But did you see any point in the thread where that allegation was made? It must have slipped past me. Or the claim that it 'shouldn't be so.' -- I was merely surprised that out Principal Ianterlocutor took so little interest in such matters, given his neomaxizoomdweebiness.
The context generally for questions about intentionality, the importance or otherwise of compositional processes, and in general what various things mean in terms of sound (and meanings coming
from sound rather than preceding it) emerges from comments like the following
The spiritual aspects of Stockhausen's work are quite important I think
(HH, #16)
I think that for Stockhausen, the spiritual dimension runs through everything that he does, rather like politics does through the work of, among many, Nono.
(HH, #21)
Does an influence have to be audible in order to be there?........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.
(HH, #24)
Most of the texts that KS uses make it clear that he's still thinking "serially" or "parametrically" even when it's all distilled into a few words. For me this was a key realisation......The other all-important factor is the idea of taking a "parameter" to its maximum value and then going further - going "off the page", as graphically illustrated in the text of Unbegrenzt.
(RB, #30)
And then in response to the question 'We should love to know why it is "all-important"!'
It's all-important to anyone who is involved with studying or performing Stockhausen's music. Now go away and blather about rating composers somewhere else.
(RB, #35)
Then to my question 'I would like to know in what way in particular either Richard or harmonyharmony think that the process of 'taking a "parameter" to its maximum value and then going further - going "off the page"' is worthwhile in terms of the sonic results thus produced. '
I think you would have to listen to the results and then you either hear it or you don't.
(RB, #47 - what is 'it' in this case?)
Then:
I think that for anyone who's involved in studying or performing Stockhausen's work, and for many others too, it's "all-important" to realise that (a) his concept of serial composition is central to the thinking behind the music whether it contains any traditional notation or not, and that (b) this concept crucially embraces the idea of going outside, of "transcending", whatever systematic framework is in operation.....As to if and where these matters manifest themselves, I think they do so all over the music.
(RB, #56)
Then:
I cited a number of very clearly audible examples of this "overstepping" in an earlier post, as well as saying in the above-quoted one that both these and the systematic framework manifest themselves audibly all over the music. Maybe not quite in every corner of every piece, but if anyone has made a case for a generalised conception of seriality being a consistently audible component of the music, it's Stockhausen.
(RB, #58 - still I would ask what it means for 'seriality' to be a 'consistently audible component of the music'?)
On
Spiral:
what Stockhausen is talking about here is the kind of self-transcendence which, in various guises, is the unstated goal of a great deal of musical performance, whether of Stockhausen's music or not, whether one accepts a term like "transcendence" at face value or not.
Then:
As Richard said, Stockhausen tried to employ serial technique to solve any and all musical problems that he felt could be addressed with it. Whenever a decision about any parameter was made, KS would consult his row or a particular manifestation thereof; the row itself and the order in which decisions were made, and about which parameters, is what decided the character, total duration, and all other features of the piece. The extent to which he followed through with this principle was, at all stages of his career and the development of serial tools, further than that of his contemporaries
(CD, #67)
And in particular, from the same post:
We learn a lot about his concept of order by studying this work closely and observing the kinds of decisions he makes to help underscore this process, and which parameters are minimized and which maximized to achieve a sense of 'order'.
....
Stockhausen was either a complete and stubborn buffoon when it came to the dialectics of such philosophical concepts as order and disorder -- or he knew very well that the only way to make this piece work was to allow this contradiction to stand. Considering some of the smaller decisions that take place throughout, I am inclined toward the latter interpretation.
To which one reply is:
I think you're touching upon one of the more important (if I may use that word!) of KS's contributions to musical thinking - not, indeed, providing the answers, but posing the questions in a way that nobody else had thought of doing.
(RB, #71)
All very interesting stuff, but to which, overall, my simple question is of how all these things relate to what can be heard. Then a crucial point is made:
What Stockhausen's pieces are "supposed to do" and what they actually end up doing are often different things, though.
