The music of Stockhausen

The music of
Stockhausen
an introduction by Jonathan Harvey

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles 1975
 University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

ISBN: 0-520-02311-0
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-85531

© Jonathan Harvey, 1975

Printed in Great Britain

 Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the kind help and unstinting

generosity of Universal Edition, who lent me scores and supplied
information, of Hugh Davies and Richard Toop who gave me
many insights into Stockhausen's mind in the course of two
short afternoons in addition to which Richard Toop subsequently
supplied much helpful material, of Alexander Goehr and our
composer-students at Southampton in 1970-71 with whom there
were discussions too numerous to mention, of William Kimber
who asked me to write the book, of Judith Osborne who made
many editorial suggestions, of Stockhausen who read it and
made several corrections, and above all of Rosaleen, my wife,
who copied out vast tracts of my scribble (amongst other
things), and without whom nothing . . .
The publishers gratefully acknowledge the following for per-
mission to quote music examples: Universal Edition (London)
Ltd., for works by Stockhausen and Messiaen; Universal Edition
(A. A. Kalmus Ltd.) for the piece by Webern.
 Contents

1. Background page 9
2. Kreuzspiel 14
3. Kontra-Punkte, Piano Pieces I-IV, Electronic Studies 21
4. New Theories 30
5. Piano Pieces V-X 35
6. Zeitmasze 48
7. Gruppen 55
8. Piano Piece XI and Gesang der Jünglinge 77
9. The Early 'Moment Form' Works 81
10. Later 'Moment Form' Works - new achievements in
electronic music 95
11. Aus den sieben Tagen - 'intuitive' music 113
Appendix (1972) 126
Appendix (1974) 132
Bibliography 133
Discography 136
Works by Stockhausen 140
Index 143
 1

Background

Karlheinz Stockhausen was born in an extreme of Nazi radio,"j" and consequent preference
era of human history. His first years were for rhythms in which the 'players are floating
influenced by economic depression and the freely'.
nadir of the German morale, and at the age of
four, in January 1933, perhaps at the time The extreme nature of the political climate of
of his first dawning impressions of the outside Germany dates back to the First World War,
world, he saw the birth of the Third Reich, perhaps beyond. The democratic, moderate
the swing of the sick German spirit from centre of the Weimar Republic was only
depressive to manic. The background is occasionally able to form an adequate parlia-
worth sketching, not because I pretend to mentary majority out of its own strength
draw any conclusions about Stockhausen's without the help of the extremists. The
strange personality from it — such conclusions Socialist-Communist Left on the one hand and
would almost certainly have to be depth- the Nazi Right on the other were openly
psychological to have any validity beyond hostile to this weak-kneed fruit of defeat with
the superficial — but because many of his its reparations and its glaring social in-
statements, personal philosophies, and even equalities, and dreamed either of the militaris-
the music, become more intelligible to us who tic splendour of the Hohenzollern Monarchy —
have not gone through such extreme climates the 'new dictator' Richard Strauss was always
when they are placed in this perspective. For talking about - or something more on the lines
instance, he said recently: 'I had no reason to of revolutionary Russia. (Stockhausen's geo-
trust any adult, because they would change graphical area, incidentally, was, half a year
with the change of the system and compromise before the collapse of the Weimar Republic
with any new situation. I found that ideology and of all factions other than the Nazis,
was something I couldn't rely on, and that I notably anti-Nazi; the polls of July 1932 show
should attach myself to the divine. Of my that Cologne-Aachen was stubbornest of all in
own choice I first became a practising Catholic its resistance to the Nazi advance.)
... I was 17 or 18.'* Or, on the musical side, his
dislike of regular rhythm, which reminds him
f Ibid., p . 39.
* Interview with Stockhausen: 'Spiritual Dimen-
sions', Music and Musicians, May 1971, p. 38. 9
The Republic tottered through the miseries of Chapter One
inflation in 1923, a subsequent unreal five
years of prosperity and savage profiteering were, of course, honourable exceptions who
based on some seven hundred and fifty million fled or suffered, as well as all the ordinary
of foreign, largely American, loans, and finally decent men and women who were under-
the collapse of Wall Street in October 1929, standably terrified to step publicly an inch
which has been described as the most serious out of line, and, of course, the Jews who had
world economic crisis since the dawn of the no choice, who just were out of line whatever
industrial era. Millions were thrown out of a their political views.
job and on the same impulse Hitler was
thrown into business. He promised jobs and The exhilarating togetherness of the new
bread, the controlling of the tycoons (especially Germans seemed much more important than
the Jewish ones), the end of corruption, the old notions of individualistic thought; the
Versailles Treaty and reparations, the restora- new issues seemed too urgent. The univer-
tion of a national pride — as extreme as had sities began to teach German physics, German
been the preceding national humiliation — and chemistry, and a journal started in 1937 called
a sense of purpose. Deutsche Mathematik spoke about the dangers
of not bringing racialism into mathematics —
The general exhilaration and sense of en- this carried 'within itself the germs of the
thusiasm was very striking in the years destruction of German science'. The highly
after the Nazis' ascendancy to power in 1933. respected Professor Philipp Lenard of Heidel-
Observers were astonished to see that, despite berg University wrote: 'German Physics?
the sinister Gestapo, the concentration camps, "But," it will be replied, "science is and
the ruthless Blood Purge of 1934, the censor- remains international." It is false. In reality,
ship and regimentation, the man in the street science like every other human product, is
was happy with the new regime.* The Jews, racial and conditioned by blood.' The arts
the communists, the pacifists and indivi- faculties seemed to be dominated by courses
dualists, like 'the past', were reduced to on Rassenkunde — racial science — history was
inconspicuousness or eliminated. The univer- rewritten and books were burnt.
sity professors, amongst whom one might have
expected considerable opposition to Nazism, The students too were aglow with the new
were in Weimar days 'anti-liberal, anti- ideals. And even more was the Hitler Youth,
democratic and anti-Semitic' and, though with its ordered stages like a nightmarish Boy
before '33 suspicious of the rowdy nature of Scout movement - looking after children from
the Nazis, were largely quite happy with the six to eighteen, at which age they had to serve
new dictatorship when it settled in. There in the Labour Service and the Army. By the
end of 1938 the movement numbered nearly
* William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the eight million. The four million who had
Third Reich, Seeker and Warburg, London, 1960, evaded it, despite prison sentences for recalci-
p. 231. trant parents, were compulsorily conscripted
in March 1939, though the new law did not
10 manage to operate fully. These youths, whose
Background sciousness of the average man: almost irrele-
vant to a true picture of German consciousness
ideological growth was carefully noted in at that time, with its daily censorship of
their performance book, passed tests at the papers, radio, books, films and plays. In the
age of ten in athletics, camping and Nazified case of religion, there was little overt protest
history, and took the following graduation over the arresting of several thousand pastors
oath: 'In the presence of this blood banner, and priests. Rosenberg's, Bormann's and
which represents our Fuehrer, I swear to de- Himmler's aim was to eradicate Christianity
vote all my energies and my strength to the and resuscitate old Wotan and his fellows in
saviour of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am Nordic deity. They had Hitler's full backing.
willing and ready to give up my life for him, Rosenberg's new thirty articles stipulated
so help me God.' that the new National Church would have no
priests, only National Reich orators; no Bibles,
With their poisoned minds and beautiful crucifixes or pictures of saints to be left in
healthy bodies, these boys and girls radiated a place; instead Mein Kampf ('the greatest of
joy that impressed and thrilled the world. all documents', 'to the German nation and
As Count Harry Kessler wrote, 'we (especially therefore to God the most sacred book'), a
in Germany) have turned towards the Greeks sword, and in the crucifix's place the swastika.
in many ways but nowadays, in contrast to Thus the buildings which had housed 'the
the classicists, quite unconsciously and natur- strange and foreign Christian faiths imported
ally as part of real life. Nudity, light, sunshine, into Germany in the ill-omened year 800' were
the adoration of living, bodily completeness to be converted. The extremism of a regime
and sensuousness without false shame or with these feelings in its blood is hard to
prudery. I t is really astounding how the exaggerate.
bodies, the physical vitality of young people
have obeyed this drive, and how much more In the case of the arts, the suppression of
beautiful they are now [1930] than they were modernism, foreign influence, the Jews and
before the War. It is a blossoming of the whole everything else inimical to what was essen-
body of the people since human beings lost tially a popular anti-intellectual movement
their shame of being naked. Maillol [the had its usual by now drearily familiar results.
Parisian artist] asked me to photograph two The speeches of Dr. Goebbels, the propaganda
young people who were, as he said, "beaux minister, were full of 'inspired' nationalism, of
comme les dieux antiques".'* gathering together 'the creative artists in all
spheres into a unified organisation under the
As is well known, those who had ideas of their leadership of the Reich', as his Reich Chamber
own, faiths of their own or who simply didn't of Culture articles put it. As in Maoist China
like crowds were not so happy. They were the and the Soviet Union, the results were dismal.
outsiders who ceased to impinge on the con- Hitler took a personal interest in the purifica-
tion of the visual arts and removed some 6,500
'modern' paintings by Kokoschka, Grosz,
* As recounted in his diary 'In the Twenties'
reprinted in translation in Encounter, September
1967, p. 23. 11
Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and Chapter One
Picasso from the art galleries; he selected per-
sonally nine hundred paintings for an exhibi- performances from the many gifted musicians
tion of Nazi art, put his jack boot through who flourished under the regime.
others and delivered a lengthy speech of
which the following is an excerpt: 'Works of Joel Sachs has shown* that aggressive
art that cannot be understood but need a nationalism and conservatism as a major force
swollen set of instructions to prove their right in German music dates from well before 1933,
to exist and find their way to neurotics who if not from Wagner's notorious explosion
are receptive to such stupid or insolent non- 'Judaism in Music' of 1850. Music such as
sense will no longer openly reach the German Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16
nation.' Schirer reports that in Munich at (1909) was just the last straw in the load of
least, where Goebbels organised an exhibition 'International Jewry, Bolshevism, "Nigger-
of 'degenerate art' (impressionist and expres- ising" ( V e r n i g g e r u n g ) Anglo-French conspira-
sionist works mainly) to show the people from cies to destroy German culture' which broke
what they were being saved, the people were the back of the paranoiac bourgeois musician.
not so overjoyed with the new way, and much Vitriolic articles proliferated, and in 1933 all
to Goebbels' fury and embarrassment flocked those years of campaigning and denigration
to the exhibition in such numbers that he paid off, and the heads rolled.
hastily closed it.
What effect the war itself might have had on
Third Reich theatre was a complete write- a youth aged eleven to seventeen, the shock in
off, overtly Nazi with its 'blood and soil' Cologne of experiencing the first British one-
dramas of the good earth and peasant life, and thousand-plane bombing in 1942, the trauma
its historical dramas extolling German heroes of defeat, guilt and confusion which the
of one sort or another. This is not to say that German spirit must have felt at the end of the
masterpieces of the past were not performed, war, the rumours of what Hitler's New Order
they were, as they were in music. had been doing to the conquered Slavs and
Jews, is beyond imagination. We who were
The opulence of music in the era was as not a part of it find it beyond the powers of
striking as was the stifling of the new. Schoen- human imagination and comprehension, so
berg left, Hindemith's works were forbidden, how much deeper below the powers of con-
Berg and Webern were for the most part scious comprehension must it have struck in
ignored (Berg only lived to see two years of those who lived through it. No wonder the
the Third Reich; his international reputation German youth of today is often cut off from
was achieved before it became a relevant the past and buried in 'the relevant' in a way
factor). But Strauss became president of others can hardly credit. They too reach for
Goebbels's Reich Music Chamber, and to- their revolver when they hear the word Kultur.
gether with Wagner and the great German
tradition received excellent and abundant
* 'Some aspects of musical politics in Pre-Nazi
Germany' in Perspectives of New Music, vol. 9,
12 no. 1, pp. 74-95.
Background physicist and phoneticist, gave the movement
one sort of extra-musical stimulus and termin-
For a barometer as sensitive as Stockhausen, ology; the electronic studio technician gave it
these years of historic extremism cannot have another. Both influences can be clearly seen in
been without fundamental impact, though the inaugural number of Die Reihe (1955) on
his creative life, as opposed to his formative Electronic Music. It is the international
life, has been lived in a time of reconstruc- mouthpiece of the movement, and is edited by
tion, a time of starting anew with a clean Herbert Eimert, who was the founder of the
slate. new Cologne Electronic Studio, and Stock-
hausen himself.
For those who like history in neat packages,
1950 is a fairly accurate landmark. The dust Perhaps the war finally dashed, for this gener-
of the war had settled, the first fruits of ation, any lingering hope that musical
Messiaen's post-war teaching were beginning structure could continue to play second fiddle
to ripen in Europe, and modern music festi- to fine emotions in the making of a piece.
vals or courses such as the Donaueschinger Schoenberg had already paved the way by
Musiktage and the Darmstadt Internation- writing music more structure-conscious than
ale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik were starting any since Bach and the Viennese classics, Berg
or resuming operations. A whole new surface had used rhythmic systems and extra-
was applied to music. It was described and musical numerologies, and Webern wrote
analysed in terms borrowed from physics, some of the first music in which the musical
acoustics and mathematics. Even the 'un- idea, as Alexander Goehr would say, is the
scientific' aleatoric element in Stockhausen's process employed - as opposed to its being a
music he claims to have derived directly from statement that arises within the process. The
studies of statistics, random structures, the status of technology and rationality was high,
aleatory behaviour of noise structures and 'irrational' was a dirty word, and composers
other scientific disciplines in Professor Werner saw the imposition of externally-conceived
Meyer-Eppler's seminars. This gentleman, patterns on to music as something not only
with whom Stockhausen studied communica- new (previous composers having been too fear-
tion theory and phonetics at Bonn University ful of the 'paper-music!' accusation), but per-
from 1954 to 1956, and who was a trained missible in aesthetic society.

13
 2

Kreuzspiel

Such was the world into which the twenty- Years W a r (all farmers), and had done the
three-year-old Stockhausen graduated from same for his wife's family tree (though she was
the Cologne High School for Music in 1951. He in the sanatorium by this time). The discipline
was born in Mödrath bei Köln on the 22nd of in this school was extremely militaristic - the
August 1928. His parents came from humble concept of private leisure and activity hardly
families. Stockhausen's mother died in 1941; existed. So, for example, a day began with
she had been in a sanatorium since 1933. His everyone rising to the call of a t r u m p e t at six
father, who fought in the war from 1939 on, o'clock, then there were sports, and then a
was killed in Hungary.* Stockhausen's father meeting in the square to hear ideologically-
was a village schoolmaster, the first 'intellec- slanted information about the war (all this
t u a l ' in a traditionally 'peasant' family of before breakfast). Having learnt English and
farmers. This meant t h a t he was obliged to Latin at his previous school, Stockhausen was
collect p a r t y contributions (Winterhilfe etc.) p u t in a class where m a n y of the pupils were
and was directly answerable to the Gestapo. two or three years older t h a n he was. The
Being a teacher, he was constantly ordered result of this was t h a t in 1944 the vast
from one village to another, though from the majority of his class became soldiers, b u t
age of five to the outbreak of the war, Stock- Stockhausen, being still too young, was sent
hausen enjoyed a relative stability of domicile. to various youth camps (to help build the
From ten to twelve he was a t an Oberschule Western Wall against the allied forces). After
(grammar school, more or less), then at a state t h a t he served in a Kriegslazarett (military
boarding school. For this latter, requirements hospital), taking care of the wounded (in-
were very stringent, not simply in respect of cluding English and American soldiers — he
intelligence and physical health, b u t also (of was probably the only person in the hospital
course) in terms of racial purity. To this end, to have studied English) for about six
Stockhausen's father had been to the trouble months. This didn't, he says, make him a
of tracing the family's roots back to the Thirty pacifist — his attitude was 'if fighting has to be
done, it has to be done', not so much for the
gain of a political faction, b u t to preserve one's
* Karl Wörner, Stockhausen: Life and Work, Faber, own home (by the time he came to the front,
London, 1973. Germany was well on the way to losing the
war, of course). Generally speaking, though,
14
Kreuzspiel a college education that had deadened the
musical past for him, as he has said, it also
his experience in the hospital of meeting marks his first encounter with Messiaen's piano
soldiers of different races tended to convince piece Mode de valeurs et d'intensités (1949) on a
him of the similarity of different nationalities gramophone record which he heard at Darm-
rather than the difference, and of the complete stadt that summer. This tough, tightly-knit
impersonality that overtakes any large group piece, something of an isolated work in
of people. (Thus were the seeds of Hymnen Messiaen's oeuvre, had an amazing effect on
sown.) Stockhausen. His previous violin sonatina had
been conventional, simple serialism with
Stockhausen learnt the piano from the age of touches of Schoenberg and Martin visible —
six, and later the violin and oboe too. In 1947 singing phrases and cheeky rhythms. Then,
he began his piano studies at the Cologne under the influence of Messiaen's piece, that
Music School. Simultaneously he began to autumn he wrote Kreuzspiel which inhabits a
study musicology and philosophy at the Uni- different world and represents a violently clean
versity of Cologne. To maintain himself he severing of the umbilical cord. He had mean-
played the piano for jazz groups, and (this while decided to travel in January 1952 to
the musicologists of the future will love) even Paris to attend Messiaen's course on aesthetics
became an improvising accompanist for a and analysis at the Conservatoire to which he
magician. He had about five two-hour lessons went twice a week for about a year. Messiaen
with Frank Martin in 1950, by which time he analysed Mozart's piano concertos, Gregorian
had a good knowledge of Bartok, Stravinsky chant and Indian music from a rhythmic point
and Schoenberg. He had written a dissertation of view, also the early Netherlanders, Debussy,
of over a hundred pages on Bartok's Sonata Webern, Stravinsky, and his own music from
for Two Pianos and Percussion, which already first sketches to finished article. Following
shows the tendency to think in terms of para- Messiaen's example Stockhausen learnt (he
meters or dimensions one at a time, separated tells us) to transform what he had previously
rather than inseparable parts of something; dismissed as dead music into a living inner
and he is already concerned with conflicts of experience, productive of new music. 'Man is
structure between them. Deliberations on this only a vessel' as Webern said; and Messiaen's
problem have been central to his composing book The Technique of my Musical Language
ever since. Bartok's experiments with the con- clearly indicates Messiaen's self-confessed
tacts between piano and percussion sonorities eclecticism, a thing which really shows up
were to bear fruit later in Stockhausen's in Stockhausen more clearly in much later
Kontakte. He had also composed as a student works like TelemusiJc, Hymnen and Stockhoven
Choral, Chore fur Doris, Drei Lieder for alto - Beethausen Opus 1970, a recorded version of
and chamber orchestra, Formel for orchestra, Kurzivellen based on the music of Beethoven.
Sonatine for violin and piano, Drei Chore, etc.
- and became a competent pianist, and, as In Stockhausen's works of this period there is,
already mentioned, jazz pianist. however, an almost total rejection of our

But 1951 marks not only this graduation from 15

European past. The only influences detectable Chapter Two
in Kreuzspiel, for instance, are Messiaen, In-
dian music (suggested by high drum pattering, an overall separate set of instructions, is
a pointillistic piece by the fellow Darmstadt individually organised, as opposed to its being
student Goeyvarts- Sonata for 2 Pianos whose a lesser or greater member of some hierarchy
middle movements also cross registers, and which is dominated by some 'goal'. It does not
just a sniff of Webern in the purity and aus- mean that one hears lots of 'single notes' any
terity of texture (he knew only Webern's Five more than one does in Webern, but the texture
Movements for String Quartet Op. 5). Let us in both cases is comparatively spare.
now look at this work as a representative of
the first period of Stockhausen's career. It is in three sections. 'Crossplay', as the title
may be translated, occurs in several ways.
The novelty which so struck Stockhausen Example 1 shows how, during twelve twelve-
about Messiaen's piano piece was that it boldly note sets, the pitches are permutated across to
formalised four parameters or dimensions of make the final set's first hexachord resemble
the music. Things normally left to good taste the first set's second hexachord, and vice versa.
and fine feëlings, such as dynamics, were no The numbered curves show another, dyadic,
longer emotionally determined, but formally way of looking at the 'crossplay'.* The piano
determined; and, what's more, separately only plays very high or very low, the medium
determined. In introducing his piece, Mes- high register belongs to the oboe, the medium
siaen wrote, 'Ce morceau utilise un mode de low to the bass clarinet. The number of notes
hauteurs (36 sons), de valeurs (24 durées), in each of these registers is written by the side
d'attaques (12 attaques), et d'intensités (7 of each set. The medium registers have more
nuances). Il est entièrement écrit dans le and more of the notes to the half-way point,
mode.' Substitute, as Stockhausen says, 'series' then less and less. The positioning of the notes
for 'mode' and you have something very close to in either the high registers or the low registers
total serialism, a method of musical thinking is also subject to 'crossplay' for the six which
which has influenced Stockhausen ever since. were high in the first set have gradually be-
come the six that are low in the final set, and
Kreuzspiel, which is scored for oboe, bass vice versa. This is a result of a set (7254361)
clarinet, piano and three percussion, is the which rotates pitches through the seven octaves.
first example of it. The first performance
(Darmstadt 1952) was accompanied by the Just as Messiaen coupled pitches and dura-
scandal customary with most of Stockhausen's tions together, so Stockhausen here attaches
premières. It is, like the other works of the a duration between 1 and 12 to each pitch
period - Spiel for orchestra, Schlagquartett for class, consequently they are permutated along
pianist and three timpanists, Punkte for
orchestra (first version) and the first version
* Kreuzspiel was by no means the first to use this
of Kontra-Punkte - pointillistic in the sense
type of rotation. See, for instance, Krenek's
that each note, duration and dynamic follows 'Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae' (1941), discussed
in Problems of Modern Music, ed. P. H. Lang,
16 W. W. Norton and Co., New York, 1962.
Ex. 1

Distribution of Notes
Piano Piano
L.H. R.H.

Bass
Clarinet O b o e
5 1 1 5

3 3 3 3

4 3 3 2

1 5 5 1 f \ b* •
I « : • t*
r »

2 4 3 3

4 3 2 3 jj

4 1 3 4

2 5

5 1

These dyads maintain a constant distance from the central line:

wr. i i: z £ :
fin. i h»
with the pitches. Indeed, a closer precedent Chapter Two
for the duration scheme seems to be Les Yeux
dans les Roues, the sixth movement of Mes- The second section does the same thing inside
siaen's Livre d'Orgue (1951), rather than the out. The middle registers (oboe and bass
Étude. The organ piece attaches pitches and clarinet) start and finish, using material that
durations together again and also permutâtes comes back to itself, and the extreme registers
a straight sequence of durations-cum-pitches (piano) are what the music moves towards
1 to 12 in the following manner — extrêmes au and away from in the middle. Widely-6paced
centre, extrêmes au centre retrograde, centre aux chords are used instead of 'pointillistic' simple
extrêmes, centre aux extrêmes retrograde, and lines in the piano, and the percussionists play
ends up with the retrograde sequence 12 to 1. three cymbals. The final section combines the
A glance at Example 2 will show the closeness preceding processes in a rather complex way.
of Stockhausen's system to the work of his The piano and wind proceed through the 12
teacher, written the previous year, though it sets (Example 1) backwards with the same
had not been seen by Stockhausen at that registral dispositions and the same notes in
time. Messiaen was father to mathematics in each instrument as in section one; but added
music in a way that the more usually quoted to this is a superimposition of the second sec-
Webern (more obviously 'modern') never was. tion around a central axis. This reaches a
So much for the pitched instruments' rhythm. maximum point half way, then fades out, so
that we are left with music similar to the be-
The other rhythmic strata are in the percus- ginning of section three and similar to the
sion. They are divided into tom-toms and beginning of the work. The percussion is like-
tumbas. Here are the durations (or attack- wise a combination of sections one and two in
point intervals since all sounds are short) in that tom-toms and cymbals play together.
The continual sense of slow change away from
triplet semiquavers as found in the tom-tom
a musical shape until one arrives back at it is
parts. Each of the four drums has a repertoire
the perceptible idea of the piece, and though
of three 'durations' which it plays whenever
it suffers from too unvaried a rate of change, it
its turn comes round. For example, tom-tom 1
gains over some other works of the period in
plays only 1, 4 and 7 (see Ex. 2). its consistent coherence. That is not to say
that Kreuzspiel is easy to hear in this way.
The tumbas have a complementary crossing Indeed, most listeners prefer to listen in
plan. They articulate sets by means of soft exactly the same way that they listen to music
accents in a continuous finger-patter. After of the past (it entails less effort), and heatedly
the introduction they move from the regular to resist any suggestions such as mine with the
set: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6/7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 to its insult 'mathematical!', oblivious of that prin-
retrograde, specially struck out by a wood- ciple — mathematical proportioning — which
block, at the point where set 6 is occurring in alone has made their music music from the
the tom-toms, and then back to the original beginning.
form. In other words, a straight uninterrupted
crossing-over process.
The uniqueness of the sound world — who else
18 would limit the piano's role so drastically? - is
Ex. 2
Intro: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
typical of Stockhausen. The tom-toms, placed Kreuzspiel
either side of the lidless piano, so close that
they invoke reverberations in it, the pattering thinking we are concerned with something
tumbas at the back, the formal and cool frag- that lasts, something that genuinely recurs as
ments that the wind play — all this creates the a factor in experience. . . . If we compare the
impression of a work not out to make dramatic flux of feeling to the flow of a river, thought
gestures, but out to display a form through a has at least the relative solidity and perma-
chosen medium. And it is important to em- nence of the soil and rocks that make its
phasise that Stockhausen was not initially channel.'* Stockhausen's post-Gruppen works
concerned with youthful and dionysiac ex- have taken the distinction to unusual ex-
pressionism; this comes later, reversing a tremes. On the one hand we have blue-print
common pattern of development. works like Plus Minus (see below p. 93)
which offer form without content, on the
However, if music is injected into form, the other, works in 'moment' form, of which the
moment-to-moment 'content' is liable to come composer has stated that all that matters is
up with some curious things, as opposed to the the 'now' — the significance of interconnections
logic and coherence of the global form. is comparatively weak and one can leave the
The uncontrolled element in a piece like hall for a drink with the composer's theoreti-
Kreuzspiel is the 'content' not the 'form'. I'm cal blessing — offer content without form.
availing myself of these thorny terms which Needless to say, in practice the performer
are distinguishable, if not separable, because supplies the content in the first case, and the
some such distinction plays a crucial part in listener instinctively supplies the form in the
Stockhausen's thought. Our experience of a second. But Stockhausen has certainly drawn
piece of music can usefully be divided into a distinction, and this distinction goes right
'being' and 'knowing' aspects, 'present emo- back to a brilliant but unbalanced beginning
tional state' and 'memory', 'feeling' and in Kreuzspiel.
'thinking'. As R. G. Collingwood wrote: 'what
we feel is certainly limited in its existence to * R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art,
the here and now in which we feel it . . . in Oxford University Press, London, 1958, p. 159.

