Maybe talking about the wrongs of how some people talk about various things is also more important than talking about the music?

Richard, as you will remember, my first post on this thread was about Stockhausen’s actual music: Klang:

http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=1166.210

BTW, I now understand a bit better one of the reasons why Himmelfahrt fascinates me so much: The work translates the abstraction of modern gestural language into the melodic realm, while “melody” is in this work just as important as in “traditional” music.

Richard,

Absolutely, there is nothing wrong with getting involved in the "workings" of Stockhausen's music, and anybody who is inclined to do so by all means should go as far with analysis as humanly possible, if they please to do so (some stuff that I have read can certainly be tremendously fascinating!). Just like there is nothing wrong with studying for hours a single chord in a late Beethoven string quartet in the context of the surrounding tonality – no irony intended here. What I do object to is when these kinds of endeavour are pursued at the expense of the basic listening experience. And with the perception of Stockhausen’s music and writings about it I do sense this imbalance.

But yes, some technical analysis can be very helpful to the listening process, even on the more basic level. I do not shy away from mentioning some technical stuff in my essays where I find it appropriate. For example, I mention the following, in order to explain to the disoriented listener why there is no formula “melody” audible in Luzifers Abschied (Lucifer’s Farewell) (the essay is not yet published):

“In contrast to the other 3 scenes of SAMSTAG, there is no “formula melody” audible: the LICHT superformula (triple formula) only shapes the form on the larger scales – a function that it additionally assumes in the other 3 scenes, as it does throughout LICHT. The composer explains in Texte zur Musik, Volume 9, p. 456 (translated from German by me):

“LUZIFERs ABSCHIED [is] a large entity which consists of textural parts with certain tendencies; the shape is derived from a partial limb of the triple formula for the entire week LICHT.”

[…]

“(Also in some other choral works of LICHT, such as UNSICHTBARE CHÖRE and WELT-PARLAMENT, the formulas shape mainly, or exclusively, just the large-scale form.)”

It gets even more technical in my essay on Weltraum, the electronic music of Freitag aus Licht, where I point out in some detail how some passages of the music relate to the enormous stretching of the Luzifer/Eve formula. After I had started with such an analysis, Jerome Kohl, my editor, came up  in an email with a related technical detail about the enormously long bass-tone sequence of almost an hour in the second half of the work. I found this so fascinating that I decided to incorporate it in the text, where it gets really detailed, with links to sheet note samples as well:

http://home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/weltraumguide.htm

Scroll down to about halfway, to:

“The figure on which this whole, enormously long bass process is based, comes directly out of the rhythm of the Lucifer formula in the passage starting from 1:16'48" in the form scheme of FREITAG, bottom staff.”,

and continue reading. Again, I found this useful, because the confused listener (including myself) will find here the answer to how on earth this long bass-tone sequence relates to the LICHT superformula melody, and will find clues to why the LICHT formula is often “inaudible” – I elaborate on the issues because here the enormous temporal stretching of the formulas forms the foreground of the music, not just its backbone.

(Of course, those more technically inclined will be disappointed that my essays are not in general drenched with such technical details, but so be it.)

Again, these are examples of exceptions; for instance a lot of the remainder of this essay on Weltraum is a quite detailed, yet rather non-technical description which simply aims to help the listener sharpen his/her ear to the musical proceedings. Also technical only in basic terms is my Introduction to the work:

http://home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/weltraumintro.htm

Al, thanks for all your extremely interesting comments. Just one qualifying thought:


It is worth bearing in mind here that sonata form was codified as such a certain while after the pioneering works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven that came to be described as such, by Antonin Reicha, Adolf Bernhard Marx, Czerny, and later Hugo Riemann, Vincent d'Indy and others. There were some precedents in the late 18th century work of Heinrich Christoph Koch and others, but these were hardly the fully-fledged 'sonata form' which is now familiar. Overall, during the classical era, what later came to be known as 'sonata form' was simply some commonality of formal strategies, rather than a 'Form' with a capital F. Some would argue that the attempt to codify it into an abstract 'Form' divulged it of its dynamic properties as it existed in those earlier times, so that it became a reified entity (and so the 'Form' that later composers attempted to adhere to could produce rather dogmatic results - Schumann's 'Sonata Form' movements have been fairly criticised in this respect). Whatever, it's at least questionable how much a knowledge of 'Sonata Form' as we know it is essential to an appreciation works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, as that sort of form would not have been recognised as such in those composers' own time.

In terms of thematic development, I do believe that that can be perceived essentially from listening alone - really 'development' is just a way of giving a verbal/conceptual model for interrelationships we perceive. And one can simply hear and appreciate a fugue (in the sense of a certain type of music that involves a line or lines of music that is presented imitatively between parts, in a very intricate manner), without necessarily being able to give it the technical name 'fugue'. Of course if one is looking historically at the development of certain genres (or their development within a single composer's output) then it is vital to be able to categorise them and compare different examples within a category. But appreciating a single work in and of itself does not necessarily require this. It's also not out of the question that some might find alternative models in terms of the delineation of various contrapuntal genres to be more productive than the conventional ones.

Overall, I often find that pieces of music from any era which can be encapsulated rather too thoroughly in terms of their technical workings are often the weaker works.

Very much agreed (and to the other stuff you said). I suppose the weaker works simply suffer from reified notions of form, expression, or other things, transforming these things from dynamic ongoing developing processes into static entities (post-modernists take note! ).

Though I don't sympathize with the bombastic quality of this statement, I would be more than happy to participate in a Křenek thread. Should we begin with his dodecaphonic pieces, his early Schubertian efforts, his total serialism, or the late work? You start the thread and I'll join in.

In the case of Inori, I would venture that it goes back to the positivism problem: somehow the representation of a primeval state, followed by rhythm, and a logical progression of stages up to polyphony is meant to convey a sense of evolution, a microcosm of history. The leaps in aesthetic logic and the glossing over of problems with this historical model is perhaps too much for (y)our sensibilities? E.g., how is polyphony a stage after harmony? Also, is the prayer parameter supposed to conjure the sense that this historical trajectory is the product of one human spirit gazing at his/her navel?

Disclaimer: I am speaking as one who has never heard a live performance of the piece. And I don't know the other works you mention.

For Kontakte, Mantra, Momente, and Gruppen, I don't have this sense. Those are the major pieces I am conversant with.