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harmonyharmony
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« on: 11:44:53, 26-05-2007 » |
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"Am Himmel wandre ich"
Any thoughts?
Any one heard/seen it?
I can't make up my mind if it's silly or quite good.
Rather fearful that it's a bit of both.
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« Last Edit: 17:05:44, 08-06-2007 by John W »
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #1 on: 17:35:44, 26-05-2007 » |
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Perhaps a bit cryptic.
I speak of Stockhausen's 1972 work, originally composed as part of his 'Alphabet pour Liège'.
It sets various pieces of Native American poetry for two singers (it's sort of a bijou Stimmung crossed with Ligeti's Music ricercata - 1st song uses 1 pitch, 2nd uses 2, etc.) and is subtitled Indianerlieder.
I've been listening to the 'official' recording and looking at the score and I'm contemplating approaching someone who might be interested in performing it with me, but can't decide if it's worth the time and effort.
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #2 on: 17:45:50, 26-05-2007 » |
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I have the recording and I've also seen it performed (by Singcircle). Stockhausen suggests that it should only be performed by singers who can identify completely with the texts. I would find this difficult to say the least, but the performance I saw had a magical quality about it.
Berio sets some of the same texts in his Coro which in my opinion is a greatly superior (infinitely less egocentric) work. Not something you can do with a friend though.
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #3 on: 15:35:50, 27-05-2007 » |
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I'm not sure I've got too many problems with identifying with the texts.
I think that they're primarily about a spiritual journey, a transcendent experience, about choosing to live and about accepting one's place in the world (being made sacred is more about accepting your own wholeness and ergo your place in the world to me - it's a Blake thing).
If you're someone who sees themselves as being quite spiritual, I think that it's not too much trouble.
The difficulty that I would find would be combining some of the ego-centric elements into the rest of the structure. I'm going to have a look at it over the next few weeks and work out exactly what happens where and when, maybe approach another singer.
I agree that Coro is infinitely superior to Am Himmel, but it's not really comparing like and like.
I like Am Himmel's potential for 'magical' but 'forgettable' performance. There's something experimental about the whole thing - disposable - that I quite like, whereas I don't think that I'd want to dispose of Coro after listening to it.
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #4 on: 22:05:40, 29-05-2007 » |
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OK, so back to Stockhausen.
I'm listening to Prozession, which I was expecting to be unmitigating tripe and I'm actually quite enjoying it.
It's got that aggressively Stockhausen sound that I find rather off-putting, but once I got used to it there seems to be something there.
It does tend towards that cliché of improvisation: everything is quiet and slow and then suddenly everyone becomes agitated.
I'm hoping to move on to Inori later. I heard it once about five years ago but didn't know what to make of it. I haven't studied the Lecture on HU... Has anyone here?
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #5 on: 23:16:49, 29-05-2007 » |
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I wonder why you had this feeling about Prozession before you heard it. And it really has little to do with improvisation!
As for Inori, my feeling is that it is sensationally beautiful until the last main section ("Polyphony"), at which point it turns from "Gershwin in outer space" to a somewhat clumsy and crabbed atonal idiom - what should be a further stage of opening-out and transcendence in the music becomes claustrophobic and uneasy, and this is only emphasised by the prayer-gestures of the (dancer) soloist (whose part is what the Lecture is mainly concerned with) which seem to turn from contemplative to agonised and desperate, which I don't think Stockhausen intended to happen. But the orchestral sound, both spatially and timbrally, is unique, and the first three quarters of an hour or so are very special IMO. Even when Stockhausen fails in his mission he does so in a way which makes many other composers' supposed successes look trifling in comparison.
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #6 on: 11:33:12, 02-06-2007 » |
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I had that feeling about Prozession because I had looked at the score.
The performance instructions are ambiguous as to whether the performers should prepare their parts in advance (as in Plus Minus or make decisions on the hoof). I don't really want to kick up a debate concerning what actually should be called improvisation, but if the decisions in Prozession are made on the spur of the moment as a reaction to the notation and to the performances of your fellow musicians, surely there's a certain amount of improvisation at play here?
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #7 on: 15:21:15, 02-06-2007 » |
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Hmmm. I think any performance of Prozession has to be very carefully prepared in advance. For one thing, as you'll know, each performer needs basically to have learned several Stockhausen pieces well enough to be able to quote and transform material from them spontaneously. Secondly, as you'll also know, the ways in which the interactions take place are highly constrained by the score. So, without wanting either to get bogged down in semantics, the results are highly variable from one performance to another, but not so much in the sense of the kind of improvisation where the performers are inventing their material as they go (as is much more the case with Aus den sieben Tagen for example).