(RB, #75)
Then, after a quite long post from myself, asking in particular 'does it really matter all that much what [pieces] are 'supposed to do'?':
It does if one wants to learn and draw conclusions from the piece.
(CD, #80)
To which my response is:
cannot one equally (and arguably more productively) learn and draw conclusions from a work by looking at the finished entity in a wider context, rather than necessarily in terms of its composer's intentions? Aren't we in danger of elevating compositional intention over sounding result here?
(IP, #83)
To which there is a response:
the only person that has laid any doubt on any particular reading of Stockhausen's output has been you, by implying that most interpretations offered do not hold up under independent scrutiny. I'm not sure what you mean by 'productively' in terms of this discussion. What are we producing here?
(HH, #84. 'Productively', as I would see it, is simply to relate all the other things to the sounds and what they express/communicate - surprised that wanting to add that dimension seems so contentious!)
Then (particularly relevant to the question placed to which I am replying in this message):
The problems Stockhausen sought to address–some spiritual, some predicated on a Newtonian, positivistic concept of musical organization, all worthy of critique–are as important to me as his solutions, especially because other composers have been considering and continue to consider related problems from different angles than Stockhausens'.
(CH, #86)
And:
Crucial to understanding most of Stockhausen's music, on a conceptual, constructional and perceptual level, is his absorption with the technology of his time, and particularly that of broadcasting (which, given the amount of time he sent in broadcast studios of one kind or another, and the extent to which he owed his living and status to the German regional radio stations, is perhaps not surprising).
(RB, #94)
Then some tangents working from the false assumption that I'm arguing that certain things are unnecessary in order to
play something (I'm talking about
listening to it), and in particular:
regardless of whether the gestural analysis you do comes before or after a study of composer sketches and plans, both types of study must contribute to a complete picture and a basis for realization.
(CD, #97)
And a little later (after another tangent to do with the Nyman book):
intuition and structure transcend one another.
(CD, #110)
And:
The way the composer 'intended' it to be heard must take a certain precedence over other ways of hearing, or at the very least be considered in a different light than the others, no?
(CD, #118)
And to my point 'But a structure consists of a set of relationships between things. Of course it can be a set of abstracted hierarchies and relationships which are conceived prior to any consideration of their meaning in terms of various musical parameters, but that's not how I see Stockhausen's works.':
Then I think you're seeing them in a one-sided fashion.
(CD, #120)
As well as in the same post:
I would still (as an ardent student etc) take my impressions on one hand, try to construct the intentions of the composer on the other, and then at least find a compromise between them.
Then things get more intricate, and there is, for example, the following:
It's "just numbers" -- and it takes a considerable capacity for "abstract thinking" to read through Henck's treatise and realize that this stuff has any musical value.
(CD, #146)
And also:
Henck would say the sounding details are in the piece, when executed according to his recommendations (i.e., the practice tips and so on). He didn't feel it was his job in the treatise to interpret the sounds, that's the job of the interpreter.
(CD, #153)
It's with comments like this that I wonder about the priorities of writers on Stockhausen's music, or others, if 'the sounds' are not the primary thing to interpret?
And we also get:
The row affects the way decisions are made, and those decisions are audible.
(CD, #158)
Once again, I simply ask 'how'? That seems rather fundamental to this music.
Then (in RB, #159), a request to talk more about what how any of this might relate to sound (and whether Henck's book, which doesn't go very far in that respect), seems bizarrely to be categorised merely as 'performance issues'.
And so on...
I'm not sure if anyone directly says 'the compositional processes are more important than the sounding result', but do get the impression that trying to relate one to the other is either passed over so lightly as to be relatively meaningless (just saying that the former 'are audible', for example), or that the former seem deemed to be much more worthy of serious consideration than the latter (by comparing the relative amount written on either).
In terms of 'elitism', I would be surprised if many didn't get the impression from a lot of what is written about Stockhausen that this music is only accessible with a lot of specialist knowledge, rather than essentially through listening. And that is indeed 'elitist' (because it automatically excludes a lot of listeners, including most obviously those who can't read music). This is to do a great injustice to Stockhausen's work.
