Stimmung

Stimmung, for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work number 24 in the composer's catalog. It is a tonal, and yet also a serial composition (Toop 2005, 39; Stuppner 1974).

Title

The German word Stimmung [ˈʃtɪmʊŋ] has several meanings, including "tuning" and "mood". The word is the noun formed from the verb stimmen, which means "to harmonize, to be correct", and related to Stimme (voice). The primary sense of the title "implies not only the outward tuning of voices or instruments, but also the inward tuning of one's soul" (Hillier 2007, 4). According to the composer, the word

Overview

Stimmung is in just intonation. Six singers amplified by six microphones tune to a low B♭₁drone, inaudible to the audience, and expand upwards through overtone singing, with that low B♭'s harmonics 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 (B♭₂, F+₂, B♭₃, D₄, A♭+₄, and C+₅) becoming in turn fundamentals for overtone singing. It is composed using what the composer calls moment form, and consists of 51 sections (called "moments"). It is "the first major Western composition to be based entirely on the production of vocal harmonics" (Rose and Ireland 1986) or, alternatively, the first "to use overtones as a primary element" (Rose and Emmerson 1979, 20). An additional innovation is "the unique kind of rhythmic polyphony which arises from the gradual transformation/assimilation of rhythmic models" (Toop 2005, 48).