20
 3

Kontra-Punkte, Piano Pieces I-IV

Electronic Studies

The next phase of Stockhausen's career, other factors such as elaborate strings of
1952—3, consists of three works, Kontra- notes, big chords, real 'groups' and lengthy
Punkte, Piano Pieces I-IV and Electronic tempo-defined sections. In short, what is per-
Study 1, and has elements of both 'pointillistic' ceived as a unit becomes larger and more like
style and 'group' style. what is normally understood to be a musical
idea - several components making up one
Nr. 1 Kontra-Punkte for ten instruments was entity of unified character. It was not first
the first work that Stockhausen felt to be conceived thus, however. The first version was
fully mature, hence the 'Nr. 1' affixed to the much more monochrome, more 'pointillistic';
title. It was written in 1952 and first performed he rewrote it very soon afterwards, adding the
in Cologne in 1953. Kontra-Punkte means both melismata etc. that we know.
'counterpoints' and 'against Purefete', in other
words it is simultaneously a new piece and a There are 46 sections, each with a different
methodological repudiation of the difficulties tempo mark. These latter are selected from a
posed by his earlier piece Punkte for orchestra tempo scale of seven steps: J*=120, 126, 136,
(unrevised version), or indeed by all 'poin- 152, 168, 184 and 200. This foreshadows the
tillistic' works. In Punkte (as in Kreuzspiel) later serial use of a tempo scale. Here the first
single notes and single rhythmic attacks were tempo is used much more than any of the
the units which were systematically organised, others, which is contrary to the serial prin-
giving rise to the law of diminishing returns ciples of the later works, though the whole
operative in a texture which is too consistently question of the audibility of such schemes is a
varied.* vexed one. To return to more realistic ground,
the ten instruments are chosen so that they
In Kontra-Punkte the unit of organisation is may be grouped according to timbral simi-
not just the single note, but includes many larity into six groups: 1. flute/bassoon, 2.
clarinet/bass-clarinet, 3. trumpet/trombone,
* In the little-known orchestral work Formel
4. violin/cello, 5. piano, 6. harp. Or alterna-
written immediately after Kreuzspiel, Stockhausen
had already made an attempt to move away from tively into two groups if separated into wind-
the problems of pointillism by using twelve produced sound and string-produced sound.
motives or configurations as opposed to single
notes. 21
One of the most important ideas of the work Chapter Three
is that the instruments gradually drop out,
finally leaving only one sonority, the piano's. J u s t as the timbres become more limited to
The sequence of dropping out (a large scale the end so do the dynamics and note values.
'release' plan, as when the notes of a chord are The seven* dynamics tend statistically to-
released one after the other) is as follows: wards pp as all other markings drop out and
the note values become comparatively even
i 1 Trumpet and restful. Thus the work moves into some-
j 2 Trombone thing nearer the future style — it becomes in-
3 Bassoon . creasingly kontra the principles of Punkte.
4 Violin \
5 Bass-clarinet . I Although composed at the same time as Piano
; 6 Harp } 1 Pieces I-IV, it has more in common with both
7 Clarinet ' Piano Piece V of a year later, with its rich
8 Cello J Germanic chords in the piano and its consist-
9 Flute ' ent textures; and also with Zeitmasze| of two
HO Piano years later, with its abundant and complex
instrumental melismata set off against long
The rate at which the dropping out occurs sustained notes. Kontra-Punkte's melismata,
follows the curved lines of the above plan at a with their leanings towards the aperiodical and
consistent relative ratio of approximately their wide leaps, now repeating fixed static
11 : 4. That is to say, the interval of time in pitches, now forging strongly ahead into new
beats between the finish of the bassoon part territory, have an exultant dionysiac quality
and the finish of the violin part is rather less such as could only spring from an unusually
than three times (11 : 4) the interval between intense creative joy.
the finish of the cello part and the finish of the
flute part. The same applies to the violin/bass- Of the projected cycle of twenty-one piano
clarinet finishing interval and the clarinet/ pieces, Stockhausen has so far (1971) com-
cello finishing interval; also to the bass- posed eleven. They are, he says, his drawings,
clarinet/harp one and the harp/clarinet one; in which he is necessarily excluded from the
also to the 'outer' system - trombone/harp world of colour modulation - indeed there is
and harp/piano. In each case the large time no string stopping or framework hitting
interval is first, so that in general the instru- either - he is obliged to rely on pure shaping
ments drop out slowly at first, then more and of the eighty-eight monochrome pitches.
more quickly; and this general tendency is
systematically shaped by factors depending Piano Pieces III and II were written in 1952
on the tone-colour that is dropping out. It for Doris, who was then his wife, and Pieces I
is another example of Stockhausen's careful and I V were subsequently added in 1953 to
attention to dimensions of form not normally make a set with the designation Nr. 2, which
systematised.
* Not six, as Stockhausen says in Texte II, p. 20.
22 | Sometimes spelled Zeitmasse.
Kontra-Punkte that of the Darmstadt School, was very
structure-conscious, only they were in touch
is usually played as such, and was the nearest with Beethoven and the Darmstadt School
Stockhausen had ever got to writing a work in was not.
many separate movements, until the recent
Herbstmusik. The entire set is dedicated to its Stockhausen wrote an article on the first
first performer, Marcelle Mercenier. twelve groups of this piece after doing some
analysis of Webern's music. It is the only one
The first piece is composed of ever-alternat- of the four in which there are articulative
ing chromatic hexachords, all the notes from 'pauses' in sufficient quantity to justify a dis-
C up to F alternating with those from F sharp cussion in terms of 'groups', and Stockhausen
up to B. The ordering within these two collec- regarded it therefore as a step forward. The
tions varies widely following certain sub- piece was written, he tells us, in two days,
collection ideas, and if the reader considers with the help of 'some measurements and
the number of possibilities when one takes in, proportionings'. But only after he'd composed
in addition to the single-note orderings, the the piece and after the analysis experience
possible range of simultaneities, from two part did he see in it the relationships between the
to six part, which can be placed anywhere groups that he had composed quickly and in-
within the collection, then the apparent limi- tuitively, with 'some measurements'. So far,
tations of such a repetitive scheme dissolve. it would seem we have a background system
There are occasionally bigger chords too which ('measurements') behind a complex foreground
borrow from the neighbouring hexachord. in which the frenzy of creation unconsciously
One such is a nine-note chord (bar 11) in made certain satisfying symmetries. But when
which the fingers must differentiate five one examines what, in Stockhausen's opinion,
separate dynamic levels. The notes are constitutes a correspondence or close relation-
attacked together and released successively, ship one begins to think that in places the
articulating, or at least following, a sub- analysis is more wishful thinking than reality.
collection idea which moves across the hexa- In order to make a macrocosmic representa-
chords. Stockhausen makes the point about tion of a hexachord by 'groups', he divides the
this process, that it mirrors bar 1 in which piece up into macrogroups of six groups each,
there are successive attacks (or arpeggiations in which each separate group corresponds to
of chords) which are released together by an 'opposite number' group in another macro-
lifting the sustaining pedal. Berg presented a group, but, as with the pitch hexachords, the
similar mirror pattern at the beginning and order is shuffled. He defines the relationships
end of the third Altenberg Lied in which a b y dynamic, rhythmic, chordal, contour and
twelve-note chord is attacked in a block at durational (1-6 quavers) factors, but these
the beginning and then slowly released in a factors are so irregularly articulated in many
certain order, and the same chord is at the groups that other intergroup correspondences
end successively attacked in the same order are equally possible. For example, group seven
and then released as a block. As so often with (bar eight) has much more in common with
forms-projected-into-music, the Second Vien-
nese School were the first; their mentality, like 23
group four (bar four) t h a n with the group Chapter Three
Stockhausen suggests, group six.
The other pieces of the set are rather shorter,
I t is a very complex piece—two sets inter- and as they are all to be played 'as fast as
act to produce a different tempo-ratio for possible' they share the general character of
each group, b ut the complexity arises from brilliance and quick contrasts with the first
very widely differentiated short events con- one. Likewise they all have a fairly realistic
stantly changing, even within groups. The pitch background which very complex
most satisfactory type of musical complexity rhythms and widely spaced registral disposi-
is offered not by music in which there are many tions deliberately obfuscate. Piano Piece II is
items, bu t by music in which there are many built on two trichords
arguments. Stockhausen came to realise this
shortly afterwards; he wrote: 'a constant suc- Ex. 3
cession of contrasts becomes just as "boring"
as constant repetition: we stop expecting any-
thing specific, and cannot be surprised: the
overall impression of a succession of contrasts
is levelled down to a single information'.* But, which are reordered, transposed and in the
of course, this piece is short enough to achieve middle elaborately permutated; III is built on
a certain splendour of élan despite all, and it a five-note collection
is interesting t h a t Stockhausen seems to miss Ex. 4
the point of his own piece. At any rate,
Stockhausen later avoids this type of structure
in favour of larger formations more closely
resembling those which he tries to fit on to this
piece. His awareness of the information theory and 7 F on the trichord
type of aesthetics becomes more and more Ex. 5
prominent in his music until it eventually, at
certain points, becomes the music, as I will
show later. And the beginnings can first be
seen clearly in his article on Webern ('Struc-
This latter piece is a study in two part counter-
ture and Experiential Time') quoted above,
point in which both parts retain their identity
and in the misguided analytical application of
by means of one dimension alone, t h a t of
it to Piano Piece I , which misguidedness
simply shows how radically his thinking was dynamic marking. The listener can follow a
changing during his course with Meyer-Eppler string of, for instance, five forte notes, whilst
at Bonn University. the register changes from bottom to top, long
silences separate the notes, other, nearer notes
of the second voice intervene and the tri-
* K. Stockhausen, 'Structure and Experiential chordal germ (see example above) runs across
Time', Die Reihe, vol. 2, p. 64. the two voices; in other words, there is much
to counter the following of this forte line and
24 tempt the ear away, but the joy of the piece
Kontra-Punkte for later electronic works. The limitation of
intervals to major thirds, minor sixths and
is that one learns to yield to temptation and minor tenths makes for a rather monotonous
to resist it at the same time, and so to appre- piece. It is a case of elaborate systématisation
ciate the several levels simultaneously. being used to achieve something that fantasy
could have done much better in half the time.
To show how the pitch structure of this early Like Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensités
period tends to work, and how similar it often it uses fixed proportions - in this case, the
is to the cellular thinking and contour- lower the pitch the shorter it is, calculated by
consciousness of pre-serial Webern, here is the multiplying the frequency by and making
shortest piece, number III, followed by an the resulting number equal the centimetres of
analysis of the voice part of Webern's Funf tape used for that note — and serial dynamics
Geistliche Lieder, op. 15, no. 1 (see Exx. 6 and7). moving by steps of 4 db within a six-element
series, having first equalised all frequencies by
At this same time, Stockhausen composed his feeding in an audio-response curve. It also
first electronic music. He had, however, al- interestingly foreshadows the procedures of
ready composed a piece of musique concrète, Gruppen (see below pp. 62-63) in its use of
Étude (1952), which was the fruit of his year ratios to generate a string of notes (or tempi
in Paris and was realised at the studio of the and durations in Gruppen):
French Radio. The Paris musique concrète
12 : 5 8 : 5 5 : 4
group, after the example of Varèse, was con-
4 : 5 5 : 12
cerned with the transformation or distortion
of already recorded sounds. Analysis of these which six-part progression generates fore-
sounds with oscillographs and filters was an ground, middleground and background - a
important part of Stockhausen's activity there string of six notes, the starting points of six
— he spent much time analysing reverberated strings and the starting points of six blocks-
and unreverberated percussion sounds, speech of-strings! Thus it is a strict example of total
and noises of all sorts. He there began his serialisation.
immersion in sound as such, making tape loops
of single sounds and playing them back for Much more interesting formally, though tim-
days on end. brally it is also very circumscribed, is Studie 2.
It is characteristic of Stockhausen that he
Studie 1, Nr. 3/i and Studie 2, Nr. 3/ii were selects quite a constricted range of material,
composed in 1953 and 1954 respectively. No then proceeds to cover it totally, to use up all
doubt Stockhausen, having gleaned some the possibilities that imagination considers
experience in Paris, returned to the new and worth while, just as in his later works a limited
more flexible studio Herbert Eimert had just sound world dominates for a long passage of
established in Cologne with considerable en- time or for the entire piece - in Refrain, for
thusiasm. Studie 1 only consists of entirely example, which is for Piano, Celesta, Vibra-
pure sine tones (it was the first piece to use phone and light percussion. His material in
them, Stockhausen tells us) and has an ex-
tremely limited array of pitches - a 'drawing' 25
 Ex. 6

Incidence
and size
of main
contour:
5,3

Abstract:

5,3,4{

f
lowest pitch

m s

i 4*
 Das Kreuz, das mußt' er tra - gen bis an die

In Bass Clarinet)
Studie 2 is eighty-one sine tones pitched along Chapter Three
an exponential frequency scale which spans
just over seven octaves. The steps are all per- as a model for the next period and the begin-
ceived as equal and are a little over of an ning of Stockhausen's contact with Professor
octave in size, in other words a little smaller Werner Meyer-Eppler's ideas. The first section
than f of a whole tone. The most significant has a melodic character in that strings of
thing about these intervals chosen by 2S\/~5 is similar density chords succeed one another
that no octaves occur. The lowest frequency smoothly in the linear manner. The dynamic
used is 100 c.p.s., and no multiple of 100 by norm is — p~ — - — a g a i n s t
any whole number occurs throughout the scale. which things occur. I should explain that this
The same applies, of course, to every other symbol from the score illustrates the relative
frequency. Thus Stockhausen has constructed loudness of the chord (height) and by the angle
completely logical 'unnatural' material as far of its slopes its rise time and decay time.
as our harmonic series is concerned. The ting- There is no 'steady state' — all sounds were
ling sound is partly the result of combining recorded through a diminuendoing echo-
non-harmonic intervals. He replaces instru- chamber (contributing to the tingling effect)
mental timbre with its characteristic harmonic and then played forwards for ~~—
partials with five-part non-harmonic chords, and backwards for • ]. An exact
each note of equal volume. They are made up envelope is then imposed.
of the sine tones, either densely packed or
loosely spaced (Ex. 8). The second section has more discontinuous
shapes and especially thick densities resulting
Another formal characteristic is that the from simultaneous chords. These chord com-
densest chord has the ladder with the most plexes are built up by several 'forwards'
rungs to climb up and down on (every fre- shapes with the sharp attack J
quency on the scale can be a base), whilst the or several 'backwards' shapes with the soft
most loosely spaced chord glides around on a attack —-—**| in a row. As always
ladder with rungs about half an octave apart, with Stockhausen, 'what is like becomes only
and thus has a 'near-harmonious' lack of dis- approximately like; correspondences only cor-
sonance. Stockhausen uses this scale from respond approximately',* and an insignificant
dissonance approaching 'noise' to 'near-har- gesture in an opposite direction is included.
moniousness' to great effect. The third section is quick and staccato, the
fourth has long sounds, and hence dream-like
Just as there are five sine tones per chord and rhythm, and widely spaced chord complexes
five types of chord, so there are five sections. whose attacks and releases are arpeggiated
They each have a strong character and, unlike with the utmost fantasy, and the fifth con-
those of previous works, are long enough to tains all the above types in a much more
make a distinct impression. In this way above unpredictable manner, as a rearrangement and
all, this work, which was written in the spring transformation of by now familiar material.
of the same year as Piano Piece V, strikes one

28 * 'Structure and Experiential Time', ibid., p. 74.

 4
New Theories

Before going any further in the chronological and bio-chemistry. I t has now become, he
discussion of the works, it will be necessary to claims, the 'prime mover' of his music.
explain the new theories t h a t Stockhausen was
hatching at about this time, with which he Here is a summary of the theory as explained
wrote the next series of works and which mark, in Stockhausen's important article '. . . how
again, a new phase in his development. He time passes . . .'* Music is a series of events in
started his studies with Professor Meyer- time. Pitch extends from about 16 impulses a
Eppler in 1954, and it seems highly likely t h a t second to roughly 6,000 impulses a second.
this gentleman was the main catalyst of these Duration extends from 8 seconds to second;
radical developments in Stockhausen's 8 seconds being (according to Stockhausen)
thought, not only in the 'time' theory, b u t the slowest pulse used in music up to the
also in Stockhausen's increasing preoccupa- present, 16 impulses a second being the fastest
tion with information theory. Also, linked to sounds we can perceive separately before they
this, the idea of the 'group' takes form. I t has merge into pitch or quasi-pitch. Thus duration
a longer-sustained identity, and more com- and pitch are only different areas in one time
ponent parts, i.e. it can be much more compli- scale reaching from an impulse every eight
cated and yet clear. A stick is just a stick; seconds to 6,000 impulses every second. This
three sticks can be a triangle. To what extent is an obvious result of playing around with
the 'time' theory remained outside musical the Cologne impulse generators and experi-
experience, Stockhausen's and ours, or even to encing the transition from slow clicks
what extent it functioned as a prop — like through low pitch to high pitch in a continu-
H a y d n ' s frock coat or Wagner's perfumes — ous glissando as the knob is turned or the tape
providing him with the right intellectual ambi- speed increased. He uses such a transition, b u t
ence for inspiration to live in is a question no the other way, as a codetta in the middle of
one has yet answered. Though this theory, Kontakte; it starts as a 'bass voice' and ends as
from the vantage point of today, can be seen a ' d r u m ' . Pitch and timbre (partials) become
as Stockhausen's first inklings of the later r h y t h m and pitch when slowed down below
holistic vision of universal unity, today en- 16 fundamental impulses per second.
riched by a considerable knowledge of physics

30 * In Die Reihe, vol. 3, p. 10.

New Theories The next step is to find the rhythmic equiva-
lent of the overtones of fundamental pitches,
If one is aware, as electronic composers must obviously an important factor in the attempt
be, that one's pitches are proportionally re- to define music, or in this case 'colour', as
lated vibration speeds, then it seems quite time. If the colour or timbre of a note is de-
logical that any proportions a piece uses fined by the strength or absence of the double,
relating durations one to another could also triple, quadruple (etc.) speed frequencies
be applied to pitches. above it, an exact durational equivalent
would be to subdivide a fundamental duration
The octave 1 : 2 proportion is simple. In the into its two halves, three thirds, four quarters
pitch octave there are 11 notes in between. (etc.) and change the 'rhythm-colour' by
The equivalent in duration is: strengthening the volume of some subdivisions

Ex. 9
1—6—) r~6n I—6—i r6~i

10 11 12 (13)

This is a rhythmic monster: it is the equiva- and omitting others. The only place where the
lent of taking only one vibration out of each quintuplets, sextuplets, etc., coincide is on
note. It is just as logical to make a series of their first beat, thus defining the fundamental
pitch vibrations equal a series of durations. duration as the overtones define the note.
We measure by the second for pitch (c.p.s.)
and by the minute for durations (metronome We have, then, tempo and pitch both organ-
markings). The proportions of the two scales ised in a twelve-step chromatic scale, both of
may be equated by dividing the metronome which may be organised in the twelve-note
octave J = 60 J = 120 into 12 logarith- serial system. But we also have a system of
mically equal steps to equal the 12 quasi- rhythmic correspondence to the overtone
logarithmic steps of the tempered scale. Thus, series — a harmonic, highly tonal system. Stock-
two notes whose frequencies are related by a hausen sees 'a fundamental contradiction be-
certain numerical relationship and which each tween instrumental music and serial music';
lasts a certain number of vibrations (cycles per he is criticising serial Schoenberg in particular
second) could 'equal' two tempi related by (superficially actually, but that is a long
the same numerical relationship, which last the story), and goes on: 'the instrumental sounds'
same number of beats-at-that-tempo as the harmonic scale of perception was irreconcilably
notes lasted cycles per second — though, of opposed to the chromatic scale of perception of
course, Stockhausen never uses the latter the twelve fundamental tones in the octave,
correspondence, which would result in an whose steps were serially composed'. There-
astronomically large number of beats in any
one tempo. 31
fore, he continues, we must use a corresponding Chapter Four
mixture in the rhythmic sphere, to make the
rhythm 'harmonic' too. Personally, I think is often restful by way of contrast to the
this contradiction is more apparent than real, excitement of the transition. Examples at
and that the electronic analyst cannot see random are: Piano Sonatas op. 14 no. 2, op. 49
listeners' wood for his own trees. The identity no. 2, Quartets op. 59 no. 1, op. 135. I t happens
of a bassoon F as just that is structurally frequently enough in Haydn to arouse one's
much more important than its separable (or suspicion that he might have dimly felt the
inseparable?) component parts. However relationship, for example, in the Quartets op.
Stockhausen has ingeniously, without doubt, 54 no. 3, op. 64 nos. 1, 5 and 6, op. 77 no. 1.
incorporated 'instruments playing serial music' Mozart uses it in two of the mature quartets,
into a neat macro-time framework of 'har- and once in the piano sonatas, where the
monic rhythms in serial tempi'. To maintain second subject is a transposition up a fifth of
only one tempo would not balance the the first, similarly unaccompanied, and intro-
'micro-time' or pitch events, it would be the duces the first triplets of the piece after a long
equivalent of tonal music (having only one first subject and transition. The texture is
tonal centre, instead of many). Stockhausen then dominated by triplets.
fluctuates his tempi within his twelve-step
scale, using 'octave transposition' by halving Ex. 10

m
or doubling the metronome mark, or, of
course, by halving or doubling the notation. first subject:-

I t is worth trying to answer the question as to

whether there is any historical precedent for
ia -etCr-

this apparently basic relationship between second subject:

macro- and micro-rhythm. The Viennese
classics are the foundation of our present day
mainstream 6ense of musical order. I f they
defined the nature of satisfying structure in
$ •£f c_r r r i* f
such an archetypal way, then it should be
possible to find something of macro-micro- The more one studies and listens to music of
rhythmic relationships in their works. I f the this period, the more one becomes aware of
tonic poses a certain texture in duplets, one the perpetual passacaglia of I - I Y - ( o r I I ) - V - I
would expect the modulation to the dominant progressions through every phrase, constantly
to define a speed 1J times as fast, since a fifth transformed, now meandering, now concise,
has a vibrational speed times faster than now the IV becoming elevated to a I and
its fundamental; in other words, triplets. having its own progression - a vastly extended
Examples are not infrequent in Beethoven, step in a much larger I - I V - V - I sequence —
but it is usually in the transition that the and so on. I t is a fascinating hierarchy of
screwing up occurs; the second subject itself forms within forms. In fact, macro- and micro-
structures. The biggest macro-structure of all
32 is the four movement symphony. As if
New Theories dominant slow movement stand in a clear 3 : 2
relationship (Ex. 11).
moulded by natural forces (if you will pardon
the teleological tone) there evolved two outer The J of the scherzo stands in a clear 3 : 2
movements of roughly similar speeds in the relationship with the J of the first movement:
same tonality, a slow one second, often in the J = 112, J . = 108. The last movement doesn't
subdominant, a scherzo third. Of course I am fit into the picture, though it does not sound
picking Beethoven from history to suit my that much slower than the first (112 and 88)
purposes; however, we are engaged on a on account of its semiquaver bustle and its
search for any precedents, and the Beethoven duple similarity. Here is a table of the metro-
symphony is a pinnacle of symphonic form. nome relationships in the other symphonies:
No. 2: first and scherzo relationship exactly.
In the first Symphony the tonalities are I—IV— 3: first and slow relationship exactly.
I—I (V occurs prominently, of course, but not 4: first and last relationship exactly
as a fundamental tonality) and the speeds are (and scherzo 20 out).
roughly I-IV (§ speed)-V (1| speed) in the 5: first and scherzo relationship nearly.
first three movements. Beethoven's metro- 6: has five movements.
nome marks, which, however strange his 7: first and slow relationship nearly.
metronome, should be proportionately correct, 8: none.
are: J = 112, J = 120, J . = 108, J = 88. The 9: all relationships present within 8.
first three tempi are perceptibly similar. The
o of the first movement and the J . of the sub- These slow movements are not in the sub-
dominant, however, except for 4, 6 and 8. But
Ex. 11 the practice was well established with Mozart,
first movement:
for whom it was almost a matter of course,
and with Beethoven's First, so that Beetho-
ven's later works may be seen to be a tonal
jump ahead of this practice, with which he
was already bored. The tension engendered by
a move to the dominant exists by reason of
a o 9 9 f the multiplication of all degrees by 1J, a move
to the dominant's dominant involves a fur-
ther multiplication by 1|, and so on ad infini-
tum up the sharp side. Similarly, the flat side
slow movem<:nt: has been shown to have subjective connota-
tions of a 'sinking feeling' - a demotion of the
tonic pivot note to the rank of mere dominant
— it involves division as opposed to multiplica-
tion (for example, in the last movement of
Mahler's 9th where D flat symbolises very

33
dramatically ultimate sinking, utter rest, etc. New Theories
as is suggested by its tempo and rhythm
character. Or note the double progression to a move to the dominant degree, a move to its
the flat submediant which becomes associated dominant, and a move an octave down, or
with the Adagio theme itself). The 'tension' X 1} X though the third step is really
associated with sharp sides and the 'relaxa- irrelevant, since halving or doubling occurs
tion' associated with flat sides are indications with every j5 J 1 J J we meet. Schenker explains
that we intuitively perceive such a correspond- the peculiar tension of the tone step, although
ence as: so ceaselessly used through the course of time
for obvious reasons, by means of its distance
Ex. 12 from 'Nature'. A careful study of Schubert's
Q ° (o)
Lieder will show that the arpeggio is associ-

fl " 1 1 ated with relaxation and, above all, freedom,

and the tone or semitone step is associated
mm = 60 90 (80) with tension or constraint. Compare, for
40 instance, Gruppe aus dern Tartarus with Auf
since 3 in the time of 2 or vice versa is the one dem See (Goethe); but usually both types
change of tempo (halving or doubling tempo appear in all songs. Stockhausen is perhaps
apart) that is familiar since the Renaissance. hoping for too much in present-day ears if he
We may say, then, that something of supposes that they can make this tone tran-
the time-relationships Stockhausen's theory sition in tempo. But are these hypothetical
brought to the surface was unconsciously felt ears of the future different from our ears in
in previous music, though whether this obser- kind, or in degree? They must only be differ-
vation is a bad case of hindsight's wisdom is ent in degree, for they are capable of the
still an open question, and should be tested by fifth/1^ equation. Presumably, then, there is
the listener's own feeling and experience. something we are missing; we are in the same
position as our forefathers were when they
The other changes of tempo are not so well- were discovering how to 'hear' the diatonic
worn. We have, as Schenker has shown, to scale. Just as we practise playing fives against
go through circles of fifths to arrive at our sevens, we should also expand our sophistica-
diatonic scale, tion in tempo relationships, a hitherto, for no
apparent reason, neglected aspect of music. I f
Ex. 13 enough music were written using the twelve-
s. degree scale of tempi we would, in time, be
A O
/ **
educated. All this is not to say that Stock-
f hausen has written the ideal music for the
m m = 60 XTA = 90 X1</2=135 X'/2=67-5 purpose; it is by no means educational music,
and he has obviously despaired at the diffi-
thus, in making a tempo change from 60 to culty of achieving this sophistication in more
67-5, we are really going through three steps: recent works (exceptions are Trans or Inori).

34
 5
Piano Pieces V-X

Piano Piece Fis a beautiful, self-sufficient and and the missing 'G' is supplied by VIII at the
rewarding addition to anybody's repertoire. faster speed:
It is in six sections, each one in a different,
related tempo. The 'moderato' movements Ex. 16

ÏPËI^
occur first, then the 'scherzo' movements,
finally the slow movement. The classical terms
are used to show that not even the most casual
ear could construe this as a I-IV-Y-I rhyth- J* =90 80
mic structure. The tempi are 80, 90, 71, 113-5, the two pieces are meant to be played to-
101, 63-5: in other words, every even step in gether.
the 'octave' scale from 60 to 120. The pitch
analogy would be an arrangement of a whole In Piano Piece V the six sections last:
tone scale, first note chosen at random, 60 quavers
Ex. 14 104 quavers
38 quavers
fl . • • ,B . I 24 quavers
84 quavers
«h=80 90 71 113-5 101 63-5 95 quavers
one of the two completely 'atonal' selections
possible, the other being six notes of a chro- To get an idea of the relative weight of the
matic scale. The avoidance of a tonal pattern sections when tempi and metrical length of
matches the atonal pitch structure. In the section combine, we may draw up a rough
other short piano pieces also, where there is not table in seconds:
time for the whole chromatic scale of tempi, 45 seconds
namely Piano Pieces VII and VIII, there 70 seconds
is an incomplete 'whole tone' scale in VII: 32 seconds
13 seconds
Ex. 15
50 seconds
-X
g • « 'ths © tN
" — a
90 seconds

$ =40 63 5 57 71 50-5 35
Thus, the last, slow section becomes easily the Chapter Five
longest, although it has fewer quaver beats
than the second. This is for a reason. For the thus slow, long and sparse in order to function
same reason, it is also the least dense, having like a coda.
only one attack per second on average: section
two has nearly twice as many (If). The den- Each section is compounded of several groups.
sities consistently follow the proportion of There is variety in the length and distinctive-
the section as measured in seconds, not as ness of these groups. They stretch from one
measured in quavers, as might be expected. single, short note in the sixth section near the
The shorter the section in seconds, the more end, to forty-seven notes in the third section.
notes per second; this is in spite of the tempo — They are sometimes articulated by silence,
see, for instance, section three, which has the sometimes seem to merge with another group,
second slowest tempo, but the second highest and one loses one's sense of articulation
density, because it is the second shortest. momentarily. In this interplay lies the great
The average densities for the six sections fantasy of the piece. The number of groups per
run: section is roughly proportionate to the lengths
2 i attacks per second of the sections. The first, third and fourth
I f attacks per second sections contain steadily fewer groups, while
3 attacks per second the second and the last two remain constant
attacks per second at about 14 or 15 (Ex. 17).
I f attacks per second
1 attack per second We may in theory, at least, draw satisfaction
from perceiving a progression placed against
Thus, in a piece that sounds predominantly an unchanging repetition. This whole prin-
like recitative, dense spots occur in the short ciple, that some elements change much more
sections in the middle of the piece, or, to be quickly than others is an important one for
more precise, at the ends of the third and Stockhausen: Plus Minus is a blueprint for
fourth sections, and spilling over into the be- such a principle.
ginning of the fifth, a longer section, but in the
second fastest tempo. The rest of this penulti- All I have said about the six sections in Piano
mate section, however, is dominated by silences Piece V is subject to a certain degree of dis-
which increase to the end of the piece. Here is guise, because not only are there many ritar-
a satisfying shape, somewhat akin to scales of dandi and accelerandi, but the changes of
excitement in early sonata form, where, very tempo are not always apparent at the begin-
roughly, exposition is medium, development nings of the new sections, either because of
is high (counterpoint density, modulation syncopation or of grace notes which interrupt
density), recapitulation is lower (repetition of the metrical flow. So, of course, the feeling of
the known, modulatory repose except for six clear-cut sections of a certain length is more
altered transition), and coda is lowest (self- apparent on paper than to the ear, unless it is
repetitious, tonally static). The last section is informed by the score. Why it was important
to Stockhausen to write a piece in one way,
36 when it is heard in another, only he can say. I t
Piano Pieces V-X
Ex. 17
N u m b e r of groups:

/ 14

4/

7
3 /

14

14

points to the suspicion that theory and musi- groups selected from two of the three possible
cality are not yet one. At any rate, the dis- types only. Again, therefore, one perceives a
crepancy becomes less and less frequent in central climax of interest and a coda which
subsequent scores because he evades the whole winds down.
issue and turns to other things.
The first type of group appears in the first
What is most apparent to the ear, however, is four sections. In the first section it is a uniform
the occurrence of three types of 'character ff, in the second a uniform pp, in the third ten
groups'. The first type is largely written in dynamics are used, each note being separately
demisemiquavers, and uses repetition of marked, and the same note is never repeated
pitches (from nine to eighteen of them). The with the same dynamic. The interest is there-
second type consists of isolated, rich, almost fore shifted to the parameter of dynamics. The
romantic, chords in the middle register. The sudden static quality of multiple pedals, pitch
third type consists of successions of low, gruff, invention at its lowest, is a most distinctive
short chords with varied, pointillistic dy- feature of Stockhausen's style. Again, this
namics. All three are exposed in the first idea hit Stockhausen's consciousness through
section. The third section is outstandingly full information theory and a study of Webern.
of character, in that it contains all three types He wrote: 'A process usually very important
in a short space of time, and the second type is for the time-moulding in Webern's music is
played twice. The last section outstandingly the fixing of each note in a constant octave-
lacks character, in that it only has one register, and alternation of registers at the
character group once (romantic chord). The
other sections have two or three character 37
most varying speeds; this is one of the most Chapter Five
notable means of moulding experiential
time. . . .'* Compare, for instance, the repe- the first statement has only three 'foreign'
tition of bottom C sharp (and A sharp) in notes that are not repeated, the second seven,
Piano Piece VII, where the same note is the third none, and the fourth has as many
played eight times in succession, each time unrepeated notes as repeated ones. In this
not only with a different dynamic and mode of central third statement all notes are played
attack, but also with different and often re- four or five times. In all the other statements
mote harmonics produced by silently depres- the notes are repeated in unequal numbers
sing different notes. Other examples occur in with increasing diffuseness.The last statement,
Kontra-Punkte, in the middle of Refrain, being short, using the maximum twelve pitch
throughout Gruppen, in Piano Piece VI (p. classes, using more pitches, having a much
24), and even, chordally, in Piano Piece X, and wider span, repeating only a few notes, is
in much of the later music where they become almost in danger of not being recognised
fixed pitches for improvisation. The fourth as belonging to its genre, and thus merges
time the group appears, in the fourth section, finally into the texture of the rest of the
it again has varied dynamics consisting of piece. The first character group, in sum,
short crescendi and decrescendi. Thus each makes a clear progression throughout the
appearance is dynamically different. piece.

