Good Heavens!

We do not think the status of Stockhausen would be much recognized out in that desert place on the lip of the civilized world!

Smalley was in the vanguard! He led the Country in matters of modern musical taste. What obscure drama could possibly have driven him to an abandonment of the vibrant Britain of the seventies and a removal of himself thither? Could it be that he of all people so soon came to sense and to see that the so confidently touted productions of the Darmstadt clique represented - an end not just dead but very dead (if for once we may assume the concept of death to permit of comparison)? Disillusioned was he in the end? Even now we cannot bring ourselves quite to believe it.

With what tremendous admiration used we in 1965 shyly to watch him stride down Kensington Park Road daily in his green duffle coat, his noble mind no doubt occupied with deep glories of great Stockhausen! Dumb in awe and admiration we never once ventured to accost him.

Incidentally, Roger Smalley's younger brother Peter became a harpsichord constructor. On this interesting web page:

http://www.smalleyharpsichords.co.uk/biography.htm

he tells us wryly that like it or not he was exposed to keyboard music from an early age. He does not though relate whether at that time it was Stockhausen's or not.

He and his good lady also run a very grand-looking bed-and-breakfast:

http://www.special-escapes.co.uk/search/display.php?FileID=bsc5838

They were Northerners of course, the Smalley boys.

It would appear to have concerned the matter of gainful employment. Perhaps the weather as well?


Well do I remember gazing down upon the fair city of Perth, Western Australia, one morning early in 1997, in the company of one of our Members. He it was who mused: "if Perth just fell off into the ocean tomorrow, do you think anyone would notice?". A little ungrateful was this, as the Festival of said fair city had just commissioned and premiered what was probably his biggest work to that date.

My mother grew up in Perth, as it happens. Exclaimed did she on hearing of this story: "and if he fell off into the ocean tomorrow, do you think anyone would notice?".

 

Such a disappointment that the body massage and reiki therapy is only available to female guests for we might otherwise have booked ourselves in for a revitalising weekend in the 'hayloft suite'. The promise of leverets, while beguiling, does not quite assuage this crestfallen seeker after personal renewal. 

It looks as if it may have to be Mrs Grimcrumble of Clacton's 'Sea Breezes' again this year after all.

Did someone hear something?

Nah, I didn't hear anything. You seen that Veronika lately?

And I have briefly responded to it in that new thread, although - fortunately - I eschewed any reference there to the personnel of the Arditti Quartet at the time as "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines".

Best,

Alistair

It is quite odd the way certain threads in these message-boards are taken up with some enthusiasm and after a week or two as suddenly dropped. This is one of them.

Nevertheless we turn to-day to the Sixth of Staukissen's Eleven Curious Piano Pieces. This one lasts for twenty-five minutes and thirty seconds, so it is not at all short. It is longer, even, than many symphonic movements of Bruckner!

Through repeated listening we have come to know the work very well. Each rehearing of its old familiar refrains is more pleasant to our ears than the last. The great Sir Richard Terry has explained why - "We may begin by disliking second-rate music," he tells us, "but constant repetition is bound to blunt our finer perceptions, and in some cases to convert mere toleration of it into actual liking." How true that is! We now know it very well, that is, but understand it hardly at all! It is not clear to us, and probably never will be, why the composer chose one note rather than another.

Nevertheless let us here submit a few impressions observations and notes:

1) The work is like a ballet suite, in that it consists of about fifty short movements separated by lengthy pauses. The composer evidently did not have much staying power! He was unable to develop his ideas at all and make anything out of his germs. Something else Terry said seems relevant here: "In modern music the object is to increase and stimulate interest until the cadence, and to have as few Perfect Cadences or Full Closes, as possible, if the composer would avoid puerility." (Certainly one would wish to avoid that would not one?) "The opposite is the case in Plainsong;" he continues, "the more points of repose one had the better. The repose of meditation is the essence of Plainsong." So Stockhausen's music with its many points of repose is as is Plainsong intended to convey a meditative mood.

2) That having been said, the work is nevertheless more meaty than Pieces seven eight and nine simply because within each of the fifty-odd movements, almost without exception, we do hear repeated notes and motifs. That in itself is something for Stockhausen!

3) But despite all the repetitions within the tiny movements we are unable to detect a single instance of a reference from any one of those movements to any other. Perhaps Members will correct us if we are wrong, because we have not been privy to a score. (Is there anywhere on the Internet where the scores of these works may be viewed?)

4) The composer clearly has no sense of musical rhythm at all. To compensate for or more likely to disguise its absence he amuses himself with complex time signatures and uneven note values. Not the same thing - there he deludes himself!

5) The work makes no use of any tonal system that we can discern. That in itself - a matter merely of construction - is no drawback, so long as the sounds are beautiful and there is some construction. Ending on a tonic triad had been done to death as long ago as 1803, and Beethoven tried to tell us all as much at the end of his Eighth.

6) There is no discernible melodic sense either. S's favourite line is a sort of descending decorated arpeggio, followed by a sort of ascending decorated arpeggio, and then a pause. His idea of variation is to change that to a sort of ascending decorated arpeggio, followed by a sort of descending decorated arpeggio, then a pause.

7) There are too many notes in the extreme upper register of the piano. These very high notes were introduced only for the virtuosi, so that they could play their showy runs. They are far too high for harmonies to be discerned and appreciated. One note in that high range sounds very like another, and we neither know nor care whether it is an A or a B!

8) Between the 7 minute 40 second mark and the 8 minute 15 second mark we actually hear a few Viennese harmonies, but having no discernible context they are meaningless.

9) Some tinkling passages here and there remind us of Chaycoffski and his Nut-Cracker, but they are short-lived. As we say the composer evidently had hardly any power of concentration.

10) All of a sudden at the 15 minute 35 second mark we hear lots of short chromatic runs. Stockhausen had evidently been listening to Schumann's Prophet-Bird!

We hope that these few remarks may be of assistance to questing Members, but to tell the truth we would far rather listen to other things. Stockhausen's music does not really point to any kind of future, does it?

And as for Member Phallus ...