In the case of Inori, I don't think it necessarily asks to be seen as a "seven ages of music" narrative, but as a musical discourse gradually becoming more multilayered and complex. The trouble then is that "Polyphony" comes across as clumsy and crude in comparison with what's preceded it, and the eventual "moment of transcendence" fails to transcend anything.

Certainly this problem occurs seldom if at all in his music prior to the mid 1970s, to my ears anyway.

You're welcome, Ian.


You're right, of course. Perhaps I should simply have said that "some basic knowledge of thematic and harmonic development" is necessary for the understanding of classical music, not "knowledge of sonata form".

As for your question about a 'break' in Stockhausen's output, I will answer tonight.

An elementary but nevertheless fundamental misunderstanding is on display here. In Art, we distinguish between on the one hand the language (the stuff medium or vocabulary) and on the other what is to be written or formed in that language.

Each successive novel of Meredith does indeed "embody a new world" but each one uses the same medium, the English language.

Each successive masterpiece of Brahms does indeed "embody a new world" but each one uses the same medium, the language of Western musical tradition.

How quickly such simple facts are forgotten in our intellectually impoverished "post-modernistical" world!

And please do not bring up that unreadable Irish crackpot Joyce, who has been sufficiently debunked by Wyndham Lewis and others.

So - and here is our great point - a composer of genius is "expected" to go on "staking out" new worlds over the course of his entire life of labour, but he is not "expected" to invent a new medium every time. What an absurdity that would be!!!! Artists are "expected" to build upon and indeed incorporate what has been achieved before not destroy it. We wonder in fact exactly what sort of "musical" education it was that poor little Stocklhausen managed to acquire amid the post-war chaos.

By the bye we are at present studying the Sixth (25 minutes 30 seconds) and Seventh (6 minutes 40 seconds) of Stocklhausen's Eleven Curious Little Piano Pieces, should any Member wish to take the plunge before us.

Member Grew here would seem to be misapplying an overly transparent and static model of language, be it a language of words or of sounds (indeed in the latter case we would like to aver that 'language' may not be the most appropriate paradigm. The many writers in the English language do not merely use the language, but frequently expand and extend it in unprecendented ways. This can take many forms - the particular contextualisation or simple frequent use of pre-existing words so as to develop their meanings and connotations or conversely the eschewal of certain undesired words. And the same process can equally apply to phrases as well as words. We would ask Member Grew here to bear in mind that the language used by Milton is quite different to that used by Wordsworth which in turn is quite different to that used by William Carlos Williams, though all make use of the English language. Some writers find new, relatively unexplored possibilities within the existing rules upon which the language is founded; others break with or modify some of these rules. This is part of the process by which a language develops (which also has to do with many other factors bearing upon colloquial speech, the influence of foreign elements, and so on). We hasten to make clear that every such development should not necessarily be seen as a move for the better or worse, simply a modification. This process is paralleled in music, when we encounter composers developing new forms of harmonic progressions, new approaches to counterpoint, the use of relatively unexplored harmonies and timbres, the use of pitches lying outside of the chromatic scale, and much more. Each successive masterpiece of Brahms, a composer equally beloved of Member Grew and ourselves, indeed does play a part in extending and modifying the Western musical language.

But at the same time, when Member Grew presents a clear dichotomy between 'the language (the stuff medium or vocabulary) and on the other what is to be written or formed in that language', he is reiterating a rather impoverished dichotomy between form and content. This is what we mean when criticising his model for its transparency. The issue of what is 'written or formed in that language' cannot, we believe, be separated out from the actual development of the language which the composer plays a part in enacting. The language is not merely a transparent medium for expressing a content, but a dynamically developing entity which is itself part of that content. This is why it is not possible to rewrite a piece in an significantly different idiom without also changing what is expressed by that very piece. We would ask Member Grew to consider very simply the difference between the symphonies of Beethoven and their piano transcriptions by Liszt in order to see how even a change of instrumental forces can affect the perceived result.

We are in agreement with Member Grew that it would be absurd for a composer to invent a completely different medium with each new work, for then the composer would be unlikely to ever achieve much more than relatively primitive work within those mediums which go undeveloped (though other composers may develop them further). However, we do not accept that this is the case with Stockhausen, whose oeuvre is very diverse but nonetheless shows clear developments between successive pieces. We would also like to draw attention to the fact that some of the influences from elsewhere upon the work of Stockhausen may be more significant than Stockhausen himself might explicitly draw to our attention. In particular, the use of works whose scores are exclusively in the form of texts was done not only by Christian Wolff in the same year as Stockhausen, but signficantly earlier, in the late 1950s, by Dieter Schnebel, in such works as raum-zeit y (1958) or glossolalie (1959-61). And that Stockhausen's use of the symbolical power of hymns may not have been uninfluenced by the use of equally symbolic African-American spirituals (which have a quality akin to hymns) in the music of Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Boris Blacher. There is of course the oft-discussed influence of American experimentalism to filter into this as well, and various other influences. Stockhausen did indeed 'build upon and incorporate [and develop and modify] what has been achieved', as Member Grew believes an artist should.