There is a similar pattern in the pitch para- The second character group, the rich, middle
meter. The first statement of the group con- register chord, has a rather more complex
sists of ten pitches, but because there are two history. This is not surprising since it is so
Cs only nine pitch classes (G, G sharp and A easily recognised: it stands out from the one-
being omitted). The second statement consists note-at-a-time texture like a tree on a plain,
of fifteen pitches, and eleven pitch classes, G and it is a more 'familiar' gesture than any of
sharp being omitted. The third statement is the others, what psychologists call a Gesta.lt.
the clearest. Here we have all twelve pitch Here the first appearance is the clearest, an
classes, and twelve pitches (no octave doub- isolated chord of five notes, their individual
lings). This is classical perfection, from which dynamics being gently differentiated between
the others may be said to deviate, though, to p and pppp, possible if carefully fingered. It
compensate, dynamically it is the most spiky has a slight stringency, with three semitone
and irregular. The fourth statement has clashes, displaced by one or two octaves. It
eighteen pitches, and all the twelve pitch changes subsequently in the following ways: in
classes. Two statements lead up to this section two it occurs with an anacrusis twice,
'classical' statement, 9 11 -> 12 pitch this being once at the bottom of the chord,
classes, and the last one diffuses it. Similarly, once above it. Immediately after the first
group there is a four chord development pre-
* 'Structure and Experiential Time', Die Reihe, ceded by a large anacrusis (five notes), very
vol. 2, p. 72. loud. This group repeats many of the pitches
used just before, either in the previous chord,
38 or before that in the previous texture, and so
Piano Pieces V-X clashes. Since it contains only three vertical
attacks, all ff, it is consequently the most
has the effect of repeating in a chordal style, violent chord in the piece.
rather than of achieving an important climax,
which would be inappropriate so soon in the The coda's chord contains only three semi-
piece. Nevertheless, for this type of texture, tone clashes, is marked mp, and therefore
the chordal, it is a moment of glory. In the helps the other winding down processes at this
third section the group occurs with an even point. The history of this character group
more powerful anacrusis. The nine notes heard within the piece is therefore one of a constantly
together (the pedal sustains the anacrusis) inventive variety of functions, ranging from
comprise the most dissonant chord of the piece recapitulation to one or two well spaced
(six semitone clashes), but the impact is climaxes.
lessened by the fact that the notes are spread
out into four attacks. The variety of presenta- Of the third type of character group, consist-
tion of this group is fascinating. Also in ing of low, gruff chords, it is only necessary to
section three, there is a piano chord of only say that it occurs three times — in the first
four notes which almost doesn't count be- section, in the characterful third section, and
cause it is not very isolated, and has only two in the fifth; and that the second statement is
semitone clashes. It has the function of re- twice the first (twice as many chords, each
peating four notes just heard rather indis- dynamic twice instead of once), and the third
tinctly four octaves lower; in particular an statement develops further by being short and
adjacent semitone clash, the only one in the by diffusing the character with grace notes
piece, which reappears at the top of it. Again until, again, it is scarcely recognisable. So this
the same group is playing radically different group-type and the first, repeated-pitch one
roles. display clear developmental patterns, while
the second group-type is static in behaviour,
In the fourth section we have a chord in the sense that a kaleidoscope is static. Once
similar in pitch and dynamics to the first again, movement and stillness are used to
chord of the piece. The only real difference articulate each other.
is that the attacks are spread into three in-
stead of being simultaneous. Its role is re- I have touched on section form and group
capitulation. form; it now remains to consider the pitch.
The shape of the organism depends on the
In the fifth section there is an even bigger speed at which new pitches are introduced.
variation than before. The chord rises directly The character group of repeated pitches is the
from a character group of the third type. The beginning of a scale which extends from that
low, gruff chords rise in pitch to unite gradu- to the situation in which every note is a differ-
ally with the identity of the isolated middle ent pitch for a stretch of twenty or thirty
register chord, which is nevertheless quite un- notes, and in which all twelve pitch classes are
mistakable. Thus a traditional type pun is fairly evenly employed as well.
made. Further on in this section occurs an
eight-note chord, containing six semitone 39
 The general texture is dominated by internal Chapter Five
pedals, pitches which occur more often than
any others. 'The unknown must come out of and are the most difficult to take in, which is
the known.' Each new group contains a few fitting at this point. From the least repeti-
actual pitches from the previous group or tious we return finally to the medium level of
groups, and adds varying quantities of its own. repetitiousness, from l j to 2^, which is also
Thus different types of group are connected fitting, as the coda is a relaxation in every
together in unexpected ways, there is a con- way, of tempo, of density, of character, and
tinuous counterpoint between pitch and group of the new-note-to-old ratio.
character, not dissimilar to what in Schoen-
berg is a counterpoint between twelve-note set To sum up, the shape of the piece is as follows.
and thematic material, and in tonal music The first section is exposition, the second is a
between tonality and thematic material. The start to progression in various directions. The
repetitions occur in carefully calculated pro- last section is obviously a coda for the reasons
portions. From the first section to the second stated above. Sections three, four and five
to the third there is a crescendo of repetition. each form a climax for one or more of the
The third contains the long repeated note dimensions. In section three the character
group at its end, preceded by the gruff chords groups all appear in quick succession, linked
group, one of whose characteristics it is to by common pitches, and repetitiousness at the
keep a number of pitches constant; thus repe- same time reaches its climax. In section four
tition is elevated here to its clearest audibility. we have the fastest, densest and shortest
Each note is played, on average, 2} times in section, and in section five we have the climax
section one, 2f times in section two, and three of pitch information, i.e. least repetition. Thus
times in section three. Of the eighty-eight the interest is sustained in different ways
pitches possible on the piano, Stockhausen throughout.
uses only thirty-three for all of the ninety-five
attacks in section three, a fairly stringent The idea of riveting the listener's attention on
limitation. In this sort of style, Stockhausen's one dimension is an important one for under-
careful selection of the pitches he needs is the standing Stockhausen's mind, and it becomes
characteristic which distinguishes him most vastly expanded in the more recent works
from his contemporaries, with the notable ex- where the 'groups' become 'moments'.
ception of Boulez. Witness his early experi-
ences in the significantly unlimited field of I should finally mention, with regard to Piano
electronic music as shown in Studie 1. which is Piece V, the serialisation of freedom. The
even fuller of internal pedals than the piano grace notes, which exist independently of the
pieces. tempo, have their own scale of speeds, de-
pending on how awkward they are to play
For the next two sections we drop to a much clearly. They are played 'freely', but it is a
lower average rate of repetition, I f and 1J. freedom dependent on musical exigencies,
These two penultimate sections tell us most, such as the instrument and the acoustics of
the room. The eighth piano piece exemplifies
40 the two types of tempo perfectly, as it con-
Piano Pieces V-X instance, mean by it. Stockhausen is as inter-
ested in using a mode, or repertoire, of graded
sists of only one element (contrapuntal lines) possibilities ('the mediation between two
and grace notes (chords). The two pursue a extremes') as he is in making clear a repeated
frantic and exciting dialogue, now indepen- ordering of that repertoire. That it should be
dent, now meeting.* repeated is a necessary condition of the intel-
ligibility of ordering as something of composi-
The question of how much serialism there is, tional significance, as opposed to mere occur-
is difficult, because in many contexts there is rence. In tonal music each pitch had at least
no perceptible serial system (which we can two basic meanings: it stood in an intervallic
assert with authority), but we would risk con- relationship with its fellow pitches and it
tradiction from the composer if we said there stood in a tonal relationship with some tonic.
was no serial system. In other words, there is (E.g. 'a third above x and the subdominant
no passage of music ever written that cannot degree of tonality y\) Schoenberg's free
be accounted for by some sort of seriality, atonalism tried desperately and magnificently
therefore unless one knows the composer's to get round the lack of the second of these
mind there is strictly speaking always a risk qualities with drama and violence of expres-
of falsehood. It is obviously impossible to sion; and then, in the serial works, he substi-
follow a series of modes of pedalling, or modes tuted ordering. (E.g. 'a third above x and the
of attack, or a series of technical difficulty, but fourth note of the series'.) Unless the double
I think that we should not try to 'follow' a meaning of each note is made clear by the
series in the way we do in Schoenberg and composer the significance of the music is less
Webern. What matters is that we are aware by half, or at least the pitch part of it is.
of a scale between two extremes being used in Stockhausen certainly pays homage to 'order-
an artistically varied way, avoiding too much ing', but only now and again, and the tempta-
repetition except on the large scale that de- tion to debase the currency of pitch in exciting
fines that it is a scale of so many steps. A clear, new colouristic textures and (electronically)
systematic example of this is Piano Piece XI, in 'noise' is too seductive to be resisted; though
where scales of six tempi, six modes of attack it must be said that the exhaustion of a graded
and six dynamics are applied at random to repertoire of possibilities in dimensions other
nineteen groups: we perceive the extents of the than pitch through the course of a piece is one
scales, but their order, interestingly varied, is of Stockhausen's most impressive musical
not strictly serial. One of Stockhausen's virtues achievements.
is that he uses more scales of organisation in
full consciousness than any previous composer. The other piano pieces also exploit six new
modes of attack, which Stockhausen compares
It is, however, clear that Stockhausen means with the 'series of envelope curves' used in
by serialism something rather different from Studie 1. Each of these pieces exploits a very
what Schoenberg, Webern and Babbitt, for distinct and individual form, however, which
does not impinge on any other.
* For further discussion of the serialisation of
freedom, see below, p. 47ff. 41
Piano Piece VI, for example, has a distinct Chapter Five
transition from the world of Piano Pieces
I—IV and Kontra-Punkte to the world of section (see above p. 35) by omission, in the
group character, of Gruppen and the later third by being placed in four registers, in the
piano pieces. The long first part is very diffi- fourth by being fixed three octaves lower (with
cult for similar reasons to those mentioned in A sharp), and also by omission, and in the
connection with Piano Pieces I-IV, but fifth by being fixed one octave higher (with D
gradually character identity is sustained a sharp). One can tell an 'omission' by the fact
little longer; now it is chords, now fixed pitch that Stockhausen goes through the 85 pitch
pedals, now silences and single notes and cer- classes of the first section — the 'text' — to
tain intervals, now a single pedal (middle D generate the rest of the piece - 'variation' -
sharp), now chromatic grace notes up or down adding occasional repetitions and grace note
to a terminal goal, now the tempo - expressed additions. He uses the same symmetrical set
by a wavy line moving on a 13-line stave as the one he uses later in Gruppen. For a dis-
representing 13 tempi from 45 -> 180 (a cussion of it see below (p. 56). Here he only
typical manifestation of Stockhausen's love uses the set and five symmetrically chosen
for exact visual equivalents) - becomes more transpositions, which link in a Webern-like
purposeful with lines such as: manner in that the last note of one set is the
same as the beginning of the next set. How-
ever, as in Gruppen, the sets do not, except
for the first and final ones, start with the first
or - note, but with one in the middle.
and so on. Interestingly, some of these charac- At the expense, I am afraid, of the splendid
ter identities, such as grace notes, are the eighth and ninth pieces, I would like to try to
result of a revision, for Stockhausen came give a bird's eye view of Piano Piece X, which
increasingly to care about this sort of differ- is considerably longer and grander in concep-
entiation. tion than anything discussed so far. Although
it belongs primarily to the set called Nr. 4
Piano Piece VII* again uses different (Piano Pieces V—X, 1954-5), both it and Piano
material: all types of harmonics — some very Piece IX were not written out until 1961.
far up the series — are obtained by depressing
keys silently. The piece needs to be heard at Obvious peculiarities of the notation are: no
very close quarters to be fully effective. Middle section lines, instead durations written in the
C sharp dominates the first section as a fixed space above the staves within which the given
pitch, and is treated in the second tempo music must be fitted, and a thick line (as for
quavers, conventionally) to which all notes
* I should like to acknowledge some helpful are connected by stems and which slopes up-
suggestions made to me about this piece by ward for accelerando and downward for ritar-
Christopher Wintle. dando, all notes' durations being indicated by
the length of a slur. This notation implies that
42 there is great rhythmic freedom within rather
Piano Pieces V-X 15. rapidly repeated notes and clusters
16. one trill!
precise boundaries. An imprecise scale of 17. half pedal to reverberate sounds softly
things enclosed by a precise one. Any rhyth- 18. silent depression of the forearm cluster
mic or durational argument must therefore in bass to reverberate sounds softly
come through only in these boundary-defining 19. silent depression of keys immediately
durations above the stave, of which the rest is after attack to reverberate sounds
a varied filling. Apart from the large scale softly.
form which emerges in the way I will show
below, and the fact that the longest durations The main idea of the piece is a big gesture
always manifest themselves as the extra- followed by tiny isolated vestiges or after-
ordinary Cage-like silences or near-silences echoes of it. The quasi-sonata-form of the
which articulate this form, these durations whole structure is as follows:
have no obvious sequential pattern. At the 1. Big opening group followed by six isolated
most (and rather academically), we can say vestiges of 'single-voice chromatic' and six of
that they lie, if plotted on log/ordinary graph clusters (fairly large vestiges).
paper, on sinusoidal curves — not one but 2. Three increasingly long sections, each pre-
several — with an exactness that seems more faced by increasingly short single chromatic,
likely to be rational than random; but this and made up of cluster and chord groups.
must necessarily be pretty remote, except in a Followed by several isolated vestiges of them.
general sense of sequential alternation, from Each of these sections may be summed up as
the auditory experience. ( U - U U U U ) in terms of scansion.
3. Big 'recapitulatory' group (blowing up an
The material used is the following: insignificant figure, repeated notes, to enor-
1. single-voice chromatic or semi-chro- mous proportions, but this is an exceptional
matic darting fragments, terminating technique), followed by isolated vestiges.
often in some goal note Then follow three more big groups with their
2. 2-part chords pp \ dynamics some- vestiges, but these are less isolated and refer
3. 3-part chords p j times swopped also to ideas other than those occurring in the
4. 4-part chords mf big group immediately before. The big groups
5. 5-part chords f i dynamics some- become increasingly shorter themselves, and
6. 6-part chords^" j times swopped effect a general mixture and gentle disintegra-
7. 7-part chords f f f tion or liquidation, as Schoenberg would say,
Seven widths of cluster, including: of the hitherto very separate elements. If this
8. clusters played with the fingers is like a coda, we might call the first section
9. clusters played with the hand(s) exposition, the second development and the
10. clusters played with the forearm(s) third recapitulation. After group 1, the groups
11. finger cluster glissando (gloves are are articulated in serial manner by the varying
recommended) emphases laid on seven character-types built
12. hand cluster glissando out of the elementary material listed above.
13. arpeggio up
14. arpeggio down 43
A more detailed look at some of the ways this Chapter Five
general plan is carried out m a y be helpful.
The single-voice chromatic ppp element re- the exposition with a reference back. I t is cer-
tains its identity almost throughout the piece tainly a sort of J a n u s ' s door, and in that capa-
by staying below that part of the piano which city a unique and effective structure. After the
does not damp and above the area where such unrelieved violence of the opening pages this
speed would sound murky. It starts at the and the sudden prolonged silence which
very beginning of the piece with an expression follows are dramatic in the extreme. Here is
of the first six notes of the same set as Stock- Stockhausen's structural thinking at its best.
hausen uses in Piano Piece VII and Gruppen
(amongst other places), at first in the subsidi- After these six single chromatic vestiges come
ary decorative notes which quickly depart the six cluster vestiges, likewise all separated
from it, then, transposed, in the structural by silence or reverberation. They, too, suggest
notes, notated with larger note heads, which ternary thinking in that the middle ones are
are sustained like a cantus firmus. The rest of made up of hand and finger clusters (with
this first group is a most extraordinary out- glissandi), but the first and last use the vio-
burst of 'maximum information', everything lent forearm clusters (with glissandi), de-
on the list is included, and there are no articu- veloped in the last one to an aggressive peak.
lative silences; the only concession Stock- This gives birth to a very long pause indeed
hausen makes to the 'redundancy' the ear while the sounds fade away only to be inter-
craves (and this alone puts the passage quite rupted by element 7, onefff 7-part chord with
apart from the 'difficulty' of the first piano a single high note after it leaving in its wake
piece or the beginning of the sixth) is that for another sea of dying reverberation. This
short periods of time the same element is con- lonely lighthouse of a sound is likewise magni-
tinuously used - strings of, say, ten chords of ficently dramatic, for we have not heard any-
the same size and dynamic. thing resembling a sonorously spaced chord
since the very opening group. Again, Stock-
Tacked right on to the end of this is the first of hausen's love of 'Germanic' chords, as Boulez
the six vestiges of the single chromatic ele- is supposed pejoratively to have called them!
ment. I t is very close to the opening statement Again, the typical brief gesture in an opposite
of this element, not only in that it repeats the direction at the end of a section — a feature of
two serial hexachords, the decorative and the this rather strict piece on all its levels. Again,
cantus firmus, at the identical transpositions, also, the two-faced element which looks back
and paraphrases other figurations too, but into its 'own' section and forward to the
also in that it has virtually the same length. development in which chords are again going
B u t in the second case half of this length is to appear.
occupied by the quiet reverberation of four
notes with no new attacks. One might call it Now for the 'development'. Three sections
a first subject codetta (at the risk of Procrus- follow, each introduced by an ever shorter
tean bedism) which rounds off the first part of passage of single chromatic (as at the opening
of the work), each section one page longer -
44 the notation is proportionate to the time it
 Piano Pieces V-X The reader can see the various symmetries and
near-symmetries resulting from a division of
lasts, so this is a rough guide. The liquidation the third section of the development. It is
of the single chromatic element is given both one section and two, there are interesting
further relevance by the fact that the group pressures on us to hear it as both, as already
that is liquidated is virtually the same length demonstrated. Sections 1 and 3a, have much
as those single chromatic statements which in common, and in addition to similarities
opened and closed the big first block, and has obvious from the chart below, they are the
initially the same amount of played music (as only two sections to have arpeggiated chords.
opposed to reverberations) - 9J crochets - too.
Now for the last part of the work. The charac-
Here is a chart of the 'development': teristics of the four component sections are as

Large
Groups Vestiges
Section 1 single clusters clusters two three one
(29 chrom. + 5 pt. 5 pt. 5 pt. 5 pt.
durations) chords ^ chords > >
1 gliss. J pedal I pedal J pedal J pedal

2 single clusters (one clusters clusters two one

(30 chrom. + 7pt. 7 pt.) + 6 pt. 6 pt. 6 pt.
durations)
5 gliss. harmonics harmonics harmonics harmonics

3 a single clusters clusters

(28 chrom. + 7 pt. + 5 pt.
durations)
3 gliss. 7 gliss. pedal £ pedal pedal pedal

3b clusters clusters clusters three five two

(31 + 5pt. + 7 pt. + 3 pt. 3 pt. 3 pt. 3 pt.
durations)
2 gliss. 7 gliss. 5 gliss. \ pedal
(contd.)
one
3 pt.

harmonics harmonics

45
follows. Sections one and two liquidate once Chapter Five
and for all that idea of the single chromatic
texture as a preface, so that it does not appear of pattern so that there is no real big group at
before section three at all, but is changed in all, merely hand clusters with four- and five-
the middle of that section, by means of cross- part chords growing out of them (a merging of
breeding with another element (the hand the differences between the elements), and
cluster), from its delicate and dry nervousness four final soft vestige-like four-part chords.
into a sound like Indian bells, high and These are strongly direction-orientated, un-
pedalled and softer than any other notes in like the usual backward-looking vestiges — in
the piece. It emerges from the pitches of the upwards motion of a wedge structure of
the hand cluster like a butterfly from the which interspersed single bass notes provide
chrysalis. the downwards motion.

Section one is recapitulatory in that it is large The tenth piano piece has a clear but elaborate
and recapitulates the repeated note figure, and structure. The beauty of these last four
it is constantly changing the type of element sections would not have been so great had the
in use, showing a complex aspect similar to strict differentiations of elements and patterns
that of the opening section. However, its of behaviour not been so carefully adhered to.
vestiges (six of them) tend to resemble and There is an artistic discipline here which one
develop the short 'development' vestiges as must admire, a successful 'serial' use of the
much as the large ones of the 'exposition'. The structural elements. Less easy to take are the
'recapitulation's' vestiges tend to be a stage extremes of crudity — the lack of small-scale
more unpredictable than any before. For rhythmic argument, the high-handedness in
instance, if the preceding big group was built the detailed treatment of pitch, which on top
of finger clusters, two-part chords and finger of all the clusters often leaves a simplistic
cluster glissandos in different successions, the impression, certainly when one remembers
vestige may contain two or three of these the felicities of earlier piano pieces, to which
elements simultaneously, prolonging them as Stockhausen is prepared to go at the 'non-
harmonics too. organisation' end of the spectrum. Because of
the way he talks about the oscillation between
Section two continues the same process, but 'organisation' and 'non-organisation' in his
has only five vestiges, and those not very programme note one wonders if he has suffi-
isolated. Section three is a near-disintegration ciently sensed the monistic nature, the grey
of the big group/vestiges pattern, as the big absence of harmonic multi-meanings, the
group, though still recognisable, is almost as 'tidiness' and over-easy graspability of these
short as the 'vestiges', which are all different clusters. Clusters are not complex phenomena;
for the first time in the piece; they don't echo they bulldoze all musical relationships away
the immediately preceding sounds but refer and have many degrees fewer of significance
back all over the piece in the most complex than a simple triad. As Boulez wrote of
way. Section four continues the disintegration clusters: 'This quickly "parcelled" material
is no guarantee of great acuteness of concep-
tion; it suggests, on the contrary, a strange
46
Piano Pieces V-X the originality - the feeling that, once again,
Stockhausen has fully defined a substantial
weakness for being satisfied with undifferenti- idea that one says in retrospect someone had
ated acoustic organisms.'* But, on the large to do, it had never been done before, and now
scale, the clarity, the grandeur, and above all, it has been so thoroughly done that nobody
else can do it without appearing second hand —
* Boulez on Music Today, F a b e r , 1971, p . 44. all this is some achievement.

47
 6

Zeitmasze

In discussing Piano Piece V, I mentioned one player is involved and one of the company
briefly the 'serialisation of freedom'. Nr. 5, gets gradually further and further out - an
Zeitmasze (1956) for flute, oboe, clarinet, cor experience every chamber music player knows
anglais and bassoon takes ideas on this subject to his cost. He calls these areas of inaccuracy
much further. These ideas were also prompted 'fields' and the size of the 'scatter' 'field-
by an urge to develop beyond total serialisa- sizes'. Stockhausen must have arrived at these
tion's discrete arithmetical (or exponential) views by just such experiences; 'like all the
steps in a chosen scale.* In strict total seriali- reflections described those that follow have
sation, 'Every individual magnitude had to be been triggered off by "purely coincidental"
exactly measured, and fixed by a discrete processes in earlier compositions. One wrote
value in each dimension (one pitch, one dura- something or other, and was then startled by
tion, one loudness).'! The complexity of the the way certain things hung together. Differ-
resulting notation often baffled the performers entiated field-sizes had, in fact, already been
into playing some passages much more in- presented, even with the normal signs for
accurately than others. One should not be dis- notation.
couraged by this, says Stockhausen, rather
one should make a virtue of it, control it and 'There was the small note, for one, written
serialise it. This is surely the essence of live independently of the other, measured time-
performed music as opposed to electronic values - the "grace-note". I f its tempo was
music; composers should not urge the per- " a s fast as possible", and if it were not only
former to become a machine, rather to become single but came in groups of various sizes,
more human. The degrees of inaccuracy are either before, over or after a measured time-
not of the arithmetical discrete step type, but duration, then these groups of grace-notes
form a continuum, especially when more than would take over the function of a second time-
stratum "fading i n " to the measured dura-
* In the first sketch version the piece simply con- tions. Here, each individual grace-note in the
sisted of all the metrically notated sections. The group received its own field-value in time,
rhythmic freedoms were a later development, determined in the following way: the pitches
f Die Reihe, vol. 3, p. 29. of a group were distributed on the piano in
such a way that the player's hand had to make
48 movements of very different magnitudes over
Zeitmasze its 'harmonic' subdivisions or formants (two
halves, three thirds, four quarters, etc.), he
the keyboard. The larger the pitch-interval, writes: 'If the single time quanta of the form-
the larger the time-interval from note to note, ants are no longer in a constant relation to
for everything was to be played "as fast as each other, but speed up or slow down, more-
possible". Besides this, the instructions men- over in various degrees, then the formant-
tion the fact that each note should be dis- rhythm becomes more or less diffuse. Different
tinctly recognisable in pitch, thus automati- field-sizes result according to the number of
cally making the lower notes somewhat variable tempi in the formants, and according
longer than the higher ones. Thus, instead of to the degree of their alterations, in which the
notating all the various notations one used original harmonic phase-relationships can no
performing indications of a quite different longer be traced back to a scale of discrete
kind, in order to produce a proportional series time-quanta. For example: a first duration-
of field-sizes within the groups of grace-notes. formant has a constant tempo, a second " a s
The size-relationships of such a series depend, fast as possible", a third speeds up and a
of course, on the time it takes for respective fourth slows down and all are to be played
performers to react, and also on the instru- simultaneously; and only the fundamental
ment, and on space (the more resonant the duration of such a time-spectrum is exactly
room, the more slowly the grace-notes must measured as a single value.' The five instru-
be played, if they are not to become indistinct); ments play together in time at one end of the
but just because of this, the composed propor- scale and all out of time at the other — this
tions continue to exist.'* If this describes latter extreme creating a 'mass structure'
what happens in the piano pieces, here is a where the only sense of time is the length of
description of its development into Zeitmasze the whole passage - the equivalent of 'noise'
and Gruppen: 'The longer two orchestras play in the pitch sphere, where there is no periodi-
in different tempi, the more probable it is that city in the vibrations. In between these
the time-strata will get out of step, be dis- extremes the 'field-size' is determined by the
placed. Even apart from the fact that such number of instruments out of time and the
displacements require a corresponding con- degree to which they are out of time. The same
trol of field-harmony, field-intensity, field- scale has always existed in musicians' minds,
density, etc., the method of time-composition he writes; composers compose freely or
must aim at regulating such field-times. schematically, compositions are free or strict
Clearly, the flow of time can no longer be forms, performers give free or strict interpre-
imagined as "quantified"; displacement can tations; and all these scales should now be
come about gradually and continuously within used consciously in their full richness. Or
particular time-fields, and the associated rather, to push the theory to its ne plus ultra,
field-sizes cannot be thought of as a sort of not only 'consciously', but in a scale ranging
discrete succession.'! And, with reference to from 'consciously' to 'intuitively' with all
the division of a fundamental note value into the steps in between. Similarities with the
Lévi-Strauss type of grid are not hard to see.
* Die Reihe, vol. 3, p. 34.
f Die Reihe, vol. 3, p. 31. 49
The distinction between precise arithmetical Chapter Six
and imprecise continuous scales (Babbitt calls
them ordinal and nominal scales) is an import- applies to the speed at which one can perform
ant one, and the inclusion of the second typ e the shortest notes of the passage. Obviously,
in later works one of the most illuminating there m a y be long durations as well, which
aspects of Stockhausen's mature serialism — it m a y seem as if in a slow tempo.
is much more realistic t h a n the imposed pre- 3. The instruction 'as slow as possible, in one
cision where no precision is necessary of some breath'. This means a passage or group-field
of the pointillistic works, Stockhausen's and whose time has to be estimated as a whole, and
others'. the parts then fitted inside t h a t whole in the
right proportions of note value. The other
Interestingly, in this 1956 article from which I instruments take this instrument's choice of
have been quoting, he moots the possibility of tempo as their normative tempo on these
applying field-sizes to pitch, e.g. — field dura- occasions.
tion from to -5-5V - i.e. a possible pitch 4. The instruction 'fast — slow down' means
between A above middle C and the C sharp an even progression from maximum speed to
which lies a major third above it, a technique about four times as slow over the group-field-
he used before the article in the composition size, which m a y be short or long, and therefore
of Gesang der Jünglinge. There would, of either violent or gradual.
course, have been nothing new about it in a 5. The instruction 'slow - get faster', the
non-theorised context since the time of reverse of No. 4 (above).
Schoenberg's Sprechgesang, for instance, to
say nothing of early aleatoric scores. This carefully thought-out plan of time and
tempo pays dividends in Zeitmasze, where
So much for the theories of time as expressed there are only up to five clear lines in any
in the article. I n the music Stockhausen uses texture, more so t h a n in any other work of
the following five time-measurements (Zeit- Stockhausen's. Never has the intention been
maße = time-measurements or tempi) which so clearly audible. One of the rarest things to
can be distributed round the five instruments. be achieved in our avant-garde situation is
1. Metronome-measured time, with the fami- genuine life and lightning-fast invention in
liar chromatic scale of twelve tempi per more t h a n one p a r t or layer at a time, as
octave, i.e. from a speed to its double speed. opposed to the more usual succession of
He changes tempo in a quasi-serial succession blocks or textures. Where he wants it - and
only at the beginning and end, b u t never in he sometimes wants the opposite, homogeneity
strict sequence in the Gruppen sense (see — Stockhausen's lines have a character which
below). Each of the twelve tempi does appear, makes for real counterpoint of the most
b u t six of the m only once. I n the middle exciting sort. They have enough redundancy
tempi are occasionally presented simultane- ( = internal repetition of shapes, dynamic
ously. patterns, rhythmic patterns, metrical regu-
2. The instruction 'as fast as possible'. This larity etc. = strong recognisability) to avoid
being muddled with competing lines, and
enough new information ( = irregularity =
50
Zeitmasze Compare this with the Webern excerpt
(Example 7), and trace the several wide-
surprises generally) to be artistically interest- interval downwards arpeggios of three and
ing. Once players have mastered their arithme- four notes and finally, with the pitch and text
tic and give instinctive performances of such climax, of five notes. The Stockhausen has
lines as this: exactly the same sort of approach to non-

Ex. 18

u68) langsam-
beschleunigen
J - b i s 171

Klar.

their performance, because not shackled to systematised shapeliness. Equally impressive

strict synchronisation with others, will be are the movements towards and away from
virtuosic, brilliant, daring and physically ex- chordal passages. Of course, this is just a
hilarating in effect. function of the field-size seriality, one of the
manifestations of 'field-size = 0'. These are
The various passages relate to each other in some of the few places where one feels the
many dimensions, not just in the seriality of influence of Messiaen, with whom he studied
their strict proportions. Very impressive is twice a week for a year in 1952 and whose
the logic with which elements grow or disinte- extraordinarily powerful musical personality
grate over several sections, such elements as so often transforms all who come near it ( E x x .
silence, flutter-tongue, melismata, pointillism 20 and 21).
(single notes isolated and dynamically differ-
entiated), 'melody'-like lines, etc. As Gene- The last fifty-nine bars of Zeitmasze read like a
vieve Marcus has shown at some length,* direct introduction to the world of Gruppen,
contour-motives are used with some consist- for as in that work the bar lines define the
ency. In fact, I might add, in a manner not length of a fundamental rhythmic unit, the
unlike certain works with free motivic inter- from-this-point-on quasi-serial tempi define
action of Schoenberg and Webern. Here is an the 'frequency' of those fundamentals, and the
early place where these sort of motives begin harmonic subdivisions of the fundamental bar,
to appear (Ex. 19). consistent throughout each tempo-section,
define the 'group spectrum'. And that tech-
nique leads us on to Nr. 6, Gruppen.
* Genevieve Marcus, 'Stockhausen's Zeitmasze',
The Music Review, May 1968, p. 146ff. 51
w
Ex. 20
beschleunigen - - - - - verlangsamen •

C " (137) . A (138)

Ob. £ lül u
i

»/x jRP
beschleunigen verlangsamen -

deutliche Lautstärkeunterschiede der Gruppen

beschleunigen - - - - - verlangsamen - -

im Tempo verlangsamen /im Tempo

;140) (141) (¡42)

t ±
p " t — x m
ffP^Z f fp
im Tempo verlangsamen - - - - - /im Tempo

'm
1 Efufcs m £ i
^ p^ pp f p^
 Ex. 21 from 'Oiseaux e x o t i q u e s ' ( 1 9 5 5 - 6 ) 0 . Messiaen
8- ttc.
Pt« Fl.

1 Fl.

lfltb.

S tltr.
Sit

frlr*R—r^-1 rr » f . In J r — r —
Clock. y v^ ^ " ^ j) vip "T ? VU* il =
V M*^ Vi?

'l'T "T k. L5"

Xylo.
»!f

AT j y

Pt e Fl.

1 Fl.

lHtt.

2 Clar.
Sil

Gloek.

