Thanks CD. Actually it occurs to me that my post is in danger of generalising too much and wandering away from what is proving an intensely interesting thread specifically on KS. So perhaps I could just thank you for a formulation that I for one found very helpful and leave it at that. Perhaps I'll start another thread somewhere on the more general point.

Back to KS...

[Oh, too late  ]

There's really no need for that, George - there's no such thing as 'Everyman' (or Everywoman), and 'naive' is hardly the first epithet that comes to mind with you, cute though it might be! In no sense at all is your view of this music any more or less valid than anyone else's, certainly not than those of use who are in one way or another professionally involved with it, which brings a whole set of other interests and biases into play.

In the broadest sense, i think it can be said that a lot of contemporary music uses different organising principles, or at least different priorities in this respect, compared to various past music (not that that is by any means monolithic - the debates one hears about whether new music should have 'melody' or not are not in essence so different from those in past eras regarding the supremacy of contrapuntal intricacy, colourful orchestraion, or whatever else). Some music does have quite different aesthetic aims from what might loosely be called the mainstream Western canon, for sure (for example some of the more static Feldman works, some minimalist music, most of Cage, some of the radically pared-down work of Nicolaus A. Huber or Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, and so on), aiming for quite different categories of experience to that obtained previously, and as such requires a different attitude to the listening experience. But Stockhausen is less like that, I feel, at least in a lot of works: his music operates with relatively audible processes, goal-oriented structures, development of material, and so on. He just uses rather different means to bring them about, and assigns different priorities in terms of parameters (timbre, for example, is more central, so is texture - in a complex work like Gruppen, hopefully, it shouldn't be too difficult to follow the interplays between textures, instrumental groups, and so on, when the piece is new, which lends a 'way in', allowing one to come to hear other things. 

It would be difficult to make highly general statements about 'New Music', at least at the present time - possibly future generations will see more unifying factors than we can when we are so much more close to it, as we do with music of previous eras. I would like to be able to say that simply the music alienates some because there are too many instilled preconceptions about what music 'ought' to be, based upon continual exposure to a Western classical canon - but to be honest I think that answer is too easy. One can also say such things like that those accustomed to free jazz/improvisation wouldn't find various things in Stockhausen and others difficult, but then one has to bear in mind that the audience for free jazz/improvisation relative to the rest of the population. I suppose it all comes down to want one looks for (or, better, what one is open to) from listening to a piece of music? In terms of 'what one is supposed to be doing' when listening to it, in the end I'd say simply one should keep an open mind, and be prepared to accept that it works somewhat differently from that with which one is familiar. Most of the best new music can be appreciated (or at least comprehended) to the highest extent by anyone who is prepared to take such an attitude, I believe (I would go further and say that that new music which it is impossible for the non-specialist to be able to comprehend is probably of lesser quality, but that debate has been gone over plenty elsewhere). There's no 'right way' or 'wrong way' to listen in the end, in terms of which aspects of the work are legislatively deemed to be unambiguously superior to others - just start with whatever seems striking, and if nothing is, then try a different piece!

I second Ian's thing wholeheartedly, btw

Concerning Klavierstück I, is it at all possible that the truth lies somewhere in between a demand for absolute accuracy and a more, shall we say impressionistic approach (assuming the performer has some interpretative rights). I would have thought so.

At one time we possessed the sheet music of this. But it is one of the items which has gone missing having been abstracted by visitors (not by "friends" as one mistaken Member had it in another thread). We remember it as consisting largely of isolated notes dotted all over the keyboard range, each one having its own time value dynamic marking and attack. Presumably there was some sort of system behind it but we saw no reward in attempting to pry it all out. All we can say is that it is the very opposite of serial, in that there is no defined sequence, but rather a repertory. Now in the mean time we have acquired a recording of it.

It is is it not very unlike the greater part of Messyaen's oeuvre nourished as that is by ever more generous lashings of constructive simultaneity?

Messyaen's idea here we thought was to have a bet each way: 1) in slyly satirizing his contemporary Webern (to whom he could not bring himself to submit), and 2) in indulging nevertheless in a playful little modal experiment just in case there was something in it. Evidently the experiment was not he judged a particularly successful one because he never went back to it properly did he? Some nay many of the star-struck shrewdness (of apes you know) among the younger generation of 1950 took it up and stirred it in with Webern no doubt because it was easier to do that than to face up to and take on Messyaen's harmony. One little misinterpretation; one colossal waste of time and effort!

Hard to escape the Livre d'Orgue as well with those soixante-quatre durées... and perhaps worth noting in any case his fascination with rhythmic experiments of a slightly abstract nature at least as far back as the Quartet for the end of time. I find it hard to think of any other composer who has managed to coax so many different musics into coexisting - at least not without some of them being deeply compromised!

To-day we turn to the fifth of Stockhausen's eleven curious Piano Pieces. It does not go on for long; for only five and a quarter minutes to be precise.

What is it we must look out for when listening for the first time to an unfamiliar musical work?

1) First we seek to find our way around it. We look for identifiable musical Elements, which a) exist in some kind of relationship to other identifiable musical Elements and b) are repeated or at least varied in such a way as to give the work cohesion. In other words, we are alert (if we may use an apt Italian expression) to the possibilities of form!

2) Melody is one of those identifiable musical Elements; a melody is a sequence of notes which in their conjunction are intended to be in some way beautiful, or at the very least significant. Repeated hearings are usually necessary in order fully to appreciate the beauties of an original melody.

3) Harmony is another Element. Harmonies are significant either in themselves, or in their relationship with what precedes and follows them. But alas, Stockhausen is not big in the combination department.

4) Finally for now: rhythm. This is no more than repetition (point 1b) on a small scale. As we have previously noted, Stockhausen's rhythmic sense is terribly weak and deficient. Indeed his intention perhaps is altogether to eschew melody harmony and rhythm, all the most musical Elements!

What then do we hear? The work begins with a couple of flourishes, followed by one of Stockhausen's notorious pauses. Then at the seventeen-second mark there is what can only be described as a twiddle: three quick notes in the very highest range of the pianoforte. We have had occasion before to complain about Stockhausen's evident love of this register; the exact pitch of the notes is unclear and they have therefore an effect more percussive than melodic. We well understand why people call this sort of thing "plink-plonk music"! Immediately following the twiddle comes a single long-held chord in the middle range. As we say, chords are quite rare in this man's work; this therefore must rank as an Event of some significance.

We cannot describe every detail, so let us see if we can catch the return of anything recognisable. Well there is a second long-held chord at the one minute six second mark - a second Event!

Then at two minutes nine seconds a third chord!

At three minutes forty-five seconds there are five successive notes (unharmonised of course) of the same length - a very rudimentary rhythm that! Perhaps they are five crotchets, even. Then ten seconds later we hear another set: this time SIX successive notes of equal length, but shorter than the first five. Perhaps they are quavers!

Anyway, after about ten hearings nothing of this half-formed and inchoate work has really stuck in our not wholly unmusical mind so we may with confidence give up Stockhausen's Fifth Piano Piece as a bad job, unless a Member wishes to jump in and enlighten us as to some secret intention of the composer. Otherwise we may with some justification conclude that his aim was Deliberate Mystification or even Annoyance. How we hate Stockhausen's silences every few seconds, and his even more frequent and oppressive sforzandos and sforzatissimos!