Hmmm.
Not sure that they were so irrelevant that they deserved to be binned.
I did ask that they be retained in some form, even though I couldn't see that discussion going anywhere helpful any time soon (though I was gratified to see such a restrained and thoughtful debate on a rather emotive topic - thanks to all concerned!).
The spiritual aspects of Stockhausen's work are quite important I think, even though I think a lot of his spiritual ideas are rather half-baked.

Has anyone else here had an experience of preparing Aus den sieben Tagen for performance?
I'd be interested in decision making pre- and mid-performance.
I've performed Right Durations, Intensity and IT so far.
Our performance of Right Durations wasn't as good as our pre-concert run-through, but Intensity really took off in performance. It was (ahem) Intense. IT just didn't work when we performed it. I had trouble with my electronics and both the turntablist and percussionist found it very hard to think of nothing while interacting with their respective instruments. I'm hoping to evolve a MaxMSP patch that will allow us to perform it using four keyboards in the future that will hopefully be completely in keeping with the motivation behind the piece.

They certainly are both of those things!

I've been involved in a few of them over the years (as well as Pole für zwei). My feeling is that it's worth doing as much detailed preparation as is feasible, to establish what the sonic and structural identity of each piece, in the hands of the performers in question, is or could be. (The "official" recordings, of course, have years of Stockhausen-related experience behind them, even though the texts seem to have put some of the players in a very unfamiliar situation.) A problem I've encountered during preparation is massive discrepancies between different players' ideas of how long a particular "process" ought to take, which can lead to the music losing its way. Another important issue is establishing how a performance of one of these pieces distinguishes itself from free improvisation (which also implies some kind of "pre-composition" I think). It's instructive to see the differences in approach between the Sieben Tagen texts and the für kommende Zeiten collection which was published a couple of years later, in which many of the musical indications are much more explicit (and, in the case of the recorded version of Ceylon, Stockhausen even brought in a fully-composed rhythmical and structural scheme in addition to what's in the "score").

Yes, involved in performances of them a while back, also more recently coached some students preparing 'Set Sail for the Sun'. In both cases, there wasn't a huge amount of verbalising other than a stress on mutual listening and interplay. It all depends on the particular chemistry between the players. I'm still not entirely sure to what extent they constitute 'Stockhausen pieces', though, other than in the extent to which particular performers bring in experience of other Stockhausen works.

Is that necessarily much different from a parallel process in free improvisation, though?


Ok, so how would you define the difference exactly?


I'll be interested to see what you come up with - also perhaps in the case of Nono, thinking of the non-textual aspects of the pieces, how would you say the politics 'runs through everything that he does' exactly, independently of what we know of his intentions (I think it does, for various reasons I might elaborate, but I'm interested in how you think this is the case)? Would you have a perception of Nono's politics on the basis of hearing ...sofferte onde serene...., Fragmente, Stille, an Diotima or Hay que caminar or A Pierre, dell'azzurro silenzio, inquietum, without having been previously informed of his convictions?



Could you elaborate on how you think that occurs as well? Say (to take one of the more extreme examples) in the piece Unlimited?

                                                                  play a sound
                                                                with the certainty
                                          that you have an infinite amount of time and space

(combined with a curvy line in the shape of a mount above these words)

OK, a brief sortie, to be followed up. Then I must go to bed.
Not really, but I don't have a problem with adopting a similar approach. Not sure this answers the question, but as we play more together, we are becoming more sympathetic to the way that we 'behave' musically. This experience of parallel working (and I think that an important part of the score is the individual's response) is actually helping us to listen to each other more not less.
For me, when I am performing Right Durations, I am following Stockhausen's instructions. There are certain decisions to be made ('Which sound?' for example) but I'm still following instructions.
Well this opens a different area to the one that I originally thought you were contemplating. Does an influence have to be audible in order to be there? I'm not very confident talking about Nono, particularly about his politics, but I might like to talk about a different example: Christian Wolff. Wolff is interested in creating different kinds of musical communities that mirror his ideas about society. Even in his abstract works, there is almost always an attempt, at a basic level, to address the way that performers play together, or put even more basically, the way that people communicate. In Stockhausen's work, in almost every period, there is evidence of some degree of focus on the spiritual: the symbology of Kreuzspiel, the text of Gesang, the quasi-mystical approach of Inori, Am Himmel and Licht. Listening to a performance of Aus den sieben Tagen, are you aware of the spiritual dimension? Not necessarily. But working on the pieces and preparing them, I don't see how you can avoid it. I have said earlier in this thread however that I see myself as a spiritual person and that I see everything that I do as having something to do with that.

Ooh. That's tricky. I was thinking more about works like Prozession, which seem to almost create a performance tradition. Looking at the score more closely after Richard's comments, I was actually reminded of the way that Javanese gamelan works. If you've played any gamelan, you quickly realise that there is almost no improvisation at all in traditional music. There are a number of different options available to you in any given circumstances (all depending on the pathet, the notes present in this current gatra, where the gongang is heading etc.) and that, when you analyse it, there are actually very few decisions that are orthodox. Any departure from the traditional options has to be undertaken with confidence and a refined taste. Having talked about 'fourth world music' in relation to Richard's music and to Scelsi on another thread, I'm coming back to it now.
This is what I was trying to say about the 'different way of making music' - it's not simply about following instructions or making a choice between a and b, it's about making an appropriate choice, determined by context, experience and taste. You could say that these are elements present in improvisation and I wouldn't argue, but the main difference is that in Prozession, you have some fairly strict instructions about what to do at various different times, with other variables left unspecified.

I am going to bed now. Good to have food for thought!

I think the movements of the dancers and the sound balance are essential in this piece. But the music itself is powerful enough, I must admit. I wonder if this piece is available on DVD: that medium would probably be more appropriate for Inori than a CD or a radio transmission.

Sleep well!

That was the chamber-orchestra version, wasn't it? (I was there too)