Xylo.
 7
Gruppen

Gruppen (or in English, 'Groups') for three In discussing the music let me follow Stock-
orchestras was written in two stages. The hausen's schedule and first say something
pitch and tempo sets, the pitch range of each about the preliminary stage of planning. A
group, a precise rhythmic scheme for the open- body of 109 players is divided into three equal
ing of the work and a demonstration of the orchestras with the comparatively conven-
way orchestras overlap were all planned out in tional component families which are situated
July and August of 1955 in Paspels bei Chur, on three sides of a hall. Thus was reborn instru-
Switzerland (well before Zeitmasze was fin- mental spatial music, the equivalent of the
ished). Stockhausen has sometimes stopped widely spaced loudspeakers in Gesang der
and released a piece for performance at Jiinglinge (composed in the middle of the
roughly this stage of determinacy; here, during composition of Gruppen), and a continuation
all of 1957 in Cologne, he wrote it out in full of such works as Giovanni Gabrieli's anti-
detail with nothing left to chance, no im- phonal works for St. Mark's Venice, Berlioz's
precise rhythms or approximate pitches. It has Requiem, the four spatial levels in 'The Temple
often been said that at about this point in of the Grail' music of Parsifal, Die Jakobs-
musical history the great sham of ferociously leiter, etc. As Schoenberg picturesquely wrote
complex-looking scores was finally exposed by of the projected end of his Jakobsleiter, 'music
the fact that some of the composers who wrote is streaming in from all sides of the hall'.
them changed with apparent complacency Schoenberg was also envisaging four spatially
from almost inhuman precision to aleatoric separated ensembles - two at different
'chance' techniques, where a good deal heights, and two at different distances - but in
'doesn't matter' as long as it sounds nice and addition to the main ensemble. This was about
complex. This ferociously complex-looking 1917, but in 1944 he foreshadowed another
score alone disposes of that exposure. For all Stockhausen idée fixe by suggesting that the
the difficulties and unrealities of the detailed effect could be better achieved by micro-
realisation, Gruppen always sounds considered phones and well-distributed loudspeakers.
and even important, in the sense of having a Stockhausen's thinking on spatial music may
lot to say both locally and totally; in short, well date from Pierre Schaeffer's Paris con-
much better than any of the aleatoric scores certs of 1951-2 in which his group (the one
which were supposed, depending upon your Stockhausen also worked with) composed
critical outlook, either to supersede it or to
prove the vapidity of the whole lot of them. 55
tapes for three spatially mobile circuits of Chapter Seven
sound. Son et Lumière and stereophonic
cinerama also date from the same time. I t is distributed around one orchestra or another
interesting t h a t Stockhausen's first sketches or, more occasionally, two or three at once.
for Gruppen include parts for loudspeakers — Also, for much of the time different groups
an idea he kept for later use, as was also the will overlap, one starting in one orchestra
idea to have 'free' tempi in the manner of before the previous group has finished in an-
Zeitmasze. other orchestra. Because nearly every group
has a different tempo marking one frequently
The use of a spatial dimension has not only the gets three tempi occurring simultaneously
obvious dramatic justification, b u t also a (achieved b y having three conductors for the
structural one. If, for example, a flute is orchestras who have to synchronise with each
playing B piano in orchestra I, and another other and pick up special sound cues from
flute plays A in orchestra I I I , and then the other orchestras).
first flute plays an A and the second flute a B,
the listener will be able to separate the lines The tempi are chosen from the 'chromatic'
because they are 'over there' and 'over there'' scale (the steps of the scale 'to be sensed as
as well as 'played by a flute', 'piano', etc. Thus equally large') between J = 60 and J = 120.
two arguments can be perceived in a situation Double speeds - metronome markings times
where otherwise only one would have been two - are used intermittently as well. These
perceptible. I n this work Stockhausen is able tempi are ordered serially. This is the moment
to use three arguments at once, though he to introduce the set of the work, as it influ-
seems to prefer 'fusion' as often as 'counter- ences almost everything t h a t was planned
point', throwing tempo-textures around the after this point:

Ex. 22 To tf-S
* # •
gp - f * n* '
• It*

hall rather t h a n ideas with a more separable There are four points about this particular set.
identity. More of t h a t later. 1. I t is degenerate; the second hexachord (6
notes) is a retrograde of the first, so by trans-
The work consists of 174 'groups', each one posing the set six semitones higher (T 6 ) you
lasting on average a few seconds and being re-duplicate T ° backwards,

EX 23
' * ' ' »« * Ì

56
Gruppen dates them too), though whether this applica-
tion is valid has been much disputed. I n
thus cutting down the field of possible forms general in the Darmstadt School, total serial-
and, more important here, of different trans- ism led to some things of value, b u t not en-
positional levels from twelve to six (a level is a tirely the expected ones. A new type of
transposition of the set which m a y be played perpetual change over a scale or ladder of
forwards or backwards, or both or with certain elements was born t h a t gave rise to a different
segments retraced or jumbled, as so often hap- type of sound in which constant surprises were
pens in this work). Forwards and backwards found rather t h a n constant logic.
are recognisably the same thing, therefore:
a fact t h a t will be seen t o be important later. Here is a plan of the tempi. I have taken G to
2. I t is an all-interval set, which means t h a t it equal J = 120; b u t I could have started on any
contains all eleven intervals once each. This is other note as far as the tempo proportions one
useful in t h a t every interval in the work is to another are concerned. If G = (J = 60),
'related' to the set, however incidentally and then G sharp = (J = 63-5), A = (J = 67), A
decoratively it m a y appear, b u t backfires into sharp = (J = 71) etc. - ^ G = (J = 120) (Ex. 24).
one of the most important deficiencies of the
work (deliberate no doubt on Stockhausen's There are twelve sets at five out of a possible
part, b u t which nevertheless I feel rather six transpositional levels, though the last is an
strongly), the deficiency of motivic purpose- aggregate of the twelve notes rather t h a n an
fulness — 'motivic' in the very widest sense. ordered set. There are no inversions, only
3. Each of the two hexachords is half of the retrogrades. (Likewise there are no extended
chromatic scale (cf. Piano Piece I amongst inversions in the pitch structure until just
others, for unordered chromatic hexachords) before the end, at group 158.)
thus giving Stockhausen a background for his
clusters. These sets do not necessarily start with the
4. A negative point. I t is a first order all- first note of the set, b u t permutate the starting
combinatorial set, in other words a rather point (as, again, in the pitch structure); and
special one t h a t could be combined with the intervals across the sets, from twelfth note
different forms of itself to make many- to first note, are the same procession of inter-
dimensional structures. Stockhausen is not in- vals as is offered by the set itself. The sign [ indi-
terested in this or did not know about it; in this cates the set starting point. Example 25 shows
sense at least, his thinking is less developed how this permutational scheme is distributed.*
t h a n Schoenberg'8 or Webern's, not to mention
what Babbitt was doing seven years previously The glissando notes represent passages of con-
in this dimension and in r h y t h m as well. tinuously fluctuating tempo of which the

I n the application of the set to r h y t h m Stock- * I am indebted to Gottfried Michael Koenig's

hausen and Messiaen in Mode de Valeurs et diagram in Die Reihe, vol. 8, pp. 92-3, for the
d'Intensités and Boulez in Structures go be- preparation of certain aspects of my example 25.
yond the pointers laid by the Second Viennese
School (but not beyond Babbitt who ante- 57
Ex. 24

Aggregate: 1 Beginning with group: 1

. g* * . I k
t r - t

Ü
14 • i . A *
W 1 —• Its—
• g» * • »

33

45
• . • II» 3E

58
- ff» )>• . 4 . "
* • j u . I r L

77
g» . «

89 s^ Ä—

100
a
% - Jf»—«
s t * S® — • — ftm
r* :t U
— •

—
* —

113

* - T F ~

10 135
« . i t *

. u* *
- i f — It~2 — « a« „ — * —
11 149 % P*
••-*-" -IU

12 162
Ex. 25

J=orch. 1 J = orch. 1+2 @

!
o = orch. 2

r = orch. 3

Tempi expressed as pitch:

= tutti Group:.© © @ © © © © J ®

P '"h: 4 J »f 4 J i ' 7 ^
r i .: 2r r
10 : 8 12 : 5 7 2 : 7
Interval ratios: 3 4 6 : 11 9 : 13 11
Metronomic tempi: J = 120 95 127 107 1011 113.5 80 71
Type of unit or fundamental pulse:
r r r„
^-0/lolin solos r
© @
N r r
© © ^ © © © j © j © @ j j

1 i* J ; \ A \ / ^

f
a

h 4 :
15

75.5
: 12

90
8 : 10
3
67
10
85
9
: 8
67
10
11 :
75.5
| p i W
r r r r r r
65) i 7 ** „ i ®
23) 24

I
i ® © J ^
£
4 : 7 10 : 3 Ì2 5 5 : 2 7 : 12 6 : 11 7 : 5 11 : 3
8 6 : 13 12 : t 9 8 : 11 3 : 8 3 : 4 8 : 9 9 : 8 10
107 95 101 120 90 113.5 80 63.5 85 71 95 90 101 71 63.5 67

r r f
written as 120
f / r r r r r t t f t r t r

©
© ® © @ 8
{ g @ © @ (47)(48)C49) (50) J (5j (53) J

('wrong orderT
-p ?
4
12
6
13
r , , ,
4
12
2 : 13
4
12 : 5
113.5 95
5
W
9 : 13
67
f ^ 9 11
2 : 7
90 80
75.5 107 85 [ 6 : 8 l3 : 11 13 :

r r r r ? r r _r
120
r r rr
80
0
'2
107 71
12 : '10
60
7 : 4
113.5 63.5 r i
© © i
% © ?
© J t r ^ L © ai
© ¿ r

T p
6
10
85
4
12
101
3 3 : 10
6 : 11
75.5 71 120
7 : 4
13 : 6
10
11 : 8
113.5 63.5 90
: 9 12 : 7
6 : 13
80 85
2 : 5
4 : 3 8
101 75.5 95
:
5
11
67
7•
: 2
107

r ì i f f r r ì r r ì i r
 plucked and struck sounds

I
11 7 : 5 11 : 3 4 : 12 13 9 3 : 2 6 •• 11 9
8 : 9 9 : 8 10 : 6 9 : 13 5 : 4 12 : 10 7 : 8
71 80 113.5 101 107 63.5 95 67 95 75.5 101 85 80 90

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printed notes are only the starting or finishing (klingen lassen) - 'allow to reverberate'. The
points and therefore no more important than third (114-122) forms the climax of the work.
all the points in between (represented by a I t falls into five subdivisions: first, brass calls
line here, and by accelerando or ritardando in 'set the wild echoes flying', muted (distant)
the score). Therefore they are not counted in and unmuted; secondly sustained brass hexa-
the serial scheme as they include all notes; they chords whirl continuously round in space;
act as three big interludes. I shall call them thirdly the piano plays a cadenza as the brass
'interludes', which is strictly correct, though hexachords fade into the distant haze;
this term must not be taken to imply that they fourthly the percussion from all three or-
are less emphasised in the structure, for the chestras build up (crescendo and accelerando)
contrary is the case. They are quite distinct on skin and metal instruments; and finally the
in character from the other sections. The first full brass and percussion join in the long
(groups 16—22) is dominated by a solo violin climactic section, one of the densest climaxes
line shared out between the leaders of the in modern music.
three orchestras, accompanied mostly by tri-
chords (derived three-note segments sounded There is one other group which perhaps falls
as chords). The second (71-76) is a passage of into this category, it is a serially created
plucked and struck sounds culminating at
group 77 in an orgy of sounds marked f f f 61
'gap', and so it is without tempo rather than Chapter Seven
in fluctuating tempo. It is group eight, and it
consists of clusters whose component notes are same drawing board as the tempo plan, for as
released successively, with the top note singled Stockhausen explains in his article . . how
out dynamically and timbrally. It is likewise a time passes . . .' they are both part of an all-
complete break with what happens on either embracing temporal scheme. The way he
side and has a rather special role that I shall arrived at group starting times and dura-
explain later. tions* is very involved indeed. Stockhausen's
tempi, if you read along the J = line of
Looking at Example 24 one might be forgiven Example 25, are all between 60 and 120, i.e. in
for expecting strong articulations to occur at one 'octave'. This is merely for conducting
groups fourteen, thirty-three, forty-five, fifty- convenience. He makes octave transpositions
eight etc., or perhaps at the initial note of each of the tempi by using different notational units
set shape within the permutation. But there as the fundamental pulse, as set out in the
are no such articulations, not even at 135 unit line of the example, and the pitches in
which looks like a sort of recapitulation. As in that chart are placed according to these vari-
this case, so with many of the others, the start ous octave transpositions, high for the demi-
of a new set is merely a continuation group, semiquavers ( = fast), low for the breves ( =
part of something previous and relatively in- slow). So much for the real tempo, as opposed
significant. Even if Stockhausen did demarcate to the conductor's beat.
the beginnings of sets two more factors would In order to make the relative lengths of
militate against a satisfying serial experience the groups one to another serial, Stock-
of hearing the same tempo intervals pass over hausen takes the intervals from one tempo
and over again. First, the exact tempo is often to the next, approximated by the numbers
hard to hear in any individual group, such are in the 'Intervals' rows,"j" and uses the second
the complexities of off-the-beat accentuation, number in each ratio to determine the
and secondly it is extremely hard for conduc- number of those units-at-that-tempo of which
tors (and listeners) to gauge these differences the group will consist. Thus the second
in tempo to the precision necessary for dis- group has 8 X J , the third 4 X J , the fourth
tinguishing whether the new tempo is, say, a 5 X o, the fifth 11 X J , the sixth 2 x M and so
perfect fifth or a minor sixth faster than the on. In other words, if the third group is f as
old tempo - serially a matter of vital import- fast as the second, the first three minims of the
ance. The Tempo Plan, then, for all its s t r i k i n g second group must equal the component four
originality remains something of a background minims of the third group, and group 3, or
prop whose main function is to give variety-
within-limits rather than a real experience of
* See account of it in '. . . how time passes . . .',
form in the macrocosm. Die Reihe, vol. 3, pp. 21-6.
| These interval ratios can be worked out by com-
A plan of the starting times and durations of paring frequencies, i.e. if the first note, G, equals
the groups must have been planned on the 392 H3., and the next, D sharp, equals 313 H3.,
one quickly sees that the first number is ^ of the
62 second.
Gruppen First, the fixed pitches. Stockhausen uses, as
another serial ordering principle, different
every group is therefore required to wait its band widths for each of the groups. He obtains
own duration (counting from the beginning of widths by reading Example 25 in retrograde,
the previous group) before entering with music taking the serial procession of intervals
of exactly that duration, because both sides of proffered and making them equal the span
a ratio are, of course, equal. The first number between the extreme outer notes of the band
of the ratio represents units of rests in the old widths. He places these bands below the note
tempo, the second number represents units of on the chart.* The 'interludes' are not con-
music in the new tempo. This seems quite a fined to band widths since they are outside
realistic musical plan despite its conceptual the tempo plan. This is a concept borrowed
complexity, certainly compared, say, with from the electronic studio where it is strictly
Berg's numerology in the Lyric Suite or Lulu, used to describe the range of frequencies
or for that matter, much Medieval and Re- allowed to come out of a band pass filter. In
naissance thought.* other words the filter can suppress most of the
received sound and select from this total an
Let us now pass to the second stage of com- adjustable band width. I t is very typical of
position, the detailed realisation of the an electronic composer to think in these terms
general plan. and is a good example of the fascinating new
vistas opened up in one branch of an art by
The most general remarks that can be made exploration in another. The experience of
concerning the make-up of the average group spontaneously making mental associations
are that pitch-wise it is often limited to fixed with electronic pieces when listening to instru-
pitches, i.e. notes stick in the same octave mental pieces of the avant-garde is now very
disposition, giving a more or less static common, and indicative of the degree to which
feeling, and rhythm-wise it consists of a funda- the cross-fertilisation between the two media
mental duration, usually the bar, subdivided (recently considered fundamentally irrecon-
into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, etc., or a cilable) has been accomplished.
selection of these quicker subdivisions. We
should examine both these characteristics in Stockhausen at one extreme uses very narrow
more detail. band widths where the pitches are obsessively
fixed ( E x . 26).

* See, for instance, M. van Crevel's article on his Notice that the only exception, the cluster in
transcription of the fifteenth-century mass, Missa the piano, is a cue for conductor I I I to start
Sub Tuum Praesidium by Jacob Obrecht into beating five silent beats at J = 75-5 before the
modern proportional notation. Dr. van Crevel dis-
covered simple relations between the durations of
various portions of the mass, and between the * Not, as has been suggested by Gottfried Michael
pitch and duration of the individual notes. M. van Koenig (Die Reihe, vol. 8, p. 94), by positioning
Crevel, 'Structururgeheimen by Obrecht' in the band above or below the note.
Tydschrift Der Vereniging Voor Nederlandse
Muziekgescheidenis, vol. X I X (1960-1), p. 87. 63
Ex. 27
Gruppen throughout the piece, is referring to another
system (more of that later), and the low brass
entry of group 11 - a largely practical device. give a cue to conductor III while referring to
This sort of group, because of its strong con- the pitches of one group back. When the
straints, superimposes effectively and with groups include all twelve pitch classes, it is
clarity on other groups. then possible for Stockhausen to organise
them according to the twelve-note set. Group
In other groups he uses wider band widths, in 23, for instance, has a predominant major
this case a tritone, G sharp -> D, the same as sixth dense band width F sharp - D sharp with
in group 1 (Ex. 27). the two notes needed to make up twelve fixed
very much higher, separated to refer back to
And as the band widths become wider, the the previous long solo violin passage (Ex. 28).
notes need not be so dense (another concept
from the electronic studio mentality). For This group exemplifies the tendency of many
instance, group 143 is built of three notes, G of the more complex groups to articulate a set
sharp, E, A (the first three of T 1 1 ), though the by successive entries in different instruments,
E flat clarinet, which has a very special role and then to double back on these pitches in a

Ex. 29

Violinen
4
alle arco

67
Ex. 30 T<
®
von sehr w e i t 1.

senza vibrato
Gruppen the group-phase. The spectrum to be composed
is then called a group-spectrum.
less systematic manner, perhaps suggesting
other set segments, such as an inversion in the 'The most diverse methods of serial composi-
first half of the second bar. tion can be used in deciding the number (the
shorter the fundamental duration, the fewer
Or, the serial structure may be more clearly formants!), the combination, the register
adhered to, as in group 80 (Ex. 29). (fixed or movable formants), the changes of
register(!), the intensity relationships, etc., of
Or, as we have seen in earlier works, Stock- the formants. A formant-spectrum will then
hausen turns articulation on its head and ex- be seen as a unitary time-complex, character-
presses the set by not-playing it in a set order, ised by its total duration, envelope-curve,
i.e. by release points. Several smaller such average speed, speed tendency, average in-
gestures lead up to the final group in E x . 30. tensity, density, density progression, sonority
(which group or combination of instruments),
Rather more often than not, however, groups sound-form, movement in pitch, harmonic
have more than twelve fixed pitches and at field, and so on. The resultant of all these
the very end of the scale, as it were, it no compositional details is what we have des-
longer makes sense to talk about fixed pitches cribed generally as the formant-rhythm (in-
at all. stead of the notion of "tone-colour"), and this
will be heard as either the rhythm of the sound
Before going on to discuss other pitch argu- or the rhythm of the bar, depending on whether
ments, such as melodic form, and then to the it has to do with pitch or duration.'*
big questions of group relationships, I will
finish the description of the average group An example that Stockhausen gives of a seven-
with a look at its rhythmic structure. bar group-spectrum is shown in E x . 31.

Stockhausen says in . . how time passes . . .': It is a picture of group 7 with two interrupting
'We described the durations in each group as almost silent bars left out of the middle. One
fundamental durations' (that's to say, the or two inaccuracies have inexplicably crept in
various quantities of units or fundamental between the score and this diagram as the
pulses). 'Now we have to ask what sort of reader will see if he compares the next example
formant-spectra these fundamental durations with the diagram. It is the fourth bar of the
will receive (just as in the case of fundamental diagram and contains divisions of the funda-
tones we had to ask which instrument — mental semibreve pulse into up to twenty-six
which "tone colour", or, better, which/ormont- 'formants'. Actually it is the most complex
rhythrn - should be linked to the fundamental bar of the work by quite a long chalk in this
tones, or which instrument to which funda- respect (Ex. 32).
mental tone). The fact that there are groups of
fundamental durations means that a formant- * Die Reihe, vol. 3, pp. 25-6.
spectrum must be related to the supra-
ordered duration of the whole group, i.e. to 69
Ex. 31
Formant

Ex. 32
Ex. 32 (cont'd)
Koenig has shown* that the number of com- Chapter Seven
ponent formants or subdivisions of a funda- Ex. 35
mental pulse going on in any group is also J = BO
determined in relation to the set. So, for
instance, as in the middle of the set (in close Fagott

spacing) we have m ítí-

PP PP

Ex. 33
PPP

i
so it seems reasonable that a group that has nit Besen streichen

3 formants will be succeeded by one that has

the smallest interval (i.e. 1) of formants less
than its predecessor, making 2 formants; this
group likewise will be succeeded by a group
that has the next-to-smallest interval (i.e. 2)
more, making that a 4-formant group.

PP iul pont.
Ex. 34

i = 3
I S
4 formants
ppp

sets. If 3 = D sharp, then

In certain places, as a variation, Stockhausen Ex. 36
has the formants of a group occurring succes-
sively instead of simultaneously (Ex. 35).
^ It- ^
3 1 2 4
This is only a tiny sample of something that
occurs on a larger scale, but it does show how Having given the reader, I hope, a general
the subdivisions have intervals related to the idea of the structure of groups, now I will dis-
cuss some of the ways the more prominent
linear ideas and arguments are shaped. There
are several types of linear set-expression.
* Koenig, Die Reihe, vol. 8, p. 95.
The first, which has already been touched on,
72 is the procession of band widths through the
Gruppen Ex. 38

tempo plan read backwards. This can give an

audible top fixed pitch, which Stockhausen
sometimes brings out by instrumentation and
dynamics. See, for instance, groups 123-134,
which correspond to the 'pitches' of groups
56-45 reading backwards on Example 25. The
clusters which characterise the section articu-
late the whole band width clearly too. Note
that groups 126 and 127 have the same tempo,
and therefore the same band width. Also note
that a band width is only a predominant 3 4 5 6 7 8
structure. Fantasy weaves many little strands
outside its range.

A second type of linear construction springs

out of this. As the top notes of the band width A third type is constructed from the pitches of
succession are slowly unfolding a set, the Example 25 in retrograde, as with the band
groups themselves may sew on top of that width sequence, and yet is independent of it.
set the same set more quickly as a group Stockhausen goes through the chart making
structure. For instance, group 141 has the band these notes prominent in sound and in the
width score, drawing rings around them to make sure
the conductors articulate them clearly, so that
Ex. 37 the result is a sort of cantus firmus. It all

4 -1
starts off in group 8, a non-rhythmic interlude
group, where not only are the first seven notes
of the retrograded tempo plan displayed in
recitative style in their 'correct' octave dispo-
as found between the tempi of groups 38 and sitions, but also the first seven band widths,
39.* At this point the band widths are pro- whose top notes are of course the same ones,
ceeding through the third aggregate of are recapitulated and linked with them. It is
Example 25 backwards (T4) and the marimba- as if we are being shown how to hear the piece.
phone quickly takes the C and A five notes If we did not give aural importance to the top
further into T 4 . notes of the first seven band widths, or
wondered where the band widths came from,
Stockhausen tells us in group 8 that the top
* There is an inexplicable double tempo in group
39 wherein the serial order is reversed. It is the notes are the structure and the procession of
only such re-ordering in the piece, and the fact band widths is determined by them and their
that Stockhausen treats the band width as if there intervals. (As always with Stockhausen, the
had been no re-ordering indicates that 'artistic
license' was taken. 73
system is not the whole story. Just after the Chapter Seven
sixth cluster in group 8 there occurs a quite
solo ff C sharp in the violin up above the Group T10 (order numbers)
cluster's range; in fact at the pitch of the C 24 0,1
sharp in the final aggregate of Example 25. I t 36 1,2
is part of that scheme, but the F sharp and D 46 2, 3
only occur (as outsiders) in group 11, similarly 62 3,4
indicated by an arrow and accompanied by (76 1, 2, 7, 8 (0, 1, 2, 3,
their proper band widths. When this C sharp's 4), 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
turn comes round in the procession of band <1 11 (flute and oboe also))
widths it is omitted, presumably because of 77 4,5
the subordinate role it plays in group 162 as a (81 7, 5, 6)
tempol But Stockhausen did not wish the 90 6, 7, 8 (part of a T "
aggregate of top notes of band widths to be texture)
incomplete, so, with an admirable sense for the 106 7, 8
exigencies of order, he put it in as 'counter- 123 8
point' in group 8 and gave it a sequel in 142 9, 10
group 11.) 156 10, 11
168 11,0
Other types of cantus firmus used are:
long, sustained pedals (groups 40-57, T 1 or Finally on linear serialism, a word about 'mul-
retrograde of ninth aggregate); timbral and tiple functions'; that's when one note belongs
dynamic articulation (groups 145-153, or- to two sets at the same time. They occur a lot
chestra I I vibraphone sfz, T 1 0 ); and articula- in Schoenberg, in the Orchestral Variations,
tion by style (groups 156—161, the set passed for instance, where the theme is often a cantus
round the orchestras tremolo or flutter-ton- firmus which systematically generates other
gue, T 1 1 or the second aggregate in retro- sets off its long body; it is a stock technique of
grade). which Stockhausen is using only the simpler
aspects. Groups 165 to the end illustrate the
I mentioned earlier the special role of the E ending of the final cantus firmus composed of
flat clarinet. I t is a sort of herald who announ- the first aggregate in retrograde (see Example
ces in shrill tones every now and again 25). This cantus is played by bells or piano
throughout the piece one set only — T 1 0 - two plus soft tremolo after-echoes, and the same
notes at a time. The close spacing of this notes do for the cantus and the start of an-
instrument's set in the highest register ff other set in the 'accompaniment'. There is no
makes for a comparatively easily foliowable 11th note of T 6 , however, until the final group
statement. I t plays virtually no other loud 174 goes through all of T 6 and finishes itself,
notes. This list of its dramatic appearances the work and the cantus off with the final solo
will show all that needs to be said of the little horn grace note (cf. Example 30).
irregularities that occur:
Needless to say, there are many smaller linear
74 set expressions which do not come under the
Gruppen

Group 166 167 168 169 170

'Accomp.' T 2 7 11, 0-3 11, 0-8 9 etc.

Cantus T 6

171 174

T 4 0- 11

f6 10. 11

heading of cantus firmus but which perform to list a description of these identities; rather
the tying together operations within single more interesting is to note how identities
groups. I have already given one or two slowly grow across the groups. For instance,
examples of them, and since they are fairly the climax of the work in group 122 is the
simple and traditional, in so far as such an blossoming of a steady growth in brass and
elitist procedure as serialism can be so called, piano sounds, which occur from group 78 on,
I won't go into them further. that is to say, throughout the whole of the
main-structure section between the middle
It now remains to give a few indications of and final interludes. See especially group 86
group inter-relationships and characters. This (muted dense chords), group 91 (piano solo), 97
concerns the surface of the structure which is (low brass staccato), 101 (muted chord under
very easy to hear, i.e. that one group is loud piano solo), 102 (brass figures), and then the
and therefore contrasts with the next that is gradual build-up in the interlude itself of
soft, and so I shall leave most of the perceiving staccato figures and held hexachords (at group
to the listener and only add a few hints. There 116), all of which identities are going to be-
are, as in all Stockhausen works, several di- come at the climax the most memorable
mensions in which there is a range of change (that is, have the strongest identities) of the
between two extremes. Isolation Fusion is a work.
very obvious one in this work where spatial
separation is used, and Similarity -»• Contrast An example of a large scale modulation (elec-
another, because the work is orchestral and tronic usage again) of sound occurs after the
can therefore present an enormous palette of cantus firmus previously described as 'timbral
timbral, figurational, textural and rhythmic and dynamic, groups 145-153 in the orchestra
identities (soloistic -> (chamber music) II vibraphone s/z\ As the sharp notes of the
orchestral), though of course the number of vibraphone (without vibrato) are finishing in
formants used (as opposed to how they are
used) is serially controlled. It would be tedious
75
group 154, they are taken over by the woody Chapter Seven
marimbaphone I, and in group 155 by wood
drums, or African slotted drums, in all three sists of fragmentary lines of a few notes length
orchestras, thus scattering and diffusing the which are 'harmonised' note for note in five
sound into indefinite pitch. This modulation is parts at first, then in four, then in three and
now developed in group 156 by having quick finally in six and seven. Naturally there is a
grace note figures rotate around three duets: big rhythmic change between the texture of
wood drums and marimbaphone in orchestra I , many thin three-part lines and the texture of
wood drums and vibraphone (as before) in I I , few thick six-part lines. A t the end of the
and wood drums and marimbaphone in I I I . group the six- or seven-part lines tend to play
The next group adds a keyboard instrument in rhythmic unison, thus making twelve- or
to each duet - a keyboard glockenspiel, a piano more part chords. The changes within this
and a celesta respectively, and then, having magnificent riot of a group are quite possible
reached its full size of three trios, this particu- to perceive on repeated hearings.
lar growth begins magically to burst open,
disseminating its seeds into other structures, Gruppen is a paradoxical work; it is possibly
its wood sounds slowly decreasing in fre- the most involved of European total serial
quency and its grace notes transferring them- works, and yet there is an enormous amount
selves to woodwind instruments - grace notes of freedom in the details. There is a vast theory
having scarcely occurred in the score before constructed almost 'outside' the work which
here being therefore very noticeable. This must have taken a truly Joyceian fanati-
occurs in groups 159, 161 and 162. cism to write out, yet the parts in which
Stockhausen is being most himself and at his
Finally, a word about densities of chords. In best are those in which the theory has least
the interlude sections, where a band width is influence, i.e. the interludes and the pitch
not in operation, Stockhausen uses his Piano structures of the final sections, structures not
Piece X technique of keeping the number of directed quite so much by band width clusters
parts in a chord consistent, to give a uniform as elsewhere in the piece. The band width
density. In the first interlude, for instance, system is very original, though there is a kind
strings of three-part chords, punctuated by of conceptual precedent in Bartdk, who uses
several isolated five-part chords, get more and an equally systematic, if simpler, procedure,
more contrapuntal until they become six-part with golden section band widths based on the
chords just before the change to chamber Fibonacci series — 3, 5, 8, 13 etc. semitones
wide.* Indeed there is much in the more
music texture at group 21. The remainder of
systematic aspects of the piece that is ex-
the section is founded on spatially diminuen-
tremely effective, but there is also some of
doing four-part chords.
which the point, at present at least, is still
difficult to hear.
Even the vicious density of group 122, the
brass and percussion climax, is a carefully
ordered progression of chord densities. I t con- * See the article by Ernö Lendvai in Module,
Symmetry, Proportion, edited by Gyorgy Kepes,
76 Studio Vista, London, 1966.
 8

Piano Piece XI and

Gesang der Jünglinge

Y e t another piece to be composed in 1956, this gramme.' (From performer's note on the
most amazingly inventive and fertile patch of score.)
Stockhausen's creative life so far, is Piano
Piece XI. And there is one more too - Gesang The variable order and modes of performance
der Jiinglinge (1955-6). As Piano Piece XI is are, of course, the most striking aspect of this
next on the opus list, Nr. 7, I will make a few work joining it to the company of 'mobiles' by
comments on it first. Its revolutionary format composers as far apart as Earle Brown and
is fairly well known by now. Briefly, it con- Boulez, though the former, inspired by the
sists of 19 length-related groups of notes dis- 'mobiles' of the sculptor Alexander Calder,
tributed in random formation on a sheet was in the field well before Piano Piece XI.
of paper. The performer looks 'at random and The really important points about this type of
begins with any group, the first that catches composition are twofold: the last sentence of
his eye; this he plays, choosing for himself the quotation is significant, and Stockhausen
tempo (small notes always excepted), dynamic says, 'The field structure of a large form like
level and type of attack. A t the end of the this will become clearer, naturally . . . when it
first group he reads the tempo, dynamic and is played several times in succession'; and
attack indications that follow (there is a scale only when one has heard enough of the
of six for each), and looks at random to any possible versions to gain an idea of the total
other group, which he then plays in accordance musical space can one see the background
with the latter indications. . . . When a group against which a selection (which has a certain
is arrived at for the second time, directions in field-size) is displayed. In Levi-Straussian
brackets become valid; these are mainly trans- terms it is like having to learn roughly the
positions to the first or second octave up or extent and nature of a language before we can
down . . . notes are also added or omitted. appreciate that selection from it which is a
When a group is arrived at for the third time, particular speech. But open systems are not
one possible realisation of the piece is com- traditionally very satisfying to us (more of
pleted. This being so, it may come about that Stockhausen's break from this tradition later);
certain groups are played once only or not at all our masterpieces are closed systems in
all. This Piano Piece should if possible be per-
formed twice or more in the course of a pro- 77
which we feel a total space to have been Chapter Eight
'rounded off', all the mooted possibilities to
have been treated; we feel that nothing has Generalisations cannot be made across the
been omitted and nothing is extraneous. In two art-concepts.
specific dimensions this is clearly manifested
as the tonal system or as the cyclic choice of The other important point about Stock-
sets used by Schoenberg (circles of minor hausen's innovation is that 'the structure of
thirds in the Orchestral Variations, Fourth the piece is not represented as a sequence of
Quartet and Violin Fantasy, for instance) and development in time, but rather as a direction-
"Webern (multiple functions of the last note of less time-field'' .•)• Although the groups them-
the sets linking with the new sets, as in the selves must flow forwards, are irreversible,
Piano Variations, movements 1 and 2 (2 sets), their order is reversible, especially as one's
or the First Cantata (4 sets)), or as the larger experience of different performances accumu-
groups of inter-related sets which, Babbitt lates. This point takes us right into the future
says, possess the quality of closure since they of Stockhausen's oeuvre, although it has im-
are symmetrically related to each other and portant historical predecessors in the palin-
disjunct from any other possible set or group dromic nature of both pitch and rhythm in
of sets, and which he used as a total group to Webern's serial music and in Messiaen's 'non-
define precisely the content and extent of his retrogradable rhythms'.
own works.
Before going on to these 'open' forms, how-
In parenthesis, I might mention the view ever, mention must be made of the important
sometimes aired that it would have been electronic piece Gesang der Junglinge, Nr. 8
much better, and more artistically creative, (1955-6) which in some senses is quite close
if all those hackneyed 'favourites' of the con- to Gruppen. In talking of the latter work, I
cert hall had been written with adjustable referred several times to electronic music con-
section orders and other variables. Each new cepts which seemed to be influencing it, though
performance would have been something to Stockhausen very rightly warns against too
look forward to with joy and new expecta- easy an equation of two very different sound
tions! It does not take much perspicuity to worlds. 'The structure of a work and its
see behind this view a distaste for the works to material are one and the same thing,'J he says;
which it is applied; had the works been loved, and if one is envisaging a continuous time
one would hardly want a hairpin changed. scale, which stretches from pitch to rhythm
Even Mahler's amazing revisions of Beet- then it is no longer so easy to view composing
hoven's 9th,* for instance, spring from the simply as a matter of arranging in time the
ardent quest for an optimum object, rather possible notes playable by the possible instru-
than from a desire to create novelty and 'flux'. ments. In Gesang only the sub-material is un-
structured, that is, the sine tones, noise, etc.
* See Mahler's conducting score in Southampton
University Library. j" Die Reihe, vol. 3, p. 36.
J 'Actualia' by Stockhausen, Die Reihe, vol. 1, p.
78 51.
Piano Piece XI formant region figures (to change the timbre),
two loudness figures by a rather more empiri-
which were the raw material of all pieces made cal method based on an intuitive scale of
in Cologne studio at the time. From this sub- perception (which he explains), and two loca-
material and from the sub-material of a tions in space — the sound coming from a point
recorded boy's voice singing the Benedicite in intervallically related to the last point around
German are constructed three scales, which, the circle of loudspeakers.
needless to say b y now, are serialised. They
are: 1. the scale between dark and bright But perhaps the most impressive and original
timbre; 2. the scale between purely harmonic scale used is that between the two camps —
spectra and random noise bands; 3. the scale voice and electronic sound, human and
between darkest and brightest noise. All these machine, and related to it - that between dis-
can be varied continuously by electronic cursive meaning and pure sound. A t those
means. The same scales are applied to the non- moments where one realises that a sound one
electronic sub-material, the boy. In singing he had initially thought of as a vocal one turns
uses scales between: 1. dark vowels (u) and out to be an electronic one, and vice versa, the
light vowels (i); 2. vowels and consonants; unity of the two contrasting elements is
3. dark consonants (ch) and light consonants apparent, and apparently submitted to a
(s).* This is the material. higher ordering that transcends the difference
between them. One can then hear the un-
H e also selects and arranges it to make certain treated voice without discomfort. The same
formations: 'The selection and composition of thing happens when we hear a recognisable
material is one indivisible conception. Six word treated as a tone colour. Near the dis-
scales were selected for the pitch level system. cursive meaning end of the scale there are
As in earlier works they represent the "inter- many degrees of intelligibility ranging from
v a l " relationships between elements, whether nonsense to half-sense to sense, permutations
they be harmonic or melodic ratios, or those of the word order and inventions of new words,
between sound and phones (single speech and new syllables. Because the text is very
sounds), sound groups or pitch "regions''.'^ well known, at least to Germans, it can 'be
These 'interval relationships' can be used in well integrated in purely musical structural
any dimension. Stockhausen takes a ratio arrangements (especially permutational -
such as 3 : 2 and applies it to two frequency serial ones) without affecting the literary form,
figures, two measured duration figures, two its message or other aspects'. J The new mean-
ings suggested by the new words and syllables
(Schneewind, Eisglut, Feuerreif etc.) must be
* There is an interesting historical antecedent in most evocative to a German ear, and the pro-
Wagner's thought. For instance: 'The musical
cess as a whole is very similar to what certain
instrument is an echo of the human voice, but so
constituted that we can only detect in it the
vowel . . .' R. Wagner, Complete Prose Works, J 'Music and Speech' by Stockhausen, Die Reihe,
trans. E. Ellis, 'Opera and Drama', p. 307. vol. 6, p. 58.
•f 'Actualia' by Stockhausen, Die Reihe, vol. 1,
p. 47. 79
writers of Concrete Poetry such as Augusto Piano Piece XI
and Haroldo de Campos, or Max Bense in
Germany have been producing. This re- The overall structure of Gesang der Jiinglinge
structuring of semantic meaning on the space is remarkably like that of Electronic Study 2;
of the page or in the time of the musical piece both final sections combine and develop the
is only one manifestation of the enormous ideas stated in the preceding sections. Al-
twentieth-century structuralist movement though the violent contrasts are neatly
which seeks to get behind the conventional absorbed into this higher form, it is above all
one-way progressions to symmetrical closed they that give the work its alertness, its youth-
systems of structure, and perhaps 'to the ful, early-morning-visionary quality — a sort
structure of the mind itself'. The movement of Wordsworthian freshness: '. . . when
is as old as the century: Mallarmé (un coup meadow, grove, and stream,/The earth, and
de dés, 1897) 1Subdivisions Prismatique de every common sight,/To me did seem/
L'idéePound (The Cantos), Joyce, Cummings, Apparelled in celestial light . . .'
Apollinaire, Beckett (Ping etc.), Mondrian
(Boogie Woogie series), Max Bill, Albers, This work ends what seems to me Stock-
Webern's Sator Arepo square, and its applica- hausen's richest creative period and one of the
tion in his music, Boulez's transformations of most artistic and influential groups of musical
Mallarmé, and so on. works of its time.