My feeling is that as the 1960s wore on KS became more and more open to improvisation as he found that what you call the "aggressively Stockhausen sound" could be recreated using progressively fewer notated indications, mainly I think because the players around him knew what he was after. The next crucial step, which he was unable to take, could have been to relinquish "compositorial" authority over the results - instead of which he seems to have decided to throw himself back into the world of completely-notated pieces.
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #8 on: 23:51:28, 07-06-2007 » |
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Just listening to Kontakte - that fantastic bit where he slows the pitch down to become individual impulses gets me every single time.
Does it ever get old?
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #9 on: 23:54:32, 07-06-2007 » |
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Just listening to Kontakte - that fantastic bit where he slows the pitch down to become individual impulses gets me every single time.
Does it ever get old? It does sound a mite dated, don't you think? Not sure I can pinpoint why - perhaps the rather naive quality of the music, that sort of unqualified optimism and sense of progress? Still a fantastic piece, though. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #10 on: 00:06:15, 08-06-2007 » |
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Not sure.
When I saw it live, I was amazed at how vividly the connection with the Bartok sonata for 2 pianos and percussion sprang to mind, and I have to say that any question of it being dated was very very far from my mind.
When you say that, are you thinking from a sonic point of view or a formal point of view? (Sorry, that question just occured to me.)
I was wondering tonight, before you posted actually, whether or not that moment constitutes a cliché, but then I realised that it's only a cliché because Stockhausen did it, and did it so well. If anyone tried to imitate that gesture, it would be immediately obvious.
Sat between two speakers. Brilliant.
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #11 on: 01:03:23, 08-06-2007 » |
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Dated? Naive? Kontakte? If you say so. Fo me the only problem with it is that the instrumental parts sound too much like they were tacked on to a previously-completed electronic part (which indeed they were), depending on imitation to a greater extent than any of KS's other notated pieces. I prefer to hear the tape on its own. What I hear in it, especially towards the end, is a sense of something gradually slipping from view, as when awakening slowly from a dream and trying to hang onto it.
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #12 on: 01:52:27, 08-06-2007 » |
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Not sure.
When I saw it live, I was amazed at how vividly the connection with the Bartok sonata for 2 pianos and percussion sprang to mind, and I have to say that any question of it being dated was very very far from my mind.
When you say that, are you thinking from a sonic point of view or a formal point of view? (Sorry, that question just occured to me.) Neither exactly - more just in terms of the sensibility expressed. I suppose when I hear it after knowing the highly self-aware music of Lachenmann, N.A. Huber, Spahlinger, Ferneyhough, Sciarrino and others, it does sound quite naive to me, and that naivete is what seems dated. Somehow belongs to an era of naive exploration without so much consideration of the wider meaning (that's not necessarily a criticism, by the way). It has a bit of the 'train set' about it. I was wondering tonight, before you posted actually, whether or not that moment constitutes a cliché, but then I realised that it's only a cliché because Stockhausen did it, and did it so well. If anyone tried to imitate that gesture, it would be immediately obvious.
Sat between two speakers. Brilliant. Well, as you say, not a cliché other than when in the hands of others - though on the other hand certain things lend themselves to becoming clichés more than others. That sweeping harp glissando in the first movement of Mahler 3 is something I can't hear the same way after countless Hollywood films; but there's something about that sort of rather crude gesture that lends itself to such appropriation. Maybe this moment in Stockhausen places its cards on the table just a little too readily? I'm not sure. The moment that to me causes a few cringes is the motor-racing sound that precedes it. I suppose I do think of Stockhausen as quite a 'naive' composer in many ways, as I would also say of Messiaen. In neither case does there seem to be a great deal of self-reflexivity. The sounds are sophisticated, but I'm not always sure if the psychological sensibility that comes across in the works is so much so, in either case. |
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« Last Edit: 01:56:59, 08-06-2007 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #13 on: 12:56:39, 08-06-2007 » |
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Similarly I recall a disparaging reaction by N Kenyon to the block chord semiquavers in Tippett-'embarassing chugging' I think he said. Sometimes these gestures seem to me to have a bit of irony or
character orientation about the, eg maybe its possible to view the Tippett passage as the sound image of
a child revving up his go-kart or something-ansd furhteer that these images can have ironic nostalgic resonance in the 'maturity' of the pieces' development. But then there's the work of Albert Ketelbey...
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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harmonyharmony
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« Reply #14 on: 16:28:35, 08-06-2007 » |
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I've been wittering away about Stockhausen on the New Music board, but it occurred to me that the proper place for discussion was here.
I will presently request that discussion is moved over here, but in the meantime, does anyone want to write something about the man or the music as we slowly approach his 80th year?
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'is this all we can do?' anonymous student of the University of Berkeley, California quoted in H. Draper, 'The new student revolt' (New York: Grove Press, 1965) http://www.myspace.com/itensemble |
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