The “break” would have to be Mantra. With this work Stockhausen starts formula composition. With formula composition we have the advent of “formula melody” as well – even if not yet really in Mantra which is a motivic work rather than a melodic one, at least to my ears (notwithstanding that Stockhausen calls also the Mantra formula a “melody”). Certainly, we have a few more non-formula works after 1970, such as Ylem and Am Himmel wandere ich, both from 1972, but by the mid-seventies Stockhausen was firmly steeped in formula composition.


Yes, the change is from almost exclusively gestural language (in which even “melody” appears in an abstract manner, such as in the M-Moments [Melody-Moments] of Momente) to a more obviously melodic language.

The change is also expressed in Stockhausen’s attitude to his earlier melodic works. For the first time he now records, in 1973, his early Drei Lieder (1950) and Formel (1951), the latter of which he found too “thematic” at the time (the time of Kreuzspiel).

However, even with the change, is there really a break from gestural language? Not really, there is plenty of gestural music also in Stockhausen’s more recent output. (Thus is the “break” really a “break”? Perhaps it is just an expansion instead, as to include also overtly melodic writing.) So in one sense we have change, but in another we have continuity, as you say – not just in terms of the fact that Stockhausen carried on with serialism in formula composition, but also in terms of a continuation of gestural language.

The dualism of gestural and melodic language becomes evident in the next formula composition, Inori (1973/4). The great temporal stretching of the formula over the entire length of the work allows for an overlay of gesture, which is evident in the first half, perhaps the most in the first quarter (in Mantra there is also stretching of formula, evident in the harmonic structure, but that work is firmly motivic throughout, with the motives directly coming from the formula “melody”).

Certainly, in the few formula compositions after that, Stockhausen is firmly on mainly melodic ground: Harlekin, Tierkreis and the Tierkreis-based Musik im Bauch and Sirius, as well as the beginning of Donnerstag, with the composition of Michaels Reise. But already Unsichtbare Chöre (1979) from the same opera again features gestural, not melodic language, overlaid on another giant temporal stretching of forrmula, this time the superformula (triple formula) of LICHT.

So maybe we could say that the only purely melodic “period” in Stockhausen’s output is from 1975 to 1978, but hold on: I cheated. Jahreslauf from 1977 is non-formula based, and gestural. So after all, there is no purely melodic period in Stockhausen’s output…

In any case, in the following years, decades, of LICHT, “gesture” stands next to “melody”. The electronic Weltraum from Freitag, the choral Luzifers Abschied from Samstag and the a cappella Weltparlament from Mittwoch are among those works that are mainly or even purely gestural. And not only do gesture and melody stand side by side, they also interwine. Melodic writing frequently becomes gestural as well, courtesy of composition with the triple formula of LICHT which allows for all kinds of combinations of melodic elements. For example, Ave for bassetthorn and alto flute from Montag features abstract “endless” melody, where formula elements are fused into an ever-changing gestural, yet also highly melodic (in the sense of “cantabile”) continuum. “Melody” can also become “gesture” in the sense that melodic outbursts are too brief to really be “melody”, but also too “cantabile” to be just “gesture”: I am thinking here of works as the a cappella Engel-Prozessionen and, in particular, Licht-Bilder for tenor, trumpet, basset-horn, alto flute and ring modulation, both from Sonntag (incidentally they are two of, in my view, the very best Stockhausen compositions).

Finally, what about KLANG? On that tomorrow. I now will join my wife for an hour of TV. Tomorrow I will also answer a few of Richard’s posts.

In this remarkable extract, The Doctor speaks almost like a Professor. Perhaps he will clarify a few points of ambiguity for me?

a) Is a composer's genius measured by the extent to which he/she does what is "expected"?

b) Does this genius become non-existent at the point when a composer - still at the time alive - ceases to compose?

c) If a composer invents a new medium or technique, why and how does this "destroy" what has been achieved (by others) in the past?

While in past ages - when composers and artists earned their living working for Patrons - we might have understood the meaning and force of "expectation", it is difficult to see how this notion can be meaningfully applied to the work of composers who are freelance and not working purely to satisfy the whims of their employers. (Such interference wreaked havoc with 20th-c Russian composers, as The Doctor well knows - even though he is reluctant to admit the fact.)

What The Doctor overlooks (and which ignorance injures his Professorial stance) is this: we have long ago come to "expect" the unexpected from new composers writing new works. It seems, therefore, at best spurious and at worst stupid to go on "EXPECTING" the "expected"!

Baz

While noting that The Doctor has decided that he is unable (or unwilling) to answer any of my three simple questions, I am grateful for his concern over my edification and enlightenment.

Although I could not care less about the trousers a composer may have worn, I certainly should find it edifying to learn the identity of the composer Dr Grew has several times mentioned - namely one Stocklhausen.

Baz

I keep promising NOT to post -- but it seems here that M. Grew's typo was intentional.