80
 9

The Early 'Moment Form' Works

There now occurs a short gap in the flow of Kontakte was begun, but interrupted by a work
compositions, and a corresponding change of not yet conceived in the new ethos, though it
direction. The personality changes in some in- does not belong with the 1954-7 group either;
explicable way, and the musical thought if anything, it has closest affinities with the
changes with it. Works become longer, slower, 1951 works for reasons that will become
more interested in colour experimentation, apparent shortly.
'beauty' for its own sake; less formalistic, less
rational. There are no more theoretical, scien- Nr. 9 Zyklus (1959) or 'Cycle' for a percus-
tific articles in Die Reihe; Stockhausen's sionist was written as a set piece for the
utterances become increasingly 'artistic' in Kranichstein competition for percussionists.
tone. In short, 'Moment Form' has arrived. A sequence of sixteen pages is set up in a circle
Progression
Ex. 39 Instrument Anschlagszahl Periode
(Number of 1 2 3 4 5 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
attacks) if*
Kl. Tr. 11

Hihat 37

Triangel 17

Vibra.gllss. 29

Guero 23

M a r i m b a gllss. 19

Tarn-tarn 31

Schellen 13

rimshots 41 Kl. Sek. VT

81
surrounding the player, and he is instructed to Chapter Nine
pick any starting point and play either way
round the complete circle. Thus, it is a sort of periods 17 -f 1 to period 5, and from period 9
open form like Piano Piece XI, at least there to period 13.
is no composed beginning and end, but it
differs as a circle differs from dots on a page. Ex. 40
Even after many hearings one cannot help (Tomtoms)

feeling that it is a simple piece; obviously

dimensions are severely limited in a medium
of this sort, and the periodic glissandi on the (Kleine Tr.) | | (Becken)
vibraphone and marimba are the crude intru-
sions of a too-simple tonal world. However,
study shows that, typically, it is extremely (Holztrommeln)

carefully thought out, and the systematic

complexity is considerable. (Marimba)

For an insight into Stockhausen's mind I will

try to give some indication of how it was
written, using his diagrams. (Gong)

Stockhausen provided a chart (Ex. 39) to show In the periods where many instruments are
how nine instruments (left column) play a available and where Stockhausen wants greater
certain number of attacks (a prime number indeterminancy, there are various systems of
sequence, next column) over the seventeen choice, of gestures which may be selected and
periods (one on each of the sixteen pages, inserted into the performance. Even the
except for one page which contains both choice of the non-principal instruments is a
period 17 and period 1) in a linear ritardando flexible matter as long as they fulfil broadly
(falling line) or accelerando (rising line) with the same functions in the plan of dry and
a certain quasi-intervallic progression (right- resonant sounds.
hand columns). It can be clearly seen that they
reach their climaxes successively. Each period or page is the same length - thirty
measured units whose tempo the performer
The next diagram shows the quite separate must himself set. As we progress through the
sequences of principal instruments in the order seventeen periods a scale of nine structure-
in which they enter and fall out (each instru- types are used, which move from strictness to
ment lasts for five periods) (Ex. 40). freedom. The first type has simple, clear
rhythms and well ordered dynamic succes-
And Example 41 (p. 83) shows the number and sions. The ninth has 'statistical' speeds and
type of instruments used in each period. There densities represented by approximate dots
is a symmetrical increase in tone colours from scattered on the time-stave. The progression
over the whole performance therefore involves
82 a move from strictness to freedom, or vice
The Early 'Moment Form' Works
Ex. 41

c=> /i • O
oJ>©

versa if the performer goes the other way A further system, a pitch cycle from a large
around the circle, with an obvious break in interval (nearly two octaves) to a small one
theory, but not, as Stockhausen says, in (semitone) determines the widths of the tuned
sound between the extremely statistical period percussion glissandi.
17 and the extremely determined period 1.
The following chart shows how the structure- The rigour of Zyklus nicely illustrates a point
types within the periods, like the instrument about that distinction between form and con-
types, increase from periods 1 and 9 to periods tent. These forms of Stockhausen described
5 and 13. The third column shows the number above are clearly audible, but we do not nor-
of time units allotted to each structure-type mally think in the way necessary to have them
within the period (Ex. 42). in the foreground of our consciousness. In a
Mozart symphony, say, we register the size of
Similarly, the types of sound element (from the groups of attacks and their regularity or
roll to single stroke) are scaled (1-5), the otherwise and the dynamic scales only secon-
number of these elements is scaled (a scale darily to the identity of the musical idea, the
with the steep increase of the Fibonacci sum of them all; and compare it primarily
series - 1, 2, 3, 5, 8), the maximum dynamics with other totals rather than with other com-
of the gestures are scaled (1-5), the dynamic ponents. In Zyklus the components obsti-
characters (crescendo, all maximum, etc.) are nately refuse to add up to a really cogent
scaled (1-5), and all these scales are serialised identity that we might call a musical idea -
and permutated cyclically, their characteristics the limitation to really very few sound colours
changing together at the sounds of the ff rim-
shots of which there are 41 (see Example 39). 83
 Chapter Nine
Ex. 42
The whole cycle is divided into two half-cycles. Over the seventeen periods the nine structure-types
are distributed thus:
Structure- Durations of each Relative Pro-
Periods types Structure-type portions of
Structure-types
r 1 1 30
2 2 1 10 + 20 (1 :2)
3 3 2 1 5 + 15 + 10 (1 : 3 : 2)
4 4 2 3 1 6 + 12 + 9 + 3 (2 : 4 : 3 : 1)
5 5 3 1 4 2 8 + 6 + 2 + 10 + 4 (4 : 3 : 1:5:2)
6 3 4 2 5 12 + 9 + 3 + 6 (4 : 3 : 1:2)
7 4 5 3 15 + 5 + 10 (3 1 : 2)
:
8 5 4 10 + 20 (1 : 2 )
9 5 30

10 6 5 18 + 12 (3 :2)
11 7 6 5 10 + 5 + 15 (2 : 1 : 3)
12 8 6 5 7 9 + 3 + 6 + 12 (3 : 1 : 2 : 4)
13 9 5 8 6 7 6 + 2 + 10 + 4 + 8 (3 : 1 : 5 : 2 : 4 )
' 14 9 7 8 6 3 + 6 + 12+9 (1 : 2 : 4 : 3)
15 8 9 7 5 + 10 + 15 (1 : 2 : 3)
16 9 8 12 + 18 (2 : 3 )
17 9 30

and even fewer pitch arguments are certainly certainly a step forward into 'Moment Form'.
important factors in this - so that we don't Moment Form's vital early stages, in which
have the impression of a form organising elementary 'material for use' is carefully pre-
significant or finely-felt individual ideas, we pared (viewed as an area to be criss-crossed
are left with form alone (as we noted previ- rather than as a line), were triggered by the
ously to be the case with Kreuzspiel). And this slow time-changes experienced on flights in
lack of tensioned interplay between form and America. 'A large orchestra of eighty players is
'content' makes, for me, a dull work. divided into four roughly similar orchestras.
Furthermore a mixed choir of twelve to six-
If Zyklus is something of a throwback to the teen voices is added to each orchestra. For the
old formalism, Nr. 10 Carré, for four spatially- first performance in Hamburg I chose an
separated orchestras and choirs (1959-60) is almost square hall and had four stages built
for the groups.
84
The Early 'Moment Form' Works to future musical events. Why should the poor
listener always have to connect the beginning
'The four conductors (with their backs to the of the piece to the end in one unbroken line?
wall) were: Andrzej Markowski, Michael Are not other things more important? Why
Gielen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio not have: 'forms of which an instant must not
Kagel. be a little bit of a temporal line, nor a moment
a particle of a measured duration, but in
'Voices and instruments are integrated into which the concentration on the Now — on
one sound world. The text is composed every Now — makes as it were vertical sections
according to strictly musical principles: a which penetrate across a horizontal portrayal
scale of phonetic sound-differentiations ranges of time to a state of timelessness, which I call
between voiceless consonants and vowels; the Eternity: an Eternity which does not begin at
text is therefore untranslatable; it is notated the end of time, but which is attainable in
in phonetic script.'* And in the programme each moment.'J (One remembers Rilke's views
note for the première: 'This piece tells no on music — 'you time, vertical on the direction
story. One can certainly stop listening for a of vanishing hearts!'.)§
moment if one no longer wishes to or can
listen; for each moment is self-sufficient and Surprisingly, perhaps, Stockhausen's disdain
at the same time is related to all other mo- for exactly measured large scale form dates
ments. right back to the Gruppen period, though
Gruppen itself is the ultimate in calculated
'I wish from my heart that this music could duration. Gesang der Jiinglinge was only ended
give a little inner stillness, breadth and con- because of the pressure of deadline, so was
centration; the consciousness that we could Kontakte; in both cases he had planned and
have plenty of time if we take it to ourselves — even partially realised further 'moments'.
that it is better to come in to oneself than to Stockhausen regards them as ended but not
stay outside (literally 'go crazy'); for the things concluded in the Beethoven sense, open rather
that happen need someone to happen to, than closed.
someone must receive them.'f
Carre, with its four orchestras and choirs, in-
Already the reader will be aware of the new vites comparison with the previous spatial
tone of voice, the almost mystical obsession works, Gruppen for three orchestras and
with 'feeling' or the 'now'.
J iMomentform' in Texte zur elektronische und
In his article iMomentform' (1960) Stock-
instrumentalen Musik (vol. I), Verlag M. Dumont
hausen voices his impatience with the tele- Schauberg, Köln, 1964, p. 199.
ology of musical moments which are always § 'Music! Breathing of statues, perhaps', from
a result of past musical events and an upbeat 'Stanzas for Winter', transl. J. B. Leishman in
Rainer Maria Rilke, Later Poems; The Hogarth
* K. Stockhausen, Texte (vol. 2), Verlag M. Press, London, 1938.
Dumont Schauberg, Köln, 1964, p. 103.
f Stockhausen, Texte (vol. 2), op. cit., p. 102. 85
Gesang der Jiinglinge for five loudspeakers. Chapter Nine
Compared with Gruppen the spatial organisa-
tion is more sophisticated, or rather, clearer. Aus den Sieben Tagen (see below p. 113), and
But in every other way it is a simpler work. away from the precision of Gruppen, Zeit-
Things happen more slowly, at greater masze and Gesang der Jiinglinge.
length, and only rarely is there a metre; for
the most part, time signals are beaten irregu- Another similarity with Gruppen, however,
larly and approximately according to spatial lies in the inclusion of interludes or insertions,
notation. This has two results: the sound is or, as Stockhausen came to call them, 'win-
more inherently beautiful than in Gruppen dows' into a further vista. These were only
and everything that is notated 'speaks', for it added at a very late stage of Carre's composi-
is easier music to play with good tone and tion, and, as with Gruppen, form the most
there are less problems of getting voices to exciting music. There are nine in Carré, many
come through; and secondly, it has much less of them short and exploiting spatial rotation
in it, fewer levels of meaning, less that needs of sound (Stockhausen was at that time ex-
to be remembered to understand the piece as a perimenting with a loudspeaker on a rotating
whole, than in Gruppen. table-stand for spatial rotation in the tape of
Kontakte). For instance, moment 63X throws
Cornelius Cardew, in two fascinating articles woodwind chords around, with piano (Or-
in The Musical Times,* has given an account chestra I ) , vibraphone (Orchestra I I ) , cym-
of his role as realiser of the blueprint. All balum (Orchestra I I I ) and harp (Orchestra
Stockhausen provided initially was the famil- I Y ) staccato chords providing another layer.
iar type of plan with pitches, symbols for the Naturally as the rotation becomes more rapid,
rhythmic character, dynamic level, timbral the synchronisation must be very precise and
composition etc. of each of 101 moments, a exact metrical structures have to be used. The
plan which had undoubtedly been plotted as effect is astonishing. A music starved almost
a graph of gradually changing elements, but to death of one of its most important layers of
measured by 'moments' rather than beats or meaning suddenly springs to life and alertness.
seconds as in more systematic pieces. An ele- 69X is another substantial insertion. A
ment might grow logarithmically over, say, soprano D (a ninth above middle C) is rotated
four 'moments'. I t was Cardew's job to score one way, and strings and woodwind rotate
out these symbols. H e frankly admits that the the other way, five times as fast. 75X sustains
end result, after all the discussions and cuts, the slow, long sounds of the main structure
is mostly Stockhausen's (though not without whilst pitting against it simultaneously this
friendly questioning of the point of such a other level of metrical music in a way which,
collaboration). But even so, one can see here a again, dramatically raises the music out of its
significant move towards the improvisatio n of
one-dimensionality. 82X is the climax of the
added interludes in which frantic directional
* The Musical Times, vol. 102,1961, pp. 619-22, motion rotates sensationally like wheels of
698-700. fire, halted with increasing efficiency by sus-
pended motionless chords. This is very
86 reminiscent of the climactic interlude of
The Early 'Moment Form' Works ception came first and led to the music only
subsequently, b u t this can only be a guess.
Gruppen, groups 118-119. Perhaps your pref- The plastic refrain strip, revolving on a central
erence for either Gruppen or Carré indicates axis in the middle of the music, imposes music
what type of musician you are. My experience on a variable slit of places, compensating for
was to like Carré at first (for its beautiful and where it arrives in the upper three stave sys-
ecstatic surface), but subsequently Gruppen tems by where it arrives in the lower three.
overtook it (for yielding real beauty of a more I t ruffles the smooth surface with a gentle gust
complex and mysterious sort — despite its of trills, glissandi, clusters, low piano notes
occasional miscalculations). But it is a matter and melodic fragments.
of opinion.
There are various other arrangements and
The next piece, Nr. 11 Refrain for three compositional rules, but this, like Piano Piece
players (1959) inhabits a quite limited and V, is decidedly a 'statistical' piece. The pitches
distinct sound world, though it has affinities are very slow to change for much of the time,
with Carré, with which it coincides in time, in but there are certain places where 'change'
t h a t it is chordal and in slow unmetrical reaches a statistical high point and a statisti-
rhythms. I t is for high piano (doubling three cal low point. One remembers Stockhausen's
wood blocks), celeste (doubling three crotales) comment on Webern: 'a process usually very
and vibraphone (doubling three cow bells and important for the time-moulding in Webern's
three glockenspiel plates). To this light and music is the fixing of each note in a constant
resonating sound world are added (as in Carré) octave-register, and alternation of registers at
tongue clicks (five approximate pitches) and the most varying speeds; this is one of the most
short, sharp phonetic syllables - a plosive plus notable means of moulding experiential
a vowel - which the players have to pitch time . . .'* There are statistical high points for
near the sounds they are simultaneously quick change of register, as well as tongue-
playing. The effect is like something out of clicks, phonetic syllables, 'as-fast-as-possible'
Japanese theatre. Rhythmically the piece is groups, slow chords etc. The way, for instance,
very still, using only approximate durations, chords will 'fan out' into single notes and vice
and nine times using a notation t h a t re- versa is not arithmetically worked out, but
quires the player concerned to hold up the statistical following an overall series of change.
performance altogether until his chord has
died away. The coda, as in many earlier pieces, Piano
Piece X for instance, mixes up the elements
All this is disturbed by the refrain. The (including the refrain's) in a sort of 'anti-
appearance of the score with its semi-circular statistical' way — i.e. there is no statistical
staves and supplied plastic refrain strip is predominance of any one element, they are
famous by now; Stockhausen has once again
found the exact visual and notational equiva- * 'Structure and Experiential Time', Die Reihe,
lent for the process he has heard in his inner vol. 2, p. 72.
ear. I t is possible, however, tha t as with much
avant-garde 'graphical' music the visual con- 87
finally merged into a complex new unit which Chapter Nine
one perceives as, if I may descend from the
sublime a moment, 'fruit cake' rather than The other important point about the medium
flour, sugar, eggs, butter, almonds, cherries, used, is that a piano is juxtaposed to electronic
currants and candied peel. noises. Just as with the ostensibly awkward
mixture of a boy's voice and electronic sound
Whilst Stockhausen was working on Carré he in Gesang der Junglinge, so here, a continuous
was also making experiments in the electronic scale between the two different sounds is con-
studio with a rotating loudspeaker which was structed in order to integrate them. This is
surrounded by four microphones. As the loud- where the percussionist comes in. He plays
speaker moved from one microphone to an- a variety of wood instruments (including
other, so the sound would increase and de- marimbaphone), metal instruments (including
crease in each of the microphones in turn, and crotales - high bell-like sounds of definite
if recorded on four tracks and played back pitch), and skin instruments. The scale runs
in a hall with four loudspeakers, one in each / crotales "j
corner, the sound could be made to rotate from piano -^-marimbaphone J percussion
around the hall. These experiments material- \ tamtam J
ised into Nr. 12 Kontakte (1960) which can be of almost definite pitch, such as African wood
played as just a tape, or with piano and per- drums and tom-toms -> 'noise' percussion -»-
cussion added. (There is even another version tape. In the tape part the sounds were made,
with yet more added to the original tape - after a long period in which Stockhausen
Originale, a music theatre piece which adds analysed the acoustical structures of percus-
actions and other sounds to the tape, piano sion sounds, by impulse-generator, filter,
and percussion! Superimposing things on reverberator and ring modulator. They can be
existing works is a feature of Stockhausen's reduced to certain general types. Here they
late style. I t says much about the 'openness' are as drawn in the score with approximate
of these works that this is possible; it would descriptions of how they make 'contact' with
certainly be impossible, or inartistic, to do instrumental sounds* (Ex. 43).
such a thing with any of the pre-1957 works.)
In the tape of Kontakte, Stockhausen uses Thus 'contact' can be made between instru-
various totally new forms of spatial movement mental and electronic sound, although ex-
— rotation at varied speeds and in both direc- tremely sensitive performers are required —
tions; iFlutklangi (flood sound) sounds coming the piano, especially, can easily be too loud or
from one loudspeaker, then successively from too soft depending on the level of the elec-
others, which gives the impression of the tronic sound.
sound flooding through the hall; alternation
continuously between two loudspeakers; loop- The instrumentalists play almost entirely
ing, where the sound rotates in the form of without metre, fitting their sounds into a cer-
a loop, i.e. loudspeakers I, I I I , I I , I V : and
pointillistic patterns of all sorts. * I am indebted to Edward Cowie, post-graduate
student of Southampton University, for putting
88 at my disposal his analysis of the work.
The Early 'Moment Form' Works to totally unfamiliar ones with no sensation of
losing the meaning.
Ex. 43

{ C o n t i n u o u s r o t a t i n g s o u n d s w i t h i n pitch a m b i t ,
no attack o r decay a u d i b l e
The variety of timbres and textures is greater
t h a n in any previous work, and, again, one
must live for the moment alone, for the vivid
• • t or or
T^ f S h o r t Imitative p e r c u s s i o n ssounc
o u n d s (bongos,
sense of an aperçu - it is not particularly en-
• or « ' y » ^ I c m a r i m b a , c y m b a l s , even p i a n o ) : p o s i t i o n riching to recall what has gone before or what
or Tw (. o n t h e s c o r e Indicates appp r o x l nm a t e pitch
is yet to come by way of comparison. Though,
as so often, an overall behind-the-scenes struc-
tural principle is made out of one number, in
li1 jk V" f V o w d o r consonant human voice fragments

i M "nkcd by f i l t e r s w e e p s this case 6. There are six degrees of variation

between 'just noticeable' and 'violent' in each
{ l o n g heavy n o i s e - c y m b a l / t a m - t a m
of the six dimensions (spatial location, volume,
texture, register, speed, instrument family),

{ Heavy w h i t e n o i s e s o u n d s
w h e r e attack and decay a r e
much varied
ordered into six subdivisions within each
'moment'. The six types of moment are
related by the same range of six degrees of
" ^ ^ ^ ^ { H l g h o r l o w trill elements
variation, and their specifications delimit the
area within, which the subdivisions' variations
m a y range, presaging later 'plus-minus'
(
I III 1 ^ 1
Enclosed b u t t r a n s f o r m i n g
sound e l e m e n t s - c o n s t a n t methods.*
Inner change

The piano and tuned percussion use the

tain space on the page as they think best. set shown in Ex. 44.
Inevitably with a piece which is b y no means
slow or sparse, as Carre and Refrain are, the There are no transpositions, b u t notes jump,
impression of improvisation or rhythmic dis- and the interval between two notes is fre-

Ex. 44

t -P

order can be a little disturbing beside the time- quently filled in, making a cluster; and towards
structure of the tape which seems both relaxed the end of the piece more and more permuta-
and precise. But in a performance as sensitive tions are made. In other words, no over-rigid
as, for instance, the one Aloys Kontarsky and
Christoph Caskel recorded, one's attention
becomes transfixed by the beauty of the colour * I am indebted to Stanley Haynes for the latter
idea, the interplay wherein one is even unsure insight.
of distinguishing the piano from the tape, and
one moves along the scale from familiar sounds 89
thought is at work here. It is, broadly speak- Chapter Nine
ing, a case of the pitch being suggested by the
tape, or else prompted by the imagination to seconds or minutes. These scenes are grouped
diverge from the tape in some way. In general into seven 'structures' which may be per-
the instrumentalists help delineate the sections formed successively as 'normal', or simulta-
or 'moments'; they change character when the neously (up to three at once), or both. For
tape does. They also have their spatial role. simultaneous performance Stockhausen en-
They are placed at opposite sides of the plat- visages three small stages: to the right, at the
form area, and occasionally play a gong and front and to the left of the audience.
tamtam placed midway between them. At one
point the pianist plays his cow bells and then The similarities between drama, which moves
his hihat in a crescendo t o f f (he has eight per- in time through a total form, and music which
cussion instruments to play as well as the does the same, have often been commented
piano) and then leaves his seat to play the upon. It is only logical that Stockhausen, who
central tamtam ff. At the same time the per- conceived new types of music by imposing
cussionist plays his cow bells and then moves external structures on sound, should do the
into the middle to make a crescendo on the same with 'music theatre'. The form is no
gong (while the pianist is still playing the longer ostensibly governed by the flow of
hihat), and at the point of the pianist's ff on feeling, but more by structural patterns of the
the tamtam the percussionist makes an ff same sort he uses in music. Again, this is a
stroke on the gong. At the same time, also, the trait of structuralist art. Robbe-Grillet's
tape emits loud tamtam-like sounds. Through books, or his film L'année dernière à Marienbad
the world of metallic sounds, 'contact' has are examples. The line — 'this story is already
been made - and simultaneously demonstrated over — frozen' — occurs many times in the film
in space. just as the serial coverage of scales gives a
frozen quality to the music; and the perfora-
Kontakte was Stockhausen's first live and ted layers of time-consciousness are similar to
electronic piece, and must therefore be re- the simultaneities of Originale. The tone of
garded as something of a turning point; for Originale is very different, however. There is
most of the works composed since have much that is surrealistically absurd, shades of
employed the two media in one form of com- Pinter (the commonplace) and Beckett. At one
point the actors even speak formant rhythms;
bination or another.
one actor has three words equally spaced in
four minutes, another five words in that time,
Originate (1961) was written shortly after
another eight, another thirteen (Fibonacci
Kontakte on which it is based. Stockhausen
series) and another provides a 'noise' band
describes it as 'musical theatre'. It consists of
with totally irregular rhythms. Perhaps
eighteen scenes in the form of instructions for
Beckett seems nearest of all to it as the
the dramatis personae carefully placed in time- dramatist of our time most dominated by
boxes. Each character's actions, in other musical and serial form in his work, and
words, must take a specified number of the surrealism of Mauricio Kagel's theatre
pieces may have been influenced by it.
90
 The Early 'Moment Form' Works another of arrows through alternative se-
quences of events. The complexity of the
The piece is built on Kontakte, and with inter- score arises largely from Stockhausen's deter-
ruptions and recorded replays by the sound mination not to write out Momente, but to
technician, it runs from beginning to end, with leave it open, flexible. But it must not be
pianist and percussionist performing many thought that this is improvisatory music.
specified actions (like making tea) as well as All the orderings and inserts must be fully
their parts. There is also an excerpt of seven arranged before the first rehearsal, but not
minutes from a Carré recording, the slow- necessarily by the composer.
moving final sections from about moment 87
to the end, which would follow quite naturally The forces used to supply the exotic and at
as an expansion of the slow and profoundly times ecstatic 'content' are solo coloratura
beautiful section of Kontakte marked X in the soprano, four choirs of at least twelve singers
score. Originale is Stockhausen's main venture each, two electronic organs, brass and percus-
into theatre so far, though by no means the sion including the large 160cms tamtam
only one into surrealistic theatricality, an (which Stockhausen uses in Mikrophonie I).
element that can be traced especially in works This tamtam plays a large part in the K -
involving human voices, such as Momente, moments of the work ( K = Klang or timbre).
Nr. 13. The colours are structural, Stockhausen says.
He is here continuing what was done in Gesang
Momente again exploits the 'feeling' rather der Jiinglinge and Carre, namely integrating
than the 'thinking' aspects of music. The form vocal sounds and instrumental sounds, pitch
is open and adjustable, the content richly com- and noise, sound and silence. For instance, the
posed. Stockhausen advises us to lose our- choirs not only sing but laugh, shriek, shout,
selves in each little paradise of sound as it speak, murmur, titter, whisper and exhale
occurs, not to worry about overall repetitional voicelessly. They also make noises with
form. fingers, hands, feet, tongues and play little
' H e who kisses the Joy as it flies instruments which produce noises or notes.
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.' For text, Stockhausen throws together frag-
was the apt motto in Stockhausen's mind at ments from the 'Song of Solomon', the 'Kala
the time. The 'form' consists simply of a form- Kasesa Ba'u' from The Sexual Life of Savages
plan which specifies what sort of thing may and Mary Bauermeister's letters to him. The
happen when, with several alternative choices soprano part ranges from singing intelligible
possible. The main formal distinctions are texts to voiceless consonants. 'Scales' of this
made in terms of colour-textures, melodic sort are covered as in previous works.
textures and durational or rhythmic textures.
The actual 'moments' are named accordingly Very similar in construction, though almost
and juggled in the formplan by the performer, the opposite in sound is Nr. 15 Mikrophonie I
making many creative decisions, but also for the enormous tamtam mentioned above
obeying several rules, putting in insertions and six performers, divided 3 + 3 . Both use
from neighbouring moments to pre-echo or
echo certain events, and following one set or 91
similar types of formplan with moments freely Chapter Nine
slotted in, but whereas Momente used in-
numerable instruments this piece uses only cisely. These are performed by the first
one. The formplan again is very simple, con- players in each group of three. The second
sisting of thirty-three boxes representing players hold the microphone near the sound
moments allotted to the two performer groups source, or move it away along the surface of
in alternation (one on either side of the tam- the tamtam or else away back from the tam-
tam except where the three signs to show the tam. In the first case the sound itself gets
moment's relationship to its successor: either softer and the reverberations sound well, in the
A (similar), or 4= (different), or -tt- (opposite); second case the reverberations get softer and
also either + (supporting) or | (neutral) or the sound itself sounds well. This part, to-
— (destroying); also either / (increasing) -> gether with symbols for a cup to collect the
(constant) \ (decreasing). These are the sound more or less into the microphone, is
'rules' to be followed by the performers in carefully notated in time:
selecting their version. Again, the supplied
Ex. 45
'moment' sheets are precisely notated, and
Near source
each one has a name descriptive of its character.
Again, also, there are insertions from other
moments which pre-echo or echo events, and
various cue arrows which may be chosen
which will either bring the next moment in at
some point in the middle of the one that's
Thlck=close to tam-tam surface
already going on, or at its end. (Even, occa-
sionally, at its beginning.) The third performer of each group operates a
band pass filter and volume controls, for
The methods of 'exciting' the tamtam are which he has precise band widths and dynamic
very diverse, and are not so much described levels specified.
in the score as is the nature of the sound to
be aimed for. Hugh Davies, who was Stock- The piece is obviously a tour de force, some-
hausen's personal assistant at the time of thing totally new achieved by painstaking
Mikrophonie J's first performance, and who trials and errors, once and for all. It can be
operated filters and potentiometers in it, notes very long, twenty minutes if the earliest cue
in his diary that at one of the last rehearsals: arrows are taken, much more if they are not,
'Stockhausen's wife finds a few things being and it is formally and timbrally very limited.
used as instruments that have been missing But if one can submerge oneself into this giant
from her kitchen recently!'* The durations, mixing machine with all its complex reverber-
volume and type of sounds are notated pre- ations (actions may reverberate and effect other
actions for some time afterwards) it cannot
* 'Working with Stockhausen', by Hugh Davies, be denied that a totally new experience of
The Composer, vol. 27, p. 11. sound is offered, as well as an exhaustive know-
ledge of the complex nature of one simple object
92 - a microcosm of 'moment-form' technique.
The Early 'Moment Form' Works jumbling, by band widths of clusters (as in
Gruppen) following the intervals of the set, by
I have left Nr. 14 Plus Minus (1963) until the isolation and development of each interval
now, although it was composed between the in turn, etc.
beginning of Momente and Mikrophonie I,
because those two works belonged together in. But the linear figurations just described are
type. Plus Minus marks an altogether new really secondary to the 'central sound' of each
departure; I shall never forget the incredulity, structure, which is also indicated on the notes
bewilderment and hostility in the seminar that pages, but as a succession of seven chords, each
Stockhausen gave on it at Darmstadt shortly of a different density. One central sound and
afterwards! Fundamentally, however, it is no one linear decoration is specified for each
different from the formplans of Gruppen and event. To them are added sounds of indeter-
Carré, the sole novelty lay in publishing it as minate pitch. The seven different types of
'his' work when it has yet to be realised, one's event resulting from different combinations of
notions of 'the work of art' had to be widened the above are the basic elements of the piece
a little, that's all. which are then given instructions on the de-
gree to which they should wax or wane in
It consists of seven pages of 'forms' symbolic- quantity, in registral height and in volume.*
ally notated, which may be realised by up to As with the formplans of other works, Mikro-
seven players simultaneously (instruments not phonie I for instance, symbols for changes of
specified), and seven pages of notes. One must behaviour are always directly related to what
beware of calling these latter the 'content' is audible in terms of information theory, to
which is inserted into the 'form', because by what the listener will perceive as new informa-
'content' one means something much more tion or redundant information. In works
precise and finished — the small scale 'feel' of published at the Plus Minus stage, the in-
a phrase or gesture with its dynamic hierarchy formation theory is the work, and performers
of upbeat and stress and registrai and rhyth- must be found who can implement the theory
mic attributes. The notes provided are simply in sound.
more 'form' of a different sort, and the realiser
must then, according to thirty-five rules, make * The distribution of types over the seven pages is
a great many decisions of his own as to the (as with other factors) governed by the Fibonacci
'content' he wishes to insert into these forms. series, as Stanley Haynes has pointed out to me;
They operate, incidentally, on the following each type occurs either 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 or 21 times
set and its inversion: on each page.
Ex. 46

and offer an insight into the different types of

set-expression, by gruppetto segmentation and 93
I f I have touched on nearly every work up to The Early 'Moment Form' Works
1964, it was to lay out the most crucial aspects
of Stockhausen's mind as they moved from written since then changes direction quite so
one type of form to another, one type of radically, and so the remaining works may be
'content' to another. I t seems that nothing dealt with more informally.

