introduce me to KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN

hm. well. just hearing Hymnen for the first time. i'm only into region II, but... damn.

Transitional Karl

http://www.stockhausen-verlag.com/CD_Translations/Text-CD_22_I_become_the_tones.pdf

The early stuff pre-Kreuzspiel is really weird — sounds like Bartók or Hindemith.

... not so surprising

maybe, but what is so weird is how the stylistic shift seemed to happen so quickly — a matter of a year between Chöre für Doris and Formel.

maybe it's not so weird as remarkable

Think it was much the same for most of those guys, tho I'm not sure what Nono, for instance, was doing before serialism

Gruppen on tonight

Be there or be square. Saw "Kontakte" last night and an old lady behind me said, "That piece was a bit long", and this guy sitting a couple of seats along from me swivelled round and said, "Yes I agree, it was a bit long", and she replied, "Yes, what do you think made it long? and I really wanted to say, "The length", but stopped myself because I thought it might seem a bit presumptuous and rude... but, thinking about it, it is ca. 35 minutes and that's longer than most people are used to in Western music...

not in art music shortly to god?

surely to god, even

I suppose not but even then they used to have to fit that stuff onto 20-25 mins of a side of vinyl album

shortly to god?

LOL, sounds like a book you'd see the religious/new age section of a bookstore

I suppose they aren't used to classical music?

Such a joyride of a piece, such a clever yet simple idea of a three-way game of ping-pong. The separation and then coming together of activity, tempos, sheer energies on display was breathtaking, although I think the textures weren't as strikng, because of that separation. Its a risk but Stockhausen pulls it off.

Nono's Canti was a good counterpart to that. Mini-groups, with the high note distributed among each of the 13 instruments. When these come together in 3/4 groups toward the end its such a rush. Its a real shame that Nono isn't as talked about as Stockhausen or Boulez or Cage.

I hope I get to hear Gruppen live someday.

youtube finally gave me a chance to hear Sternklang. It's Stimmung + filters! It's great! It was always one of those 'later' pieces I was slightly afraid of, but I would have absolutely sprung for a Verlag copy of that during that window when Amoeba had them in stock.

This is my 2nd Gruppen but the first I've actually got the full effect, as it were. Bit of electric guitar in it of course!

Nono's Canti was a good counterpart

Yeah, this was great as was the other Nono piece. Also saw a couple of Xenakis percussion pieces (Okho + Psappha) (for free!), which were almost upstaged by a couple of toddlers who were in danger of joining the performers at several points.

Also good to see Helmut Lachenmann wandering round at a few concerts - not exactly getting mobbed by screaming fans but having his hand shaken vigorously by several young and not so young fans

Bit of electric guitar in it of course!

:)

This was actually a good bit of correction to his later reputation as a megalomaniac. The instruments here were sparingly used, not every passage was going for the shock and awe, you can really see his specific interest in the concert space, and how Kontakte was just as dramatic an use of that idea of surround space (at least on record, I didn't go to Saturday's but it should be easier to catch a perf of that).

I have only 2 memories of doing music o'level back in 1981: one of them was being played Kontakte by my music teacher. The other was her playing us the pistols followed by some romantic gloop and giving us aggression tests after each (the music was supposed to have the opposite effect to its intent, i.e. hearing rotten's snarl makes you feel LESS aggressive. The theory didn't work on us.) I wonder what the impact of Stockhausen would have been if she'd tried the test then.

'stimmung' really underrecommended as an introduction

it would be a good record to give to kindergarten teachers

Huh, I would think Stimmung would be THE go-to recommendation for anyone hesitant about Stockhausen.

Anyone else go to Stimmung/Cosmic Pulses at the Barbican on Monday? The singers were all seated around a table with a huge glowing orb at the centre of it, Cosmic Pulses was like being in a washing machine with lasers flying all around you. I can't imagine it working at all without centrifugal sound but in that context, wow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDgIaJtCk4

That's

Stockhausen: "Montag aus Licht" ("Monday of Light") documentary (1988) (English)

A half-hour documentary about the music and staging of Montag