94
 10

The Later 'Moment Form' Works

New Achievements in Electronic Music

The only major work I have not touched on resultant note, and also subtracts the frequen-
prior to 1964 is the revision of Punkte for cies from each other and sounds that note. If
orchestra. The early work, as its title implies, one of the frequencies is below 16 c.p.s., as it
belongs to the highly formalised pointillistic often is in Mixtur, a rhythmic transformation
period, and dates from 1952. It serves as a of the sounds occurs. The ring modulator's use
background on to which Stockhausen imposes, led to, again, a unique and distinct sound
ten years later, an elaborate foreground, a text world. 'The "what" (material) is not separable
on which he composes a far-reaching variation; from the "how" (the forming). I would never
each 'point' or single note or notes becoming have composed as I did, had the "what" of
the centre or pedal point of an elaborate group this process not had very specific character-
which surrounds, engulfs, develops or con- istics which lead to a specific "how". For
trasts with it. The result is impressive in the example, when one uses ring modulation, one
manner of Gruppen, there is precise control must compose particular kinds of structures -
and much in the detailed texture to extend the simple superimpositions, many tones of long
experience on repeated hearings. It is a work duration, not-too-rapidly moving layers -
best understood and analysed as a whole in since ring modulators create dense sym-
terms of related group structures, but to do metrical spectra from simple material, and
that would be to go well beyond the confines this can easily lead to an overweight of noise
of this book. or a stereotyped colouring of the sounds.'*

Stockhausen has, since 1964, written a fairly Of course, paying respects to the exigencies of
constant flow of works. Nr. 16 Mixtur for sound per se rises in a sweep from the bad (?)
orchestra, sine wave generators and ring old days when structures were structures and
modulators (written rather quickly in the medieval music could be played sung or
summer of 1964) and Nr. 17 Mikrophonie II whistled on anything to hand, The Art of
(1965) for choir, Hammond organ and four Fugue almost likewise, and even Mozart
ring modulators are Stockhausen's first works
to exploit the ring modulator. This is a device * Record sleeve note by K. Stockhausen for
into which two or more simultaneous notes Mikrophonie I and II (BS 72647).
may be fed (through a microphone), which
adds the frequencies together and sounds the 95
could sanction the replacement of oboes, horns Chapter Ten
and strings by a string quartet (in the three
piano concertos offered to a publisher in 1783) tral group with a specific sine tone is then
or clarinets by violin and viola. Stockhausen amplified and put out through loudspeakers.
stands at the top of this sweeping line of The louder the instrumentalists play, the more
increasing inseparability of sound and form the microphones pick up to ring modulate, so
which had grown throughout the nineteenth unless the volume controller in the centre of
century. And yet, typically, Stockhausen the hall turns the loudspeaker output down,
could see all this and wrote his own 'abstracts' it is only the soft sounds and the very loud
as well - Plus Minus for unspecified instru- sounds which are easily heard as natural
ments, Solo for unspecified melody instru- orchestral timbre. Obviously, as in many
ment, Spiral for unspecified instrument or other works, the scale used is the familiar one
singer, Poles for two etc. This implies no con- bridging the gap between the known and the
tradiction in Stockhausen's personality, only unknown, the orchestra, and its total distor-
that he likes to concentrate rather exclusively tion in ring modulation, with all the stages in
on, and to some extent separate, one aspect of between.
the compositional process in each work. Here it
is allowing sounds to grow organically into The sine wave generators should never be
their own shapes, there information-theory- heard as such, they are simply the factor
type thought,there concentration on a sump- which makes orchestral sounds alter, or glis-
tuous detail (the 'now'), there a serial trajectory sando around at various speeds as they inter-
over a whole work, and so on. I've already act with the orchestral pitch. Much the same
indicated many instances of how this may be shadowy role is performed without the glis-
discussed in terms of 'form' and 'content'. sandi, of course, by the Hammond organ in
Mikrophonie II, though in addition it often
Both Mixtur and Mikrophonie II consist of supports the singers' pitch — giving in ring
fairly lengthy 'moment'-type sections. In the modulation a sum tone of an octave higher and
former case each one of the twenty moments a difference tone of zero. The twelve singers are
has a title indicating its character ('Points', divided into four groups, 'fed' as before, into
'Mirror', 'Blocks', 'Dialogue', 'Steps', 'Pizzi- four ring modulators, amplifiers and loud-
cato', 'High C', etc.), and the given order in speakers. The 'moments', proportionately
which they are played is variable (reversible, related, as in some of the other works, by the
or in a few cases, interchangeable). Four of Fibonacci series, exploit all aspects of the
the five orchestral groups - percussion are voice, from song to surrealist theatre. Much of
separately amplified - that is to say, wood- the text is drawn from Einfache Grammatische
wind, brass, pizzicato (strings and harp) and Meditationen by Helmut Heissenbiittel which
strings (bowed) are fed into four ring modula- has the advantage of being suggestively
tors simultaneously with the sounds of four meaningful if ultimately meaningless, and
sine wave generators — one for each group - good for repetition, permutation and jumbling
and the result of ring modulating the orches- up generally. It is a study in how far you can
twist grammatical structure and still suggest
96 something. A typical line for the sopranos:
The Later 'Moment Form' Works former will supply the latter. He does, how-
ever, provide six pages of notes with abstract
'like a confused, toothless old crone, enraged: timbral differentiations, fairly conventionally
([: "talking intersects talking and there is notated, from which the content should be
there is none none":} built - all six will be at least partially used in
every performance. The hierarchy of sections
Mikrophonie II is the first of several works is set out overleaf.
which quotes from Stockhausen's past oeuvre.
In Carré Stockhausen introduced the idea of Choice for the soloist is necessary in the follow-
'windows' looking into a further vista, and ing ways: 1. he must choose a form scheme (one
here that further vista is Gesang der Jiinglinge of six sheets); 2. for each of the six 'cycles' of a
(at the beginning), Carré (soon afterwards) and form scheme he must choose a page of music;
Momente, in each case the most ecstatic and 3. he must choose three types of timbre (e.g.
memorable sections — 82X of Carré, for mutes) other than his normal tone to comply
instance. One has the impression of remember- with instructions in the music; 4. according to
ing them in a dream, or faintly glimpsing them symbolic instructions for each cycle he must
in the mist, for they are loud passages here arrange either (a) the systems of music or (b)
reproduced very softly usually over choric the 'parts' of the systems or (c) the 'elements'
whisperings. The tone of'dream' or 'trance' or of the parts in his own order, selecting at ran-
what is sometimes (falsely) called 'mysticism' dom up and down the page. Or these three
becomes increasingly prevalent in works of possibilities may have to be mixed. (This is a
this period, reaching something of a culmina- vast extension of Piano Piece XI.)
tion in Aus den sieben Tagen, itself conceived
in a state of meditation. Before discussing the form any further, it is
Having exploited the possibilities of the ring necessary to explain the electronic set-up. The
modulator in live performance, Stockhausen soloist plays via a microphone into a tape
goes on to write a work which exploits the recorder which records him. The sound travels
possibilities in an electronic tape, Telemusik', along a tape loop (adjustable) which gives a
and further, a work that exploits the possi- delay before being played back over stereo
bilities in live performance of another piece loudspeakers. This same sound on its way to
of electronic equipment, the time-delay tape the loudspeakers is in addition diverted back
loop, or feedback — Solo. on to the (stereo) recording head, which for
some of the time will therefore be recording
Nr. 19 Solo for melodic instrument and feed- both the live soloist and his time-delayed
back was written in Tokyo during Stock- recording. This time-delay is always set at the
hausen's visit there in 1966. As the type of length of the 'period', so a cycle consists of,
instrument is not specified, this work obvi- say, eleven equal periods of six seconds each.
ously belongs to the category in which sym-
bols or words are provided for the creativity Three assistants are used to 'play' this system.
of the performer to 'realise'. It is one of those Always following the score, and varying from
works in which the composer's emphasis falls
on form rather than content - hoping the per- 97
 Amount Chapter Ten

Total Form Scheme . 6

Chosen Form Scheme 1

Cycle (with one page 6 per Form Scheme

of music for each) J
Period Varies between 6 and
11 per cycle

System (line of music) 1 per period

Part (bar) 1 - 5 per system

Element (note or Approx. 2 or 3

note-group) per part

period to period, the first controls which same time point in the period for as many
stereo channel the soloist will be recorded on periods as required, whilst the soloist can go
by opening or closing his microphone pick-up on to play different things over them.
potentiometers, the second controls by similar
means how much of each channel is fed back So far, then, we have a selected form from the
to be re-recorded, and the third controls the soloist put into a sort of perforated many-
level of sound issuing from the speakers in a layered canon by the electronic equipment.
more intuitive way — he should sit near the But there is an interaction between the two as
soloist and 'react' to him; when both channels well. The soloist is instructed to play either (a)
are open together he should use 'stereophonic polyphonically with the feedback or (b)
alternation (irregular ad lib.) . . . between the chordally or (c) in 'blocks' (see E x . 47).
speakers at various speeds, sometimes ex-
tremely rapid', and create distance effects. In In addition, he does not simply play his
addition the first two assistants are expected to arranged page of notes during the cycle con-
perforate the sound when it's on their equip- cerned, but may be instructed to compare it
ment with short closings of their potentio- in a specified way with the next or previous
meters a specified number of times each period. page (to 'anticipate' and to 'remember' things
as Stockhausen puts it), or to compare it with
The net result of this system is that solo the feedback. Here again we get 'information
sounds, once performed, may recur at the theory' criteria of change: « means 'approxi-
mately the same', + means 'different' and -II-
98 means contrary.
I t is evident that the system is the piece. Any
precise relationships which existed on the
sheets of music are certainly destroyed by
their atomisation and rearrangement. The
formal structure lies in the difference between
the six cycles of any performance. Each has
its characteristic ('blocks' etc.). The cross-
references of one cycle to another may give a
possible small amount of repetition, but they
may equally well not. The creativity of the
performer in adding together systems and
parts and elements is vital, though he has not
much leeway to construct any substantial
'ideas' of his own, but in any case, to compose
with so many hundreds of thousands of alter-
natives possible (as opposed to the compara-
tively few of Piano Piece XI) evinces an
amazing faith that all precise relationships
within the rules will be equally good, or per-
haps matter equally little, which latter suppo-
sition is lent support by Stockhausen's cavalier
addition of parts of Hymnen to the DGG
gramophone recording of Solol This is excused
on the grounds that it will compensate for the
loss of the spatial effects — which are indeed
very beautiful, perhaps the best aspect of the
piece - but at the same time it throws into
some doubt our confidence that the composer
wishes to hear with precision and sensitivity
one note (one group) vis-à-vis another in other
pieces, where the notation is precise.

No such doubts can be sustained in the

electronic pieces, however; they are immu-
table, object-like. And it is to his sixth work
in this medium that I shall turn next.

Nr. 20 Telemusik, a five channel electronic

work, was realised in the amazingly short time
of just over five weeks — 23rd January to 2nd

99
March, 1966 — in the Electronic Studio of the Chapter Ten
Japanese Radio, Tokyo. Stockhausen dedi-
cated it to the Japanese people in acknow- passed through me while I lay awake. After
ledgement of his admiration for their 'severe four nights without sleep and four days of
struggle' to build the new Japan; perhaps he working eight or nine hours in the electronic
sees them as an emblem of his own struggle studio without any useful result (I had to
with the traditions of Europe. 'I have learned assimilate not only the language, the food, the
- especially in this country — that tradition air, the water, the yes-and-no confusion, but
does not simply exist, but that it must be also the different equipment), one vision came
created every day.' Stockhausen visited the back more and more openly: it was what I
Noh theatre, the very centre of Japanese like — a vision of sounds, new technical pro-
tradition, about thirty times, and acknow- cesses, formal relations, pictures of notation,
ledges that it had more influence on Telemusik human relationships etc., etc., all at once and
than just supplying some of the multifarious mixed up and confused in a network too compli-
recorded music of which the work is composed. cated to be defined in one process; it would keep
He proudly relates how some Japanese, when me busy for a long time! In all this I wanted to
they heard Telemusik, commented that he had come closer to an old dream — going one
re-created Noh-time. definite step further in the direction of writing
not 'my' music, but a music of the whole
I will quote what the composer wrote about world, of all countries and races. You will hear
the conception of Telemusik because it gives these mysterious visitors in Telemusik, I am
much insight into the man generally, and into certain - from the Amazon, from the Sahara,
his growing concerns about 'embracing the from Omizutori, Yakushigi, and Kohjasan,
millions'. In this latter notion, and in the from Spanish village festivals, from the
visionary quality one is often reminded of Imperial Gagaku, from joyous Bali, from the
Wagner — Wagner's account of how the be- high mountains of Vietnam, from China, and
ginning of Das Rheingold (standing for the who knows from where else. They all wanted
creation and also the birth of music) was con- to be part of Telemusik, sometimes simul-
ceived, for instance, or his description of how taneously superimposed and interpenetrating
a leitmotif is born in 'On Operatic Poetry and each other. And I had a difficult time making
Composition'.* Here is what Stockhausen the new and unknown world of electronically
wrote: produced sounds open to these guests. I
wanted them to feel at home, not 'integrated'
'The first eight or nine days in Tokyo I was in an administrative act, but really related by
unable to sleep. I was happy about it, because mutual contact of their essence. I don't know
thousands of sound-visions, ideas, movements exactly how I did it, or what made me go like
a moon-struck man, but I believe I succeeded
* 'On Operatic Poetry and Composition' (1879 in composing Telemusik.''
Bayreuth Blätter); Richard Wagner Prose Works,
vol. VI, trans. W. A. Ellis, 1895, p. 170. Telemusik consists of thirty-two sections.
Over and above the organisation of the ex-
100 cerpts from folk and religious music (which
The Later 'Moment Form' Works be, shows another development of Stock-
hausen's all-purpose theory of time.
are much less structured than the permutated
boy's voice in Gesang) and the purely elec- The content of these exactly proportioned
tronic elements stands a superstructure which sections is complicated and often spills over
is fairly symmetrical. Each section is intro- into the succeeding ones. There is a lot of ring
duced by a clear sound from a Japanese modulation of one filtered strand of sacred or
temple instrument. The length of each section folk music with another or with electronic
is determined by the pitch of the instrument sounds, making for very dense textures in
used. The Keisu, the principal metal plate which one can overhear the strains of Radio
chime instrument used in the Buddhist cere- Seville and Radio Vietnam through the static,
mony to demarcate sections in a way similar suggestive of a sort of global village to which
to that in which the Catholic sanctus bell is one stands in a relationship partly of radio-
used, divides the work into three parts of 10— wave interconnection, partly of extra-sensory
11-11 sections respectively. In the Buddhist interconnection, and partly of brotherly
ceremony 'the prayers and holy scriptures are empathy. But the development of the sacred
read in a simple chanting style like that used bells is perhaps the most musically significant
for similar sections in many Christian services. element, for they not only strike the musical
Responsive singing between the cantor and time-divisions, they also develop through the
the priests occurs during the section in which piece up to section 31, where the high static-
the priests rise and make obeisance to their obscured filtered music from early sections
god. It is interesting to note that this cere- becomes very high bell sounds with something
mony, like the Shinto dances . . . is often re- of the timeless beauty of the end of Les Noces,
peated in multiples of three.'* The higher bell and underneath, four deep and splendidly
sound of the Rin introduces sections 8, 16 and hieratic temple bells are ring modulated with
24, making a very slow four-against-three sine tones and, as in Mixtur, made to change
formant rhythm with the Keisu. The Mokugyo, pitch while resonating. Telemusik is surely the
a large deep-toned Chinese temple block used best work of its type. That it ignores more
polyrhythmically to great dramatic effect after specifically musical types of experience is
the wasan (final hymn) in masses of the Jodo obvious, and, to my mind, amply compensated
sect, introduces every sixth section; the for by the intensity of artistic vision and the
Bokusho (wood block sound) introduces every exquisite evocative quality of much of the
fifth section except where this is already sound structure. The 'quotations' are treated
introduced by one of the previously mentioned with the greatest discretion, and the length of
instruments, and the very high Taku (wood- the work is appropriate to its material.
block) introduces every second section, with
the same provisos applying. Thus this scheme, Stockhausen's next pieces continue this theme
whatever the difficulties of hearing formant of 'writing not "my" music, but music of the
rhythm on this ultra-macrocosmic scale may whole world', sounds that may be plucked
from the air by radio.
* William P. Malm, Japanese Music, Charles E.
Tuttle Co., Tokyo, 1959, p. 69. 101
 Nr. 22 Hymnen (1966-7) is electronic music to Chapter Ten
which Stockhausen has added schematic,
rather than detailed, parts for six of the 'pluralism' and 'monism' grandly united in
players with whom he has since this time the 'Utopian realm of Hymunion in Har-
worked and toured the world. He has also mondie unter Pluramori'.
more recently added material, again rather
free, for orchestra to two of the sections. The Hymnen is basically a unification of two
theme of Hymnen is the electronic transform- worlds, namely pure sound structure and
ation of recorded national anthems, and each 'found' sound objects with all their associa-
of the four sections (called 'regions') so far is tions. They are electronic sounds and concrete
dominated by one of them. The banality of sounds respectively. Stockhausen makes the
the basic material is used as a deliberate further distinction that they are also the inner
springboard for complex transformation — the imaginative world, and the external perceived
more memorable the theme, the more it can world. Their unification is one of the funda-
be twisted in the 'variations'. There are mental processes and tasks of life, the forging
passages of speaking, such as when 'red' is of links between our deepest image-making
spoken in four different languages from the selves and the external world, without which
four loudspeaker groups round the hall. The that world remains dull and merely utilitarian.
'openness' of the work is characteristic: Throughout Hymnen everyday, 'external'
'Hymnen for radio, television, opera, ballet, sounds, whose 'meaning', because it is so
record, concert hall, church, outdoors. . . . The familiar, strikes one more powerfully than
work is so composed that various scripts or their attributes qua form, are modulated by
libretti for films, operas and ballets may be electronic 'imaginative' ideas and thereby lit
prepared for it. The ordering of the character- up as 'form' and at the same time their
istic parts and the total duration are variable. 'meaning' attributes are transformed. The
Depending on the dramatic requirements, constant mediation between the two worlds
regions may be lengthened, added or left out.'* dissolves their difference. Let us see how the
There is a new openness also in Stockhausen's forty-odd anthems and sundry other recorded
acceptance of the objet trouvé; he says that his and short wave radio sounds are arranged in
previous preoccupation with inner worlds of this 113-minute work, in many ways the most
fantasy is here joined through mediation in a personal and clear of all his recent output. I
higher unity with the concrete external world should warn the reader that in the rough
of everyday sounds and noisesf (whose in- description that follows, many associative
inclusion may perhaps owe a debt to Varése's words are used to describe sounds that have
Poeme Electronique of 1958), ending with been hitherto unnamed, and that it is vital for
him not to be seduced into thinking that that
is their meaning; he must forge his own links,
* Note for DGG record sleeve by Stockhausen, make his own images — those that will do most
translated Gregory Biss and Rolf Gehlhaar. for him - and they will almost certainly be
f Karl Wörner, Stockhausen: Life and Work, Faber, different from mine!
London, 1973.

102 Stockhausen describes the first region, which

The Later 'Moment Form' Works (typically) is developed: its final and most
elaborate version, occurring about two-thirds
he dedicated to Boulez, as having two 'centres', of the way through, transforms a low fog-horn
the 'Internationale' and the 'Marseillaise'. sort of sound into an upward-rushing clamour
These anthems are used more than any others. of distorted human voices which remains sus-
The essential idea of the region, however, is pended at the top of the texture in the 'hissing'
a development of the very first sounds, the frequency range until it plunges down again
sounds of a short wave radio receiver (or several into recognisably human sounds at the begin-
of them) being rapidly switched through the ning of the second region.
stations. One has the sensation of being swept
off one's feet and blown round the world, catch- The 'dominant' chords continue to appear
ing fragments of national anthems, morse code, and transform at regular intervals (seven times
static and speech (a newsreader saying 'United in all) with anthems, glissandi and station-
Nations') aa you go. There is a feeling of excite- switching fragmentation in between. They are
ment and human commotion, an extrovert finally phased out with one of the transforma-
atmosphere which pervades the entire region tions of which Stockhausen is very fond, where
until near its end, where hints of the inward- the sound is modulated with a slow frequency
ness to come are first discovered. Nearly all the giving a jerky, shaken effect, the sonic equiva-
sounds of the region can be traced back to this lent of stroboscopic lighting.
amorphous hotch-potch, the boiling primeval
ooze from which the new births will come, as The restless gibbering of more or less distinctly
Wilfrid Mellers would say, an idea perhaps ex- heard sounds ceases now for the two-minute
tended from the tenth piano piece. The first interlude on the names of 'red' in four different
real opposition to this idea is a succession of languages, chanted clearly and simply by the
two 'dominant' chords: composer, some friends and the croupier on a
few liturgical tones, ending with 'international
Ex. 48 red'. Colour, p a i n t . . . likewise an international
'vibration' language?

Q ^ y — The next sections are complex. The domina-

ting elements are distant festive singing with
brass band, high pitched 'flood-sounds' (like
a chorus of crickets), cut into by the loud glis-
each tone separately synthesised from a wave sandi already mentioned and burbling, jerky
form containing many high partials which is distortions of anthem material. As the Mar-
restlessly swept by filters and perforated with seillaise begins to make its presence felt so
amplitude modulations (which control loud- the overall colour changes and more sounds
ness). A background of whistles and shrieks are introduced, principally motoric buzzing
and other sounds of commotion always accom- sounds, reverberated flue-pipe sounds not dis-
panies this event. I t is heralded by a brief, similar to the tingling sounds of Studie 2,
thick upward glissando — a sort of signal for
most of the events in this region which itself 103
and glissandoing non-harmonically related Chapter Ten
clusters.
not conceived in four discrete movements, and
The final section is an impressive fight between that the flexibility ('regions may be
loud brass chords, which become ever softer- lengthened', etc.) is really present and not a
edged — Stockhausen slows them down and factor that is likely to destroy shape. As in
causes the reverberation on them to sound previous works, moods change, elements come
wavery, loose, as if some monster is plunging and go, and large-scale symmetry is not the
ever deeper into the black depths - between most vital consideration. The crickets con-
this and ever more hesitant, nervous textures tinue to chirr and to transform back and forth
in which, again, one seems to be whirling into maracas, hung bamboo clusters and the
through space and time catching soft echoes unknown, but all within a narrow range of
of vast choirs, flood-sounds, and any sounds timbre. Nine very sharply attacked chord-
that have appeared previously in the region. columns cut in to introduce this region's first
It is a brilliant passage of sound-imagina- anthems, among them, 'God save the Queen',
tion. in very perforated, fragmented form. As the
cricket-sounds at last begin the descent to
A last attempt at the Marseillaise is shattered become the shouting crowds of people men-
by a big synthesised column of sound, leaving tioned previously, and as the high frequencies
finally only the cricket-like flood-sounds to are all drained off, so an important new ele-
carry over into the second region. ment is introduced, a synthesised tone or tones
in the middle to high frequency range. For
There is one element more. Four times, every recognition purposes, it sounds at times like a
four minutes, a sinister, filtered casino painful jet whine, at other times like an elec-
croupier's voice says a few words, such as tronic organ. It is often varied with different
'Faites votre jeu, Messieurs et 'dames, s'il vous speeds of amplitude modulation. In each of its
plait.' He is nearly always surrounded on three extended appearances in this region it
either side b y complete silence. He seems to be transforms, broadly speaking, from the harsh
separate, to belong to some other world run- to the soft, and in the third appearance it
ning concurrently, but hidden. He appears makes an important formal reference across
thrice in the last movement with the same the regions in that it transforms itself into the
words. Does this ambiguous Joycean figure, element I described as 'dominant chords' in
perhaps a symbol of another sort of inter- the first region, which consisted also of syn-
nationalism, have the function here that the thesised pitch, and this in turn gets mixed up
Japanese chimes had in Telemusik: keeper of with the Russian national anthem, the only
the musical time? one Stockhausen synthesised rather than
recorded, which, with many variations of
The second region begins, like the third and wave-form (such as fierce saw-tooth waves)
fourth, with continuations of the preceding and distortion techniques (such as violent
ideas. One can see from this that the work was perforating) but also with many simple and
quiet triads, dominates the region to the
104 end.
The Later 'Moment Form' Works characteristic that the first two chords of the
Marseillaise were first heard in the murky
But let us return from the history of one event elimination of the crowd sounds four-and-a-
to the history of the region where we left it. half minutes previously. There is a short and
Shortly after the crickets were revealed as grandiose section for the Austrian anthem
humans speeded up to cricket-tempo, the (with a slow outward glissandoing prolonga-
humans are speeded up to a point in between tion of the last chord of the second line),
human and cricket-tempo which sounds some- followed by much complexity (including a
thing like a chorus of birds, and a little later a ship-launching scene) and rapid changes of
flock of geese and ducks. (Real birds are added texture. The control of dramatic pace in
to reinforce the transformation.) Nothing these long movements is the most obvious
could better illustrate Stockhausen's theories manifestation of large-scale formal thinking,
about the universe's different vibrational and this is the pace-climax of the second
levels being different tempi of the same 'thing' region.
- (see Chapter 11). Although Stockhausen may
not be wanting to express the extraordinary There was earlier, in the middle of Deutschland,
empathy with birds that Messiaen exhibits in reference to the Nazi Horst-Wessellied, then,
those late pieces where something of the in- just as we hear a hint in the 'cricket' sound of
tensity, the higher body temperature, the an African anthem, there is an abrupt switch
quicker movements, the higher frequency to an interlude in an electronic studio. Amidst
range of utterance and hearing, the shorter noises of rewinding and switch-clicks, Stock-
life-span is understood and transferred into hausen and another are heard recalling that
the breathtakingly fast, complex and dense Otto Tomek said that to include the Nazi
bird choruses, yet there is no doubt that song created bad feeling, to which Stock-
Stockhausen's intellectual and intuitive grasp hausen replied that he did not mean to do
of the idea, vastly extended into Germanic that, it was only a memory. 'Otto Tomek has
metaphysics, is profound. said, had said, said . . .' each of these versions
is used and this prompts them to the notion
The element descends again, becomes human that the simultaneous presence of different
(talking this time) and is eliminated by means tenses could be taken further, is another aspect
of a further echoing descent and retardation of the multi-time layering in musical structure
into the murky depths. that Hymnen is all about.

The main anthem section - mostly the Federal After this interlude, the previous texture is
Republic of Germany's and Austria's - is taken up exactly, and is continually mixed
prefaced by a long soft bass note which slowly with the colourful marimbas and drums of
sinks by semitone steps and is swept by filter African anthems, eventually merging into
changes giving off different vowel sounds (see the concluding synthesised 'organ' sounds
my remarks on Stimmung) and occasionally already described. It is a structured conclusion,
joined by memories of past sounds. At first with regular alternation between rapid and
the Marseillaise is recalled as in a deep sleep;
low, slow, soft-edged. It is significant and 105
disconcerting anthem references and the 'or- Chapter Ten
gan' progressions, both elements changing a
little at each appearance. This region is dedi- tendencies. The third juxtaposes the two
cated to Henri Pousseur. opposites in sharp contrast, and as we shall
see, the fourth is an act of homage to 'Plur-
The third, dedicated to John Cage, is the amon', the marriage of the opposites.
shortest, and structurally the easiest to grasp.
The first 7 J minutes are devoted to a continu- After four minutes of considerable vivacity
ation of the synthesised meditation on the centred on the U.S.A. there follow four
Russian anthem. It becomes gradually more minutes (a frequent 'rhythm' in Hymnen) of
distorted - the main chords are rapidly filter- noise, at first reminiscent of an ocean-going
swept, panned from channel to channel, ring liner's engine, later reducing to a deep
modulated and amplitude modulated (these coloured-noise rumble. Some of the filtering
are the four principal operations in all the here is violent and alarming, and the distorted
music of this element). When the distortion is radio sounds are distinctly eerie. A desolate
at its height the same procedure as in region seascape is suggested by soughing coloured
two is adopted, namely that one chord is noise and brief tern-like calls. Out of the
sustained and gradually allowed to slide down coloured noise we hear Stockhausen himself
in both pitch and volume, accompanied by its (presumably) transforming 'from one event to
distortions (filtered ring-modulator fuzz), un- another' with a series of unvoiced consonants
til, after 3 whole minutes, its extinction can starting with 'th', which is indistinguishable
no longer be doubted. At the same time, a from the soughing wind, and finishing with
something very close to a whistle. There is a
morse-code idea has been slowly growing and
short spoken dialogue between Stockhausen
filially loudens to introduce 'The Star-
and 'David' in two languages: 'We have to get
Spangled Banner', over which it continues
from America to Spain across the ocean in a
to hover for a bit as one of those favourite
few seconds', before we get to the goal of the
'permeable' sound elements which does no
transformation, namely the whistles which
harm to the clarity of any other idea Stock-
traditionally accompany a Spanish singer and
hausen likes to put under it.
guitarist.
The Russian anthem had the longest, most
exclusive treatment of all the anthems. By The final, 'Spanish' section is the most hyper-
contrast and appropriately, the American one extrovert of all. Just as the outgoing American
is the most wildly inclusive. It is constantly section followed the inward, questioning
losing its identity in some other anthem, often Russian one, so the even more extravagant
neatly spliced on by means of a pivot chord Spanish one follows the even more withdrawn
common to both. The first region may be 'seascape'. The emotional contrast is widened.
thought of as pluralistic, with its many inter- The chief interest in this section lies in the
national references, the second, with its pro- multi-layered treatment of the Spanish an-
longed meditation on Germany, has monistic them, which gets faster and faster (without
always rising equivalently in pitch), but some
106 levels get faster than others and form mere
The Later 'Moment Form' Works It finally becomes, after a brief break, the
breathing of a solitary sleeping man,
permeable texture at the top.* Levels of dis- apparently lying quite still - an almost
tinctness and indistinctness interweave with disconcerting phenomenon after all the
levels of sharply contrasting volume in a ka- elaborate spatial movement that the other
leidoscope of Spanishry. But things are never sound elements have been subjected to.
as simple as they seem on first hearing. What, His physical location is disturbingly real.
for instance, are those two prolonged bell For the final 11 minutes of the work he
dyads doing near the end? They are followed breathes through the dreaming 'R.E.M.'
by a third, much higher, which also has a phase into apparently deeper and deeper
changing continuation, right until the end of sleep, and then shows signs of coming to the
the region. They are prolongations of pitches surface again with his last breath. All this
attacked at great speed - the 'rise time' for from the Swiss national anthem!
notes becomes extremely short when the 2. deep, cavernous rumbling, a continuation
Spanish anthem is played over at such break- of this idea from the end of the third
neck speed, it becomes similar to the very region. It becomes deeper and gives way
sharp rise-time characteristic of bells — so after nearly 4 minutes to:
Stockhausen has made an association which 3. a vibrating sound which varies between
arose naturally out of the original idea. 'hard' (tapping) and 'soft' (oscillating). This
gives way after about 4 minutes to:
The fourth region has fewer types of sound 4. a red-hot searing siren-sound, with a fierce
than any other region, thus completing the cutting edge of high partials, made up of
direction of the work as a whole in its move- parallel lines falling in steady glissandi, a
ment from diversity to unity. The main ones new one fading in imperceptibly at the top
may be described briefly as: as an old one fades out at the bottom,
1. the Swiss anthem, which started to appear giving that perpetuum mobile sensation of
at the end of the third region, is made clear, eternal descent (it was first heard briefly at
then increasingly distorted for about nine the end of the second region). Punctuations
minutes. Its final choral triad is prolonged are added by girl's laughter, distant birds
into a breathing-rhythm ostinato of soft- and five shouted names which echo as in a
edged immensity, impressively treated labyrinth of subterranean caves. The fifth
within narrow limitations by variations of of these shouts finally, after 8| minutes,
pitch and rhythm, by the addition of what stops the process.
sounds like a host of angelic sopranos, and 5. a soft duet of near sine-tones derived from
so on. This prolongation lasts 11J minutes. the echo of last shout, moving in and out of
exact interval ratios; it calms the air for 3
* An example of permeable texture used low down
minutes over the last chords of the choral
in the frequency range occurs under most of this
section: a coloured-noise wind-like rumble, a con- ostinato (sound-type number 1).
tinuation of and link with the previous section. 6. the casino croupier, who says: 'Messieurs et
It is sufficiently soft and spongy in character to 'dames, rien ne va plus' at the climax of the
absorb harder objects without loss of identity to
either. 107
 red-hot parallel glissandi (4), and later, Chapter Ten
after (5): 'Faites votre jeu, Messieurs et
'dames, s'il vous plait' twice, the second talked about recently: 'What I'm trying to do,
time surrounded by startling silence, as far as I'm aware of it, is to produce models
bringing the choral ostinato to its end and that herald the stage after destruction. I'm
marking the beginning of the breathing. trying to go beyond collage, heterogeneity and
7. seven complex columns of sound which cut pluralism, and to find unity; to produce music
across the breathing. They are made up that brings us to the essential ONE. And that
from these elements: an initial violent is going to be badly needed during the time of
attack followed by a sustained low pedal shocks and disasters that is going to come.' In
note of much energy with a high one at a Stockhausen's mind the Utopian fantasy is
thrice varied interval above it, memories clearly associated with the sadistic fantasy of
of the synthesised 'dominant' chord ele- 'the fantastic catastrophe that will come . . .
ment, of several anthems including the an- killing hundreds of millions of the human race';
thems of Ghana, Russia + 'Internationale', it is the 'rebirth' that 'can only happen when
'Internationale', Gt. Britain, India (in that there is death. A lot of death!'* Elsewhere he
order) and of talking events ('a Chinese has spoken of destruction by fire. This is one of
store'). The pedals, which frame the re- many points at which my personal interpreta-
capitulated elements - they are sustained tion of Hymnen touches 'The Ring'. The
before, during and after them - are finally destruction of the old world by fire in Götter-
sounded alone and form the last massive dämmerung is the sort of image I see in the
sounds we hear; only the sleeper is left who extremely fierce and almost painfully pro-
draws a few more breaths. longed climax of element 4, particularly when
8. the word 'Pluramon' spoken slowly as if in the sound is momentarily stopped for the
a sleep by the breather, and soon after- croupier to say in his peculiarly enigmatic
wards repeated faster with gentle awake- voice: 'Messieurs et 'dames, rien ne va plus,'
ness by the same voice - Stockhausen's after which it burns in again with the utmost
own — between an exhalation and an in- violence. There is also the similarity of tech-
halation this time, therefore one presumes nique in handling very long time-spans, the
by some 'other' than the material body of broadly conceived dramatic planes, the use of
the breather. This symbol of Stockhausen's very easily recognisable material which, in a
obsession for bringing together diversity, very large free-flowing form is a workable way
the pluralism of black and white compre- of achieving coherence, the contrast between
hended in the monism of grey, he calls the extroversion and introversion, the transition
ruling principle of the Utopian realm of from one to the other achieved by chromati-
'Hymunion in der Harmondie', to which cally 'sinking' basses (more especially in
centre the latter part of this region is Tristan) or slow glissandi — the Hindu medi-
dedicated. tative process of sinking into the self that both
composers knew about so well - their shared
Hymunion is a Utopia Stockhausen has often
* Interview with Peter Heyworth, Music and
108 Musicians, May 1971, p. 38.
The Later 'Moment Form' Works Nr. 21 Adieu for wind quintet and Nr. 23
Prozession are both works in which a lot of
dislike of Hanslick's 'pleasure in beautiful freedom is given to the performers. Prozession
forms' and music as intellectually frozen (process on its way) was written for Stock-
architecture,* and so on. hausen's group to play on tours, and it
presupposes a tremendous rapport and intelli-
Hymnen is a powerful work, one which if you gence from the players, as the players' parts
lower your barriers m a y well hit deep. To go use only + , — and = signs for 'form' and
to a performance of it would not strike me as previous works of Stockhausen (again) for
being necessarily like going to a concert, any material to be shaped into 'content'. The
more t h a n going to a performance of Die t a m t a m uses events from Mikrophonie I, the
Schone Miillerin would strike me as being like fifty-five-chord (an electronic instrument) or
going to a poetry reading. I t is a work of the amplified viola events from Gesang der
'drama—music' in which the medium is sound Jiinglinge and Kontakte and Momente, the elec-
and the relationships work in the same sort of tronium events from Telemusik and Solo, and
musical way t h a t dramatic relationships are the piano uses events from Piano Pieces I—XI
musical - characters develop, have progres- and Kontakte. Performed by Stockhausen's
sions one way or another and interweave, close associates, with his own music as a basis,
over-all pace is carefully controlled, and the result is inevitably pure Stockhausen. I n
elaborated by more subsidiary paces within any improvisatory case, failing any other
itself. These characters are rather single- suggestions, any group, confronted with
dimensional, and there lies m y distinction, for minimal material with Stockhausen's name on
the characters I would expect to perceive at a the cover will do the same, though Stock-
concert would be multi-dimensional, namely hausen has felt it necessary to suggest t h a t
highly developed musical ideas drawing on groups should listen to his recordings of the
some 'system of reference', tonal, serial or 'improvised' pieces as a guide, thus, it seems,
otherwise. The idea of this piece is to achieve defeating the object of allowing the sounds to
richness b y superimposing several changing suggest themselves. Any good performer must
characters on top of each other, or referring to have the 'feel' of a piece to play it well. This
them at wide intervals of time, also by ima- 'feel' m a y manifest itself as a visual thing - for
ginative changes of form and the cross- instance, as when Ronald Lumsden, in his
breeding of two or more ideas together, and performances of Piano Piece V, sees a little
also by creating strongly associative moods — m a n about an inch in height inside the piano,
more literally 'dramatic' t h a n would be dwarfed b y giant hammers crashing all around
possible in a piece concerned with multi- him; he says t h a t only when he arrives at some
dimensional musical relationships. I t is one such strong feeling which can unify all his
of the supreme artistic conceptions of our thoughts about a piece is he happy t h a t he can
time, yet one for whose full understanding no play it well, or indeed t h a t it's good music.
musical training whatsoever is necessary. And pluses and minuses or a few instructions
do not in themselves add up to any such
* Richard Wagner's Prose Works, trans. W. A.
Ellis, 1893, vol. V, 'Beethoven', p. 77. 109
picture. Stockhausen has recognised this Chapter Ten
danger and has announced his intention of
supplying more precisely determined music hausen uses traditional language in a rather
('my music') to set the collective ball rolling eerie way to symbolise the meaning of this
again. event. Four very soft quasi-baroque cadences
are interrupted before resolution by the entry
Adieu for the conventional wind quintet uses of the chord on which improvisation is per-
improvisation in a more limited sense. In each formed. They define the four 144-unit-long
of the thirty-four groups whose lengths are sections into which Adieu is divided. At the
proportioned, again, in the Fibonacci series (1, very beginning, for instance:

Ex. 49
EXTREMELY SOFT from very far

J- 89 units, each unit Is M M = 4 0 - 6 0

0]
•J? n —fta INDIVIDUALLY
VERY L O N G DURATIONS
r** IRREGULAR (i.e. avoid regular rhythms)
GLISSANDI very slow irregular
• (small variations around the given pitch)
¿Y. t
—
f
\J U! •
I
Bassoon
Horn
Flute
Oboe
Clarinet

2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 or 144 units), the Nr. 24 Stimmung (translated by Stockhausen
player is given a pitch or pitches and told as 'Tuning' but which can also mean 'mood',
to play polyphonically with his colleagues, 'frame of mind' or even 'voicing') for six
synchronously, in groups of instruments, with vocalists likewise uses very static slow-moving
constant or accelerating or slowing down sounds with different ways of repeating the
intervals of entry, irregularly with small long notes. Also it uses tonal material, but
glissandi around the notated pitches, adding from the opposite end — the novelty consists
free grace notes etc., etc. The full title of the not in its combination with 'modern music',
work is Adieu for Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer. but in the fact that no composer before (with
Meyer was an exceptionally gifted organist, the exception of La Monte Young and a few
the son of the Cologne oboist who played many other Americans) had considered using only
times in Zeitmasze; he was killed in a car one harmony for seventy-five minutes. Doubt-
accident at the age of twenty-seven. Stock- less Monteverdi had thought of it, but had too
many adventures into harmonic diversity
110 tempting him to have any time or inclination
The Later 'Moment Form,' Works this essentially gentle sound is gently dis-
turbed (as in Refrain) by the utterance of a
left for it. Now, three and a half centuries Magic Name, which should be integrated with
later, those adventures are no longer so the rhythms and lip and mouth positions of
tempting. It is a piece based on the harmonic the singer singing the vowels; and other Magic
series. The lower harmonics (except the funda- Names are then offered by other singers who
mental) are sung by the voices as main pitches, attempt to perform a similar integration until
identity has been achieved, and the disturb-
Ex. 50 ing ripples absorbed into the calm. Indeed,
/
the whole principle by which the piece moves

ft 1 from one section to the next is that, although

a pitch and a vowel-rhythm scheme may
change completely, other voices only change

H:
k- gradually until they reach the new identity;
7 and when two little poems by Stockhausen
are spoken, odd syllables are to be taken up
\
and 'absorbed' by the other voices. The Magic
(the chordal texture being relieved by five Names are the names of Gods and Goddesses
unison texture sections) but they must train (each singer has several from one region). The
themselves to produce exactly certain spectra vowel-schemes include odd words, often of
on their main pitches, scored in their parts as sacred or erotic significance — 'hallelujah',
vowel sounds. Stockhausen always justifies 'yoni' — and two short poems which are some-
his long static passages by saying that they what surrealist in tone and erotic in subject.
give us time to go inside the notes and per- They should be spoken 'with a great deal of
ceive their wave structure and harmonic series variation in pitch, without exaggeration,
content: from Kontakte on he would have us peacefully, gay, with gestures towards the
re-educate our ears to distinguish the partials other singers'. To describe the combination of
of a note, and not be content merely to hear metaphysics, eroticism and playfulness, and
them as a conglomeration, a timbre. There is the trance-like inaction of this extraordinary
even an unfinished orchestral work dating and original piece as 'oriental' is a little too
from 1960 - Monophonie - which uses middle easy. In fact it is the westerner's conception
E-flat throughout for constant transforma- of orientialism, such as is commonly found on
tion. Obviously an important precursor of the west coast of America where the piece was
Stimmung. It is quite easy to hear for your- written. It dates, curiously enough, from the
self the entries of successively higher harmon- very place (San Francisco) and year (1967) of
ics in the vocal harmonic series if you sing on the first Human Be-in when 20,000 hippies
one note a sequence of vowels from darkest to demonstrated their brotherhood and the
brightest in one 'filter-sweep'. These soft, Summer of Love was publicised all over the
vibrato-less held notes are constantly chang- world, Haight-Ashbury being 'the vibrant epi-
ing colour in a notated rhythm - called a centre of the hippie movement' as Time
'period' which is repeated over and over again
during each of the fifty-one sections — and yet 111
magazine had it. Most genuine oriental music, The Later 'Moment Form' Works
however, far from being long, slow and con-
templative, possesses quite extraordinary certain degree of selection - the player some-
rhythmic vitality. times softly searches for the sort of sound he
requires - and always to a certain degree of
Nr. 25 Kurzwellen for t a m t a m , viola, elec- distortion. As with the bipolarity of Gesang der
tronium, piano, filters and volume controls Jiinglinge (voice/electronic sound) and Kon-
and four radios again suggests images of takte (piano/electronic sound) so here the piece
America - Cage was to m y knowledge the first is based on a scale ranging from almost exact
composer consistently to use radios in music, imitation of radio sounds by the live per-
albeit for rather different aesthetic reasons, formers to their natural dissimilarity. From
(Stockhausen uses radios only to transform black to white, as Stockhausen is fond of
them); again there is the 'global village' theme saying, with all the shades of grey in be-
of the electronic connection of all men in tween.
brotherhood, the theme of vibrations in the air
around us 'plugging in to the universe', per- Stockhausen made a celebratory disc for
ceiving the hidden connecting-flow (spoken of Beethoven's tercentenary year by using
by so many mystics and more recently LSD Beethoven recordings instead of short wave
experimentalists), and so on. Here Stock- events. He made up four Beethoven tapes for
hausen comes still nearer to Cage's 'acceptance the players, proceeding in roughly chrono-
of the given sound' (as opposed to enforcing logical order, with various obscurations and
what one's ego likes). He found the work gave distortions, and produced what can only be
'lasting metapersonal inspiration, expanses of called an unmitigated disaster. Stockhoven-
calm, dimensional plurality, freedom, spa- Beethausen Opus 1970, as it is called, does not
ciousness, and of a medial self-renunciation transform the past as Messiaen, back in 1952,
transcending all our previous experiences'.* showed Stockhausen how to do it, or anything
As with Prozession, the players are simply like it. Nor does he descend into the back-
given -K — o r = signs with a few others grounds and Urlinien of Beethoven's structures
pertaining to types of synchronisation with and rebuild the material from there; he takes
other players. The material, which in the scraps of Beethoven as mere local sound (his
former case was from Stockhausen's own least interesting aspect) as it appears on some
earlier works, is here whatever the radio comes recording or other. Any remnant of Stock-
up with on a short wavelength, subject to a hausen's personality is swamped by Beethoven,
who in t u r n is swamped by the irritating
* Karl Worner, Stockhausen: Life and Work, distortions. No tertium quid emerges; the work
Faber, 1973, pp. 75-6. is characterless - it has no 'feel'.

112
 11
Aus den sieben Tagen
- 'Intuitive' Music

Nr. 26 A us den sieben Tagen — compositions play a vibration in the rhythm of your
May 1968 would seem to be a fitting work intuition
with which to conclude this study, as it is play a vibration in the rhythm of your
really the ne plus ultra of the works on either enlightenment
side of it and the philosophical kernel of a play a vibration in the rhythm of the universe
whole spate of 'ideas for improvisation' which
has followed. During seven days in early May mix these vibrations freely
1968 Stockhausen shut himself up, ate nothing,
meditated much. The result was a book of leave enough silence between them
fifteen brief sets of instructions, couched, this
time, not in practical language, but in sug- May 8, 1968
gestive evocative language which has distilled
what he wants performers to do to such an for ensemble
extent that what he offers is almost meaning-
less, it is everything and nothing, an incom- AUFWÄRTS-Upwards
municable essence, the 'unvorstellbar' of play a vibration in the rhythm of your smallest
Moses's vision in Schoenberg's opera. Here particles
are some of them translated:*
play a vibration in the rhythm of the universe
for ensemble
play all the rhythms that you can
VERBINDUNG - Connection distinguish today between
the rhythm of your smallest particles
play a vibration in the rhythm of your body and the rhythm of the universe
play a vibration in the rhythm of your heart one after the other
play a vibration in the rhythm of your breath- and each one for so long
ing until the air carries it on
play a vibration in the rhythm of your thinking
May 8, 1968
* Translated by Rolf Gehlhaar, John McGuire and
Hugh Davies. 113
for ensemble Chapter Eleven
A B W Ä R T S - Downwards lead you
do not leave it, stay with it
play a vibration in the rhythm of your limbs always return
play a vibration in the rhythm of your cells to the same place
play a vibration in the rhythm of your mole-
cules May 8, 1968
play a vibration in the rhythm of your atoms
play a vibration in the rhythm of your smallest for ensemble
particles
which your inner ear can reach N A C H T M U S I K - Night Music

change slowly from one rhythm to another play a vibration in the rhythm of the universe
until you become freer play a vibration in the rhythm of dreaming
and can interchange them at will
play a vibration in the rhythm of dreaming
May 8, 1968 and slowly transform it
into the rhythm of the universe
for ensemble
repeat this as often as you can
I N T E N S I T Ä T - Intensity
May 8,1968
play single sounds
with such dedication for ensemble
until you feel the warmth
that radiates from you SETZ D I E SEGEL ZUR SONNE-
Set Sail for the Sun
play on and sustain it
as long as you can play a tone for so long
until you hear its individual vibrations
May 9, 1968
hold the tone
for ensemble and listen to the tones of the others
- to all of them together, not to individual
T R E F F P U N K T - Meeting Point ones
and slowly move your tone
everyone plays the same tone until you arrive at complete harmony
and the whole sound turns to gold
lead the tone wherever your thoughts to pure, gently shimmering fire

114 May 9,1968

Aus den sieben Tagen for ensemble

for ensemble ES-It

at first for 3
then for 4, 5, 6, 7 players, singers think NOTHING
wait until it is absolutely still within you
KOMMUNION - Communion when you have attained this
begin to play
play or sing a vibration in the rhythm of the
limbs as soon as you start to think, stop
of one of your fellow players and try to reattain
the state of NON-THINKING
play or sing a vibration in the rhythm of the then continue playing
limbs May 10,1968
of another of your fellow players
to the player
play or sing a vibration in the rhythm of the
cells LITANEI - Litany
of one of your fellow players
For many years I have said it innumerable
. . . of another . . .
times
and sometimes written it: that
play or sing a vibration in the rhythm of the
I do not make MY music, but
molecules only relay the vibrations I receive;
of one of your fellow players that I function like a translator,
. . . of another . . . that I am a radio. When I composed in the
right way,
play or sing a vibration in the rhythm of the in the right state of mind,
atoms my SELF no longer existed.
of one of your fellow players
. . . of another . . . Now I am trying to reach the next stage,
to connect you, the player,
play or sing a vibration in the rhythm of the to the currents that flow through me,
smallest to which I am connected.
particles that you can reach I am not trying to make a composer of you
of one of your fellow players in the old sense,
. . . of another . . . but rather to gain a completely new confi-
dence in your abilities:
try again and again so that through me you will be connected
don't give up to the inexhaustible source

May 9, 1968 115

t h a t pours out through us in the form of Chapter Eleven
musical vibrations.
for any number of musicians
Do not t r y to grasp it with your mind,
you will only disturb it all and make it A N K U N F T - Arrival
impossible.
You must gain the confidence t h a t you will Give up everything, we were on the wrong
be able to do it. track.
I have had it from the beginning. Begin with yourself:
I t is only because of this t h a t I am a short you are a musician.
step ahead of you. You can transform all the vibrations of the
But you must gain it too, otherwise every- world into sounds.
thing t h a t I have received If you firmly believe this and from now on
and want to transmit through you never doubt it,
will be false and distorted. begin with the simplest exercises.

You may have neither the time nor the Become quite still, until you no longer
patience think, want, feel anything
to concentrate consistently and increasingly Sense your soul, a little below your chest.
better Let its radiance slowly permeate your whole
on allowing whatever must go through us body
to sound as undistorted as possible. both upwards and downwards at the same
T h a t is why I am doing it for you time.
as long as you cannot do it for yourself. Open your head on top in the center, a
I will tune you in like a receiver, little towards the back,
b u t whether or not you sound clear, depends and let the current t h a t hovers above you
upon you. there, like a dense sphere
enter into you.
My last experience was K U R Z W E L L E N ; Let the current slowly fill you from head to
I came as close as I could to you foot
and to what there is of music in the air. and continue flowing.
Now comes the difficult leap:
no longer to transmit man-made signals, Quietly take your instrument and play, at
music, tintinnabulation, first single sounds.
b u t rather vibrations which come Let the current flow through the whole
from a higher sphere, directly effective; instrument.
not higher above us, outside of us, Whatever you want to play, even written
b u t higher I N US AND OUTSIDE . music of any sort, begin only
when you have done what I have recommended.
May 10, 1968
You will then experience everything on your
116 own.
Aus den sieben Tagen bindung the theory o f ' . . . how time passes . .
Abwärts a n d Es the introspection theme of,
Before you play, you may let your thoughts s a y , Stimmung; Aufwärts the theme of a
run free, you may train the muscles 'serial' scale between two extremes, as in all
of your fingers, of your larynx, etc. the middle period works, Treffpunkt the
But now you know what you think and 'information theory' theme - the necessity for
train for, 'redundancy' in the articulation of 'experien-
and even the thinking and training tial time'; Nachtmusik the theme of'dreaming'
will be completely new, completely different as expressed in works like Mikrophonie II with
from before. its distant dreamings of earlier works, or the
Nothing is as it used to be. somnolent breathing rhythms at the end of
Hymnen; a n d the two longer statements
As long as you retain this consciousness, express the relationship t o Kurzwellen and
everything you will do will be right and good. the musician-as-medium theme generally.
May 11,1968
Of course, all of them may be seen as a
There is also a theatre piece, Oben und unten, physical or metaphysical extension of the
in which a disagreeable and bestial man and theory of temporal vibrations as expressed in
two instruments rich in 'noise', such as viola '. . . how time passes . . .' which Stockhausen
with contact microphone and filter and tam- sees as extending from timbre through high
tam with microphone and filter, provide one pitch through rhythm to tempo and large
strand and a refined and angelic woman with scale form. Indeed he has elsewhere fascin-
two 'clear' instruments like piano and elec- atingly pictured the effect of music itself on
tronium provide another. A child in the middle man as a stimulus on a vibrating object (to be
echoes words he hears. After delivering their 'moved' or 'stirred' = to be vibrated), corre-
words straight into the audience for at least lating 'being on the same wavelength', 're-
forty minutes the man and woman dance sponding to' with 'vibrating sympathetically'
together and continue intermittently their - resonating for longer or shorter periods after
duet of monologues. No text is given. the sound itself has finished. This unity of
musical time he now extends to the unity of
These 'compositions' express in essence much matter, which likewise exists in the form
of what we have already seen in Stockhausen's of vibrations in time.
previous work. Kommunion* expresses the
brotherhood theme of, s a y , Telemusik; Ver- Despite all the associations with modern
science (acoustical research, radio communica-
* There are fascinating connections now being tions etc.) these ideas are essentially tradi-
hypothesised between telepathy and quantum
tional, extending back to ancient Persian and
physics by utterly 'respectable' scientists. With re-
gard to 'play or sing a vibration in the rhythm of the
Egyptian mythological notions about the
smallest particles that you can reach of one of your creation of the world from a single divine
fellow players' see the discussion of the physicist resonance. Pythagoras's teaching, in so far as
Adrian Dobbs's work in Arthur Koestler's The
Roots of Coincidence, Hutchinson, 1972, pp. 69-81. 117
it has come down to us through Porphyry and Chapter Eleven
Iamblichus, contains some of the earliest
expressions of them, and they had a great illusion from reality. The stripping of the ego,
artistic ferment in the nineteenth century and advocated, indeed, by all major religions,
turn-of-the-century theosophy where they which will lead to a new perception of the
border on occultist numerology, as, for in- nature of things, means essentially unselfish-
stance, in Edouard Schure's book, Pythagoras ness and freedom from 'the whirlpool of
and the Delphic Mysteries* - 'Pythagoras called desire'. But there can be no doubt that Stock-
his disciples mathematicians, because his hausen has directed strong attention to the
higher teaching began by the doctrine of existence of spiritual organs of perception
numbers. These sacred mathematics, however, present in a germinal condition in all men.
or science of principles, were both more trans- They require only to be developed; and the
cendent and more living than profane mathe- time for this sort of evolutionary step has
matics, which alone are known to our savants arguably arrived.
and philosophers. In them Number was not
regarded as an abstract quantity but as the The influences forming Stockhausen's mysti-
intrinsic and active virtue of the supreme One, cism must date back to his youthful return
of God the source of universal harmony. The to Catholicism, and his travel experiences
science of numbers was that of the living broadened the aspects, and names, of God.
forces, of the divine faculties in action in the The yogic books of the Indian, Sri Aurobindo,
universe and in man, in the macrocosm and in were his most vaunted influence at one time
the microcosm.' (in about 1968), but perhaps it would be of
interest to point out the less obvious affinities
Although Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists and of Stockhausen with a strong German tradi-
what Kathleen Raine in Blake and Traditionf tion, of which he continually reminds one. It
describes as the great tradition of European runs through Meister EckhartJ (a favourite of
art do touch on the sort of things Stock- John Cage's also) and later Jakob Boehme, to
hausen is putting forward, they are not con- Schopenhauer and some of the romantic poets
cerned with them centrally. There is an and beyond. Novalis (1772-1801) wrote at the
important difference. The purest neo-platonic beginning of his unfinished novel Der Lehrling:
thought is never disconnected from the moral
aspect. Or, as the purest and greatest successor J The similarity between Meister Eckhart, other
in the Gnostic tradition, Rudolf Steiner, has fourteenth-century German mystics and those
said, every step forward in the spirit world that follow them on the one hand, and Upani-
must be accompanied by three in the moral shadic and Vedantic monism on the other hand
has often been noted (e.g. R. C. Zaehner, Mysti-
world, otherwise you lose the power to tell
cism Sacred and Profane, Oxford University Press,
London, 1961, p. 181), and it is interesting that
* Edouard Schure, Pythagoras and the Delphic this German-Indian axis should be echoed in our
Mysteries, Wm. Rider & Son, London, 1910, p. 84. day. Sympathy with the overt monism of the
| Princeton University Press, 1968. Vedanta and Upanishads (in which Sri Aurobindo
is so steeped) has not been all that common in
118 European history outside Germany.
Aus den sieben Tagen life, and his writing seems to us to bear a
wonderful relationship to genuine mysteries,
'Manifold paths are trodden b y men. He who for it is a chord from the symphony of the
traces and compares t h e m will see strange universe." ' J
figures emerging; figures t h a t seem to belong
to t h a t great cipher-writing which one catches Or, in an aphorism from Fragmente: 'Seasons,
sight of everywhere - on wings, egg-shells, in times of day, lives and destinies, are all,
clouds, in the snow, in crystals and stone strikingly enough, thoroughly rhythmical,
formations, on freezing waters, on the inside metrical, according to a beat. I n all trades and
and outside of mountain ranges, of plants, arts, in all machines, in organic bodies, in our
animals, men, in the heavenly lights, on sheets daily functions, everywhere: r h y t h m , metre,
of t ar and glass which have been touched and beat, melody. Anything we do with a certain
rubbed, in iron-filings around the magnet, and skill, we do rhythmically without being aware
in curious conjunctures of chance. In t h e m of it. R h y t h m is found everywhere. All
one intuits the key to this wondrous writing, mechanisms are metrical, rhythmical. There
its grammar; b u t this intuition will not let must be more to this. Could it be simply the
itself be pieced together into any fixed forms, influence of laziness?'§
and seems to resist transformation into a
higher key. An alcahest* seems to have been A more recent member of this tradition, and
poured out over the senses of men. Only mo- perhaps a direct influence, is Rilke, a poet
mentarily do their wishes, their thoughts seem well known to every educated German. I n a
to solidify. This gives rise to their intuitions, famous letter of 1925 to his Polish translator,
b u t after a short period, everything is again, he wrote: 'We, local and ephemeral as we are,
as before, swimming before their gaze. are not for one moment contented in the world
of time nor confined within it; we keep on
' F r o m afar I heard it said: " T h e incompre- crossing over and over to our predecessors, to
hensibility is the result only of a lack of under- our descent, and to those who apparently come
standing this; (the language) seeks what it after us. I n t h a t greatest " o p e n " world all are,
already has and what could therefore never be one cannot say "contemporary", for it is the
the object of a further discovery. One does not very discontinuance of time t h a t makes them
understand the language, because the lan- all be. Transitoriness is everywhere plunging
guage does not, and does not wish to, under- into a deep being. And therefore all the forms
stand itself; true Sanscriff would speak in of the here and now are not merely to be used
order to speak, because speaking is its joy and in a time-limited way, but, so far as we can,
its essence." instated into those superior significances in
'Not long after this someone spoke: "Holy which we share. Not, however, in the Christian
writ is not in need of any explanation. Who- J Novalis, Schriften, Stuttgart, 1960, p. 79.
ever speaks truthfully is filled with eternal § Novalis, Hymns to the Night and other selected
writings, the Liberal Arts Press Inc., Library of
* Alcahest = a universal solvent of the alchemists, Congress Catalog Card No. 60-9556, 1960, p. 71.
f Sanscrit regarded by Romantics as the pri-
mordial language (Ursprache). 119
 sense (from which I more and more passion, Chapter Eleven
ately withdraw), but, in a purely mundane,
deeply mundane, blissfully mundane con- The 'conversion' of the visible world into our
sciousness, to instate what is here seen and 'vibrations', the 'here' into 'the whole'; the
touched into the wider, into the widest orbit - 'friendship' with Nature; the 'transformation'
that is what is required. Not into a Beyond, of Nature into 'ourselves', the two-way inter-
whose shadow darkens the earth, but into a play of our own vibrations and those of the
whole, into the whole. Nature, the things we world, the universe - all these themes are in
move about among and use, are provisional Aus den sieben Tagen. And the twelfth of the
and perishable; but so long as we are here, Sonnets to Orpheus (First Part) might almost
they are our possession and our friendship; be a salutation to Kurzwellen!
sharers of our trouble and gladness, just as
they have been the confidants of our ancestors. Heil dem Geist, der uns verbinden mag;
Therefore, not only must all that is here not be denn wir leben wahrhaft in Figuren.
corrupted or degraded, but, just because of Und mit kleinen Schritten gehn die Uhren
that very provisionality they share with us, neben unserm eigentlichen Tag.
all these appearances and things ought to be
comprehended by us in a most fervent under- Ohne unsern wahren Platz zu kennen,
standing, and transformed. Transformed? handeln wir aus wirklichem Bezug.
Yes, for our task is to stamp this provisional, Die Antennen fühlen die Antennen,
perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so und die leere Ferne trag. . . .
painfully and passionately, that its being may
rise again, "invisibly", in us. We are the bees of Reine Spannung. 0 Musik der Kräfte!
the invisible. Nous butinons eperdument le miel Ist nicht durch die lässlichen Geschäfte
du visible, pour Vaccumuler dans la grande ruche jede Störung von dir abgelenkt?
d'or de Vlnvisible. The "Elegies" show us at
this work, this work of the continual conver- Selbst wenn sich der Bauer sorgt und handelt,
sion of the beloved visible and tangible into wo die Saat in Sommer sich verwandelt,
the invisible vibration and agitation of our reicht er niemals hin. Die Erde schenkt.'f
own nature, which introduces new vibration-
numbers into the vibration-spheres of the "f A free translation of this almost untranslatable
universe. (For, since the various materials in language made by J . B. Leishman runs:
the cosmos are only the results of different Hail to the spirit able to combine!
rates of vibration, we are preparing in this For our lives elude us, like a figure
way, not only intensities of a spiritual kind, stared into the stars. We share a bigger,
deeper day than ticking clocks define.
but - who knows? - new substances, metals,
nebulae and stars.)'* We act in true relation, without any
knowledge of our real resting-place.
* Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Ho- The antennae feel the far antennae
garth Press, London, 1936, pp. 19-20. through the wirelessness of space. . . .
Purest tension! Harmony of forces!
120 Expending our dispensable resources
Aus den sieben Tagen influenced 'sympathy with external things for
their own sake': 'This organ of perception (the
The theme of Denke nichtsl reverts to nine- brain), which originally and in normal cases
teenth-century composers' notions. Liszt, for looks outward for the purpose of satisfying
instance, wrote: '(music's) supremacy lies in the wants of the will of life, receives in the case
the pure flames of emotion that beat one of an abnormal development such vivid and
against another from heart to heart without such striking impressions from outside that
the aid of reflection. . . . Only in music does for a time it emancipates itself from the ser-
feeling . . . liberate us . . . from "the demon vice of the will, which originally had fashioned
Thought", brushing away for brief moments it for its own ends. It thus attains to a 'will-
his yoke from our furrowed brows.'* Tchai- less' — i.e. aesthetic - contemplation of the
kovsky, in describing the 'unbounded sense of world; and these external objects, contem-
bliss' he experiences when in a genuinely plated apart from the will, are exactly the
creative state of mind, says: 'There is some- ideal images which the artist in a manner fixes
thing somnambulistic about this condition. and reproduces.'§
"On ne s'entend pas vivre".'f Mahler, with
characteristic introspection, wrote: 'before But whereas in the nineteenth century we find
(the work) organises itself, builds itself up, and a heroic gesture of idealism, with Stockhausen
ferments in his (the composer's) brain, it must it is more coolly practical, apollonian rather
be preceded by much preoccupation, engross- than dionysiac in tone, and more impersonal.
ment with self, a being-dead to the outer If Wagner also thought of himself as a vessel,
world'.J Wagner closely parallels Stock- he was nonetheless a highly egotistical one.
hausen's notion of the quietening of the mind Stockhausen has, like the rest of us, reacted
in order to perceive and then to reproduce the against the megalomania, but not the essential
'vibrations' of the self and the external world doctrine. The most important difference, how-
with his Schopenhauer — and Buddhist — ever, lies in the fact that this salutary doc-
trine is really 'taught' in Aus den sieben Tagen,
we leave a silence round your instruments. and has been extended beyond the composer's
domain to include (obligatorily) the performers
Where the seed is turning into summer and the listeners too.
even that most constant go-and-comer,
the farmer, never reaches. Earth presents.
What are we to make of these 'compositions'?
ibid., p. 59. Stockhausen is advocating a recipe for pure
* Franz Liszt, 'Berlioz and his "Harold" Sym- water in the context of a gourmet's recipe
phony', 1855. Translated by Otto Strunk in book. To our palates jaded with Brahms and
Source Readings in Musical History, Faber, 1950, Strauss he offers the simple sound, played from
p. 847.
f Letter dated 24 June, 1878, quoted and trans-
lated by Rosa Newmarch in Life and Letters of § Richard Wagner, Prose Works (vol. II) 'Opera
P. I. Tchaikovsky, New York, p. 306. and Drama', p. 152, translated W. A. Ellis,
J Letter to Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, 18 July, 1895.
1896, translated by Sam Morgenstern in Compo-
sers on Music, Faber, 1958, p. 312. 121
the depths. To anybody meditating, or achiev- Chapter Eleven
ing what St. Teresa called the prayer of quiet,
the beauty of a simple soft sound is beyond that she has just fled the country in disguise.
description. B u t then so is almost anything You look at her with mounting interest. What
perceived in this state. I do not need (nor does exquisitely soft hair, what an amazing com-
Stockhausen) to describe the value and bination of refinement and sensuality, what
wonder of contemplation, that has been better delicate but passionate movements. When you
done centuries ago, but such an explicit tie-up actually discover that the lower middle-class
between contemplative states and musical housewife, whose most dangerous habits are
performance or contemplative states and bingo and telly, could yet lead you to poetic
listening has not been recommended in such heights of imagination that were from some
extreme terms before, though it has obviously points of view, at least, well worth while, you
been at the back of primitive and sacred and realise that they had more to do with your
mantric music from the very beginning. imagination and the neighbour who had you
on than with the lady herself. Beauty, we
All music demands an imaginative response must accept, is in the ear of the listener, but
from the listener, a bell must ring inside him when Stockhausen or any other composer
at every point. Coleridge said that we know a gives us only indications of beauty and tells us
man for a poet by the fact that he makes us to make ourselves especially susceptible, we
poets. The listener is not concerned with the quickly tire and demand that the lady really
sounds themselves, but with what they mean must be a Parisian courtesan if we are to take
when concentrated upon or imaginatively in- him at all seriously, we are not interested in
terpreted; that is what makes it 'listening' as mere experiments, the quest for knowledge
opposed to 'hearing', for we 'hear' sounds con- and insight is too serious.
tinually but we 'listen' to very few. The more
imaginative the response from the listener From the performer's point of view much the
and performer the better. Indeed, to take same thing is true. Imaginative collaboration is
the listener's case first, one is forced to see important, indispensable; and those who per-
Stockhausen's very long recent compositions form late Stockhausen obviously get enormous
as contemplative states of' heavenly length' as creative satisfaction out of so doing; but
some people say of Bruckner, because from again, it is possible to get lost poetising about
many conventional points of view they are sounds in a way which is too subjective, too
very thin. B u t can one make an imaginative remote from the actual event, and above all,
response if it seems ultimately wishful too out of touch with the musical realities the
thinking? Let me give an example. A few audience demands in order to get its imagina-
drinks into a party you see at the other end of tion working. Group improvisation, in some
the room a beautiful lady. Y o u ask someone form the essence of many of Stockhausen's
standing next to you who she is. They tell you recent works, can by definition only be either
she is a famous Parisian courtesan, who has simple or chaotic in terms of musical thought,
been the cause of three duels and a murder and there is not time for it to be anything else. (As
jazz virtuosi show, however, it can do won-
122 ders for the performers.) As soon as there is
Aus den sieben Tagen be a better description than 'improvised'. (It
may also be objected here that Stockhausen
more than one person improvising, enormous does not claim to be the composer of these
simplicities or chaoses arise. There are either sound events - 'it is not my music'. That,
boringly obvious climaxes and lulls or there is though true, is hardly the most interesting
a veneer of complexity which sounds all too point, which remains after every realisation:
obviously the unsatisfactory handiwork of 'was it good music?'.) Needless to say, it has to
chance. Only to the extent that functional be very good indeed to stand beside our other
harmony (even in the very broadest sense) does musical experiences, which are mostly of
not matter any more are group improvisations hearing things which we already know, for it
successful, for it is strictly impossible to im- is impossible to repeat an improvisation
provise cogent harmony in a group. Simultan- except on record. When we hear pieces for the
eous intervals or controlled densities do still fourth and fifth time or more, we are reaching
matter and those works such as Adieu and to the profoundest possible musical perception
Stimmung in which the harmony is not im- because we both know the total piece and live
provised are therefore the most successful. But each moment, with its 'surprises', with all
even that must (logically) be considered in- the more enriched intensity. Such complex
ferior (for all the liberation of performers etc.) experiences are impossible with once-only
to music with the 'best improvisation', thought pieces.
out and written down in the leisure of the
composer's workshop, and then well per- However, as an antidote to certain prevalent
formed. That is why Baroque improvisation - tendencies (dehumanisation etc.) there is much
for example, as in a Corelli violin sonata where to be said for Stockhausen's 'unfinished'
the violinist ornaments his line furiously and pieces. Because the players' musicality (intui-
the harpsichordist realises his figures with tion, spirituality) is so deeply tapped, these
all the imagination the tempo will allow him - works sound slightly different in surface
for all its brilliance - was eventually and pro- quality from any other music when well
gressively superseded by the exact notation of played. Such sounds could hardly be hit upon
all the cleverest ideas of the harpsichordist, by notational means when one is using short
with other middle parts added, to create an wave radios; for instance Stockhausen's artis-
even more complex interplay of independent tic flair for new sound experiences is directly
life in individual parts under an overriding related to the improvisation mentality. Think,
harmonic order. for instance, of the effect of Expo for 3, per-
formed in the Stockhausen Pavilion in the
It may be objected that the short wave radio Osaka Exhibition of 1970, when you, the audi-
works, for instance, are not improvisation, for ence are suspended in the middle of a sphere
the performer is following strict and difficult on a sound permeable platform, surrounded by
instructions ('imitate this short wave event seventy loudspeakers - an idea Stockhausen
etc.'). But, the number of decisions the per- wrote about in 1958, an adaptation of
former has to make is literally enormous, how- Frederick Kiesler's 'Endless Theatre' designs
ever instinctively he may make them. As far
as simultaneities are concerned, 'chance' may 123
 of 1924. The complexity of the short wave Chapter Eleven
(received from 'the world') sounds and instru-
mental sounds and where they come from, the new spiritual and mystical attitudes of which
'now' etc. is obviously what is important and he is a herald elicits a broader view of history
significant, one would be overwhelmed by the than I feel qualified to pronounce upon; but
immediacy of the beauty. The performers, the as a hopeful sign that Stockhausen's creative
score, the equipment, the situation, every- spiral may be twisting, and considered thought
thing is geared to that. Meanwhile sustained may be blended in a new synthesis with
musical argument of the Zeitmasze or Gruppen Aquarian experience, I will quote a few
sort is forgotten. There are many items, but sentences from a 1971 interview: 'The next
few arguments, which is what I was saying step I have to take is to find out how to
about the pointillist period. A dimension superimpose several layers of more or less
considered among the most wonderful and determinate quality, so that at a given mo-
mysterious of which the human mind is ment one group will play completely intui-
capable, is missing. Has Stockhausen turned tively. But what they play will be related to
full circle? Perhaps it is more of a spiral, and what they hear played by a group whose
music is completely predetermined. Let's say
the future will bring, as happened with Piano
that I want to have five or six fast chords in a
Piece V, a new binding together of the indi-
row. This will never come about in an eternity
vidual riches collected up in the moment-form
in an intuitive group, because human minds
period into a more closely interacting structure
are never automatically synchronised. On the
where, as I said of that earlier period, the
other hand, collective intuition produces
single stick which is just a single stick has been
qualities that you can't otherwise achieve.
abandoned, and three sticks have been picked
When musicians are not too much bound by
up and made into a triangle. The age in which
instructions, then they react to the sound
we live, for musical, sociological and psycho-
itself. They could never say why they did it
logical reasons, needs more construction than
that way. They just did it in the moment they
destruction. It is no longer important to were listening.'*
shout four letter words in the theatre; the
breakdown of the outmoded is accomplished.
The intense feelings we wish to express must It seems a reasonable and practical distinction
be bound together more coherently and im- to make between what the performer likes or
aginatively than ever before if we want to say wills, and what 'suggests itself to him', with-
anything new. But if one had been writing out going as far as Cage's total banishment of
around the time of Stravinsky's Rite of personality in his philosophies of self-subju-
Spring, Schoenberg's Erwartung and Webern's gation to the impersonal dictates of chance
Op. 6 one would probably have said exactly and silence. (Cage's ideas, incidentally, may
the opposite. Stockhausen's prophecy that as have suggested a great deal of Stockhausen's
we move into the age of Aquarius we will thought, the seeds of nearly all of them are to
jettison the intellectual attitudes prevalent be found in Cage's Darmstadt lectures and
since the time of the ancient Greeks for the
* Interview with Peter Heyworth, Music and
124 Musicians, May, 1971, p. 34.
Aus den sieben Tagen music should preferably do the inducing itself,
i.e. should be excellent b y our criteria in a
articles of the late fifties - which is not to deny purely musical (formal) sense and become
Stockhausen's originality in developing them.) more and more fascinating as acquaintance
Where these sounds come from t h a t 'suggest increases and every detail becomes distinct in
themselves' — from the un- or super-conscious, the memory, otherwise we must say t h a t it is
the air around us, viruses from another planet not the music itself t h a t is having an effect
(Stockhausen suggests this too) - is inevitably upon us, but rather the lectures, articles,
a matter of dispute; the important thing for philosophies and day dreams with which
Stockhausen is t h a t we react Platonically and it has been plastered. The music per se is in
progress towards a higher state of conscious- this case unnecessary to the blessed state.
ness, eventually to a new evolutionary stage I t seems t h a t in the indeterminate, ultra-
not dissimilar to t h a t envisaged by Chardin. intuitive works of Stockhausen one runs the
I t is a wonderful, heroic idea, and I believe in risk of incoherence and non-communication:
it almost as much as the thousands of young the trance is beautiful, b u t it is all and every-
musicians and non-musicians who pack out thing; however crude the sounds, in this state
Stockhausen's concerts and for whom he is a they are seen, as Cage would say, as the
cultural, almost extramusical, guru. But there Buddha. So it is not music itself t h a t Stock-
lurks also the nagging question as to whether hausen is talking about b u t our interpretation
this is not the same tragic situation as t h a t of t h a t music as listeners (or performer-
which obtained in Schoenberg's Moses und listeners). There really is a distinction be-
Aron. Moses lacks the form to convey the tween patterns of sonic relationships on the
vision. Is not the closed form, the object, the one hand and what we make of t h e m on the
mysteriously resonant symbol still the only other, however buried in centuries of con-
hope for storming heaven? A state in which fusion this distinction might be; and the first
one is susceptible to the divinity, as H a y d n step towards understanding the metaphysics
p u t it, can be induced by music; b u t the of music is to draw it.

125
 Bibliography

BOOKS

JONATHAN COTT, Stockhausen — Conversations with the Composer, Robson Books, 1974.
K. STOCKHAUSEN, Texte, DuMont Dokumente, Verlag M. Dumont Schauberg, Köln, Volumes
One and Two, 1964. Volume Three, 1971.
KARL H. WÖRNER, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Werk & Wollen 1950-1962, Kontrapunkte, Band 6,
P. J. Tonger Musikverlag. Rodenkirchen/Rhein, 1963.
Also translated into English by G. W . Hopkins as Stockhausen: Life and Work, with translator's
preface and new material. Faber and Faber, London; University of California Press, Berkeley
and Los Angeles, 1973.

ARTICLES

CORNELIUS CARDEW, 'Report on Stockhausen's Corre', The Musical Times, vol. 102 (1961), pp.
619-22, 698-700.
JONATHAN COTT, 'Conversation with Stockhausen' in Rolling Stone, 8th July 1971.
HUGH DAVIES, 'Working with Stockhausen', Composer 27 (1968), pp. 8-11.
ADRIAN D. FOKKER, 'Wherefore, and Why?' Die Reihe, vol. 8, pp. 68-79.
JONATHAN HARVEY, 'Stockhausen: Theory and Music', The Music Review, vol. 29 (1968), pp.
130-41.
SEPPO HEIKINHEIMO, 'Stockhausen's Kontakte', University of Helsinki.
PETER HEYWORTH, 'Spiritual Dimensions' (interview with Stockhausen), Music and Musicians,
May 1971, pp. 32^,3.
G. w . HOPKINS, 'Stockhausen, form, and sound', The Musical Times, vol. 109 (1968), pp. 60-2.
ERHARD KARKOSCHKA, 'Stockhausens Theorien', Melos, vol. 32 (1965), pp. 5-13.
MAX EUGEN KELLER, 'Gehörte und komponierte Struktur in Stockhausens KreuzspieV, Melos I,
1972. p. 10.

133
 Bibliography
GOTTFRIED MICHAEL KOENIG, 'Commentary on Stockhausen's ". . . how time passes . . .", on
Fokker's "wherefore and why?" and on present musical practice', Die Reihe, vol. 8, pp. 80-98.
ROBIN MACONIE, 'Stockhausen's Setz die Segel zur Sonne'', Tempo 92 (1970), pp. 30-2.
ROBIN MACONIE, 'Stockhausens Microphonic /', Perspectives of New Music, 10, 1972, p. 92.
ROBIN MACONIE, 'Momente in London', Tempo 104, 1973, pp. 32-3.
GENEVIEVE MARCUS, 'Stockhausen's Zeitmasse', The Music Review, vol. 29 (1968), pp. 142-56.
BROCK MCELHERAN, 'Preparing Stockhausen's Momente'', Perspectives of New Music, Fall-
Winter 1965, pp. 33-8.
JORGE PEIXINHO, 'Stockhausen em Paris', Coloquio artes II/6, February 1972, pp. 53-4 (Sum-
mary in French).
K . RITZEL, Musik für ein Haus, Schott, Mainz.
H. w. SCHMIDT and DR. KIRCHMEYER, Von Webern bis Stockhausen, Verlag Gerig, Cologne.
DIETER SCHNEBEL, 'Karlheinz Stockhausen', Die Reihe, vol. 4, pp. 121-35.
ROGER S M A L L E Y , 'Stockhausen's Gruppen', The Musical Times, vol. 108 (1967), pp. 794-7.
ROGER S M A L L E Y , 'Stockhausen's Piano Pieces, some notes for the listener', The Musical Times,
vol. 110 (1969), pp. 30-2.
ROGER S M A L L E Y , 'Stockhausen and development', The Musical Times, April 1970, pp. 379-81.
ROGER S M A L L E Y , 'Momente', The Musical Times, January 1974, pp. 23-8 (part 1) and April
1974, pp. 289-95 (part 2).
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN, Articles in English in Die Reihe:
'Actualia', vol. 1, pp. 45-51.
'For the 15th of September, 1955', vol. 2, pp. 37-9.
'Structure and Experiential Time', vol. 2, pp. 64-75.
'. . . how time passes . . .', vol. 3, pp. 10—40.
'Two lectures: I Electronic and Instrumental Music', vol. 5, pp. 59-66; II 'Music in Space', pp.
67-82.
'Music and Speech', vol. 6, pp. 40-64.
'The Concept of Unity in Electronic Music', translated by Elaine Barkin in Perspectives of New
Music, Fall 1962, pp. 39-48.
'A Mouth Piece', 'Not a Special Day', 'Charter for Youth'; three articles translated by Harry
Partridge which first appeared in the American magazine The Composer, reprinted in Feedback, a
pamphlet edited by Richard Toop, together with Stockhausen's programme note for Mantra,
produced to coincide with Stockhausen's visit to England in April-May 1971. Published by
Robert Slotover (Allied Artists).

134
Bibliography
'Elektronische Musik und Automatik', Melos, vol. 32 (1965), pp. 337-44.
'Plus Minus auf vierzehn Notenblättern', Melos, vol. 33 (1966), pp. 144-5.
'Mikrophonie I und Mikrophonie II', Melos, vol. 33 (1966), pp. 354-8.
'Musik für die Beethovenhalle', Melos, vol. 36 (1969), p. 514.

135
 Appendix (1972)

Mantra for two pianists represents a return to dominant (E) and above all the unison and
the 'personal', an assertion of the individual octave (A) produce especially euphonious
mind rather than a sinking into the collective harmony, clearly arranging the twelve avail-
spirit. It was written in two months, June to able pitch classes in a hierarchy dominated by
August, 1970, and is a lengthy, fully notated the current sine tone 'tonic'. Each of the twelve
and systematically complex work. Each per- degrees of any 'tonality' has a distinctive and
former plays also a woodblock and a set of unique sound. In the tonal system proper, the
crotales. If this suggests similarities with same pitch (identical sound) can belong to any
Refrain, then one is quite mistaken. Each work of twelve (or twenty-four) tonalities and often
is by axiom uniquely different from all others. to several at once, each on a different level of
In addition there are two sine-wave producing background determination. Serial and atonal
oscillators for whom parts appear in the score. music ('pantonal' music included) sacrifices
Their pitches are sent to a ring-modulator this multivalence of meaning except in near-
with the piano's sounds and ring modulated foreground structure and substitutes other
with them, the result being sent out into loud- types of meaning. Now, in Mantra, we see an
speakers. This means that an entirely new interesting attempt to bring back the hiér-
'system'* of harmony is created in that each archisation of tonality, but because there is
note of the chromatic scale, when ring modu- only one level of 'tonic' - each note says very
lated with a held pitch, produces two other definitely by its colour 'I belong to such and
pitches (the sum tone and the difference tone) such a tonic' — the richness of tonal multi-
which are more or less consonant depending valence is impossible. But there is the in-
on the interval of the piano's note from the creased richness of meaning resulting from the
sine wave pitch. For instance, a chromatic addition of tonicality to the other meanings
scale against Piano l's first sine tone produces of the type we normally associate with Stock-
the following approximate 'harmony' (Ex. 51):
hausen's determinate music. He has used an
showing that the subdominant (D), the
additional stratum of meaning, this tonicality,
to define the large-scale serial structure of the
* i.e. it is globally true for this piece. piece. The 'mantra' series upon which every-
thing is based is played, with its inversion, by
126 the sine wave oscillators over the twelve-plus-
Appendix
Ex. 51

SINE-WAVE
OSCILLATORW

PIANO
i
SUM TONE

SPEAKER(S)
I K* (t*
+ -y<

DIFFERENCEl
TONE
(0c.p.s.) ( 1 3 c . p . s . ) = = JJ=

one sections, with one note plus its inversion a very background tonic of A, which is much
per section. The mantra or series and its clearer than any other tonic except E flat by
accompanying inversion are as follows: virtue of the oscillators' unisons.
Ex. 52
Sections: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
PIANO I's
OSCILLATOR

PIANO H's
OSCILLATOR

So, except for the first section, the eighth, and On the microcosmic level the mantra is
the long thirteenth section, there are two
'tonics' running in each section, a complexity « See discussion of this in chapter 4 , . . how time
which reduces possible conflict between tonal passes . . p. 31.
structure on one level and 'serial structure on
another',* and at the same time emphasises 127
articulated by thirteen stylistic characteristics Appendix
which m a y be followed from bar 3 of E x a m p le
53. In this serialisation of 'motives' Mantra diminutions of the duration set (see E x a m p l e
reverts to the technique first tried in Formel 54).
nineteen years earlier. They are: 1(A) regular
Stockhausen also uses thirteen different types
repetition, 2(B) sharp off-beat accent, 3(G
of scale through which to filter his mantra
sharp) normal, 4(E) grace-note upbeat around
scales. These scales are generated by widening
a central note, 5(F + D) tremolo with next
the intervals of the mantra, as is shown by
pitch, 6(D) note with chord, 7(G) loud double-
the two excerpts in E x x . 53 and 54.
attack, 8(E flat) grace note link with previous
note, 9(D flat) staccato, 10(C) irregular repe- Mantra is different from Stockhausen's earlier,
tition — parent of'morse code' style, 11(B flat) determinate music in many ways. The form is
embryo trill, 12(G flat) sfp mode of attack, more immediately recognisable as stemming
13(A) note accompanied b y arpeggio ( E x . 53). from a single idea than ever before, yet the
variety of texture is greater than in any piano
These thirteen characteristics also in turn piece, and the element of theatre (for instance
characterise the thirteen sections on the when the two players make quasi-Noh vocal
macrocosmic level, accompanying the slow and woodblock calls to each other), the ring-
sequence of sine tones as they accompanied the modulation, the crotales, when added to the
fast sequence of the pitches in E x a m p l e 53. richness of purely musical thought, all make
Within the thirteen sections there is also a it a synthesis of more diverse invention than
sequence of the other stylistic characteristics, Stockhausen has previously achieved. I t is an
thus section one, though dominated through- expression of Stockhausen's 'vibrations within
out by characteristic 1 (regularly repeated vibrations' theory on a grand and colourful
notes) treats also characteristic 2 in bars scale — with the largest mantra in the sine-
12—13 (13 beats), characteristic 3 in bars wave-oscillator-induced succession of 'tonics',
14-191 (26 beats), characteristic 4 in 1 9 J - 21 the next largest in the crotale part, which gets
(13 beats), characteristic 5 in 22-25 (13 beats), through the mantra and (subsequently) its
6 in 26-29 (13 beats), 7 in 30-38 (13 + 13 inversion during the course of the piece, the
beats), 8 in 39-46 (26 beats), 9 in 47-52 (26 next in the 'cantus firmus' mantra running
beats), 10 in 53-55 (22 beats, slower), 11 in through each region, and the rest at various
56-58 (22 beats), 12 in 59-61 (16 beats), 13 in speeds in the twelve short representations
62-64 (28 beats). (Note the prevalence of 13- within each of these regions. There are in all
beat microcosms.) 13 X 12 = 156 appearances of the mantra
before the 'coda' on the final sine tone unison
Throughout the first section, the cantus of A. This coda in rapid semiquavers flees
repeated notes follows exactly the duration through the entire 156 mantras in about four
proportions of the original mantra (Example minutes. Though the pitch currency is virtu-
53), but using semibreves as units instead of ally debased to mere texture, there is a
crotchets. Likewise there are all sorts of climactic excitement about the passage with its
savagely placed chordal interjections which,
128 like the climax of Gruppen, is hard to resist.
 r t i

S 1 -il» •Ü»

M
H "

* M I J g ^

s
+
IO
tv c
o

tv iL
ol-
l|Lj
E C -bo Gv
u c
Q_ «I

«
ML

filo
A
i l ^
t* S s
« h ool

I
î-A c
o
a

I
r^ A
i l
i
A E
V

Il (S
E •S
y >>«
U
O. O CL
S i S A

ool-»

© H ©
Tf<
in

k
W
Appendix
Ex. 55
characteristic style 6 (13 J )
4
/unit 2

I p p (5 of mantra with o unit

-j -
2
5) ¿ r

Ex. 56
Interval*: 2 9 4 1 3 5 4 2 1 2 4 3
ORIGINAL
MANTRA
(bars 3-9) I b» ^ ,
^
.
k-«-
3

8—
8 33 U- —
15 J»- 4 * = 11 18 — 15 _ 7 4 7 15 11
EXPANSION
BY 3 54 TO. 4
(bars 13-15)

4 22a 5 2 8 11 „ 8 6 2 3 8 5
EXPANSION
BY 2 T O 3
(bars 26-29)

•counted In semitone steps

131
 Appendix (1974)

Notes supplementary to the text: made to nearly all of the pieces. In V, for
example, all the character-groups belong to
p. 23 Herbstmusik, written very recently, is a the revision; only relatively long notes with
theatre piece in four movements. attendant grace notes were present at first. In
the first versions almost every aspect of the
p. 34 Inori is the score Stockhausen is work- pieces is based on these squares, but of the final
ing on at the present time of writing. It uses published versions, it is only VIII that remains
the logarithmic tempo scale in a much more fairly close to the original serial conception.
complex manner than Gruppen (much quicker
changes), but the material itself is rhyth- p. 63 Although the band widths are globally
mically simpler. fixed over a group, they often have inner
movement. A strongly directional spiralling
pp. 38-42 Piano Pieces V-VIII stem from towards the next bandwidth can sometimes be
an overall background plan of a 6 X 6 magic heard; for instance in the descending groups
square and 5 derived squares. Stockhausen 62-65.
has, however, moved such a long distance from
that background to the presented surface that pp. 105-6 The conversations are with David
analysis along such lines is problematical and Johnson, Stockhausen's assistant in the WDR
aurally unrewarding. Drastic revisions were studios when Hymnen was being composed.

132
 Index

Page numbers in italic indicate more important references.

Adieu, 109,110,123 Cardew, Cornelius, 86 Goeyvarts, 16
Aus den sieben Tagen, 97, 113- Carré, 84-7, 89, 91, 93, 97 group form, 21, 23, 30, 36-9, 56,
117,121-5 Caskel, Christophe, 89 62,77
'Abwärts', 114,117 Catholicism, 9,118 Gruppen, 25, 38, 42, 44, 49, 50,
'Ankunft', 116 chance, 13, 55, 123 51, 55-76, 85, 86, 87, 93, 124,
'Aufwärts', 113,117 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 122 128
'Es', 115,117 Cologne, 9,12,13, 25, 55
'Intensität', 114 concrete poetry, 80 Haydn, Joseph, 30, 32
'Kommunion', 115,117 Hindemith, Paid, 12
'Litanei', 115 Darmstadt, 13, 15, 16, 23, 57 Hitler, Adolf, 10-12
'Nachtmusik', 114,117 Davies, Hugh, 92 Hitler Youth, 10-11
'Oben und Unten', 117 Debussy, Claude, 15 Hymnen, 15, 99,102-9,117
'Setz die Segel zur Sonne', Die Reihe, 13
114 Dobbs, Adrian, 117n Indian music, 15,16
'Treffpunkt', 114,117 Drei Chöre, 15 information theory, 13, 24, 30,
'Verbindung', 113,117 Drei Lieder, 15 37,44, 93, 98,117
Babbitt, Milton, 41, 50, 57, 78 Eckhart, Meister, 118
Bartók, Béla, 15, 76 Eimert, Herbert, 13, 25 Kagel, Mauricio, 90
Beckett, Samuel, 80, 90 electronic studio, 13, 25, 63, 67, Koenig, Gottfried Michael, 72
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 15, 23, 79, 88,100,105 Kontakte, 15, 30, 85, 86, 88-90,
32, 33, 78, 112 91,109, 111, 112
Berg, Alban, 12,13, 23, 63 Fibonacci series, 76, 83, 90, 93n, Kontarsky, Aloys, 89
Berlioz, Hector, 55 96, 110 Kontra-Punkte, 16, 21-2, 38, 42
Boehme, Jakob, 118 'fields', 48-9, 50, 51, 77, 78 Krenek, Ernst, 16n
Boulez, Pierre, 40, 44, 46-7, 57, formants, 49, 69, 72, 75, 90, 101 Kreuzspiel, 15,16-20, 84
77,103 Formel, 21, 128 Kurzwellen, 112, 116, 117, 120
Brown, Earle, 77
Gabrieli, Giovanni, 55 Les Noces, 101
Cage, John, 43,106,112,124, Gesang der Jünglinge, 55, 78-80, Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 49, 77
125 85,86,88,91,97,101,109,112 Liszt, Franz, 121
Calder, Alexander, 77 Goehr, Alexander, 13 Lumsden, Ronald, 109

143
Index
Mahler, Gustav, 33-1, 78,112 Piano Piece X, 38, 42-7, 76, 87, Spiral, 96
Mantra, 126 103 Sri Aurobindo, 118
Martin, Frank, 15 Piano Piece XI, 41,77-8,82,97, statistical composition, 13, 40,
Messiaen, Olivier, 13, 15, 16, 18, 99 82, 87
25, 51, 57, 78, 112 Plotinus, 118 Steiner, Rudolf, 118
Meyer, Wolfgang Sebastian, 110 Plus Minus, 20, 36, 93 Stimmung, 105,110-12,117,123
Meyer-Eppler, Professor Wer- pointillism, 18, 21,124 Stockhoven-Beethausen Opus
ner, 13, 24, 28, 30 Poles, 96 1970,112
Mikrophonie, I, 91-2,109 Prozession, 109-10,112 Stravinsky, Igor, 15,124
Mikrophonie II, 95-7,117 Punkte, 16, 21, 22, 95 Les Noces, 101
Mixtur, 95-6,101 Pythagoras, 118 Strauss, Richard, 9,12
Momente, 91, 97,109 structuralism, 80, 90
moment form, 20, 81, 84, 85, 89, Refrain, 25, 38, 87, 89 Studie 1, 25, 40,41
96,124 Renaissance Music, 15, 63 Studie 2, 25-8, 80,103
Monofonie, 111 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 85,119-20 Study for orchestra, 15
monism, 102, 108,118n, 120 ring modulation, 95, 96, 97, 126
Monteverdi, Claudio, 110 Robbe-Grillet, 90 Tchaikovsky, Peter, 121
Mozart, W. A., 15, 32, 33, 83, 95 Telemusik, 99-101,104,109
scales, 21, 28, 31, 34, 35, 40, 41, theory of time, 30-4,48-50,101,
Nazism, 9-12 49, 50, 56, 79, 89, 90, 91, 96, 105,117-20, 128
Novalis, 118-19 112,117
tradition, 15,100,110
Notation, 28, 42, 44, 48, 49, 77, SchaefFer, Pierre, 55
87,88,92,93,97,109,112,123 Schlagquartett, 16
Schoenberg, Arnold, 12, 13, 15, Vier Chöre, 15
31, 40, 41, 50, 51, 55, 57, 78,
open forms, 77, 78, 82, 85, 91 113,124,125
Originale, 88, 90 Wagner, Richard, 12, 30, 79n,
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 118, 121 100,108,121
Schubert, Franz, 34,109 Webern, Anton, 12, 13, 15, 16,
Piano pieces I-IV, 22-5, 41, 44, serialism, 15, 16, 21, 25, 31, 40, 18, 23, 25, 37, 41, 42, 51, 57,
57 41, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 62, 69, 78,124
Piano Piece V, 22, 35-40, 87, 74, 75, 83, 126
109,124 sets, 18,42,44,56-60,67,69,72,
Piano Piece VI, 38, 42,44 Young, La Monte, 110
73, 74, 89, 93, 128
Piano Piece VII, 35, 38, 42,44 Solo, 96,97-9,109
Piano Piece Vili, 35, 40-1 sonata form, 36, 43 Zeitmasze, 22, 48-51, 55, 56,124
Piano Piece IX, 42 Spiel, 16 Zyklus, 81-4

144