I really do think you just need to listen, Ian, and (as Stockhausen would say) put your receiver on the right wavelength.

In the immortal words of Windsor Davies:

"Oh dear.
What a pity.
Never mind."

Yes I know, and you don't like the only answer I can give you, so I guess there's no further to go in this particular direction.

Here's an instruction from the explanatory notes of Spiral, explaining what to do with the "Spiral signs" which crop up at intervals in the score (bear in mind that the terms "transposing" and "parameters" have been defined elsewhere in the explanatory apparatus and have precise but not necessarily orthodox connotations here):

"Repeat the previous event several times, transposing each time in all parameters, and transcend it beyond the limits of your previous playing / singing technique and then also beyond the limitations of your instrument / voice. This instruction applies to all visual and theatrical possibilities. From this point, retain what you have experienced in the extension of your limits, and use it in this and all future performances of SPIRAL."

If you perform the entire piece, which in Michael Vetter's version (and as far as I know he's the only performer to have attempted to perform the piece in its entirety, and one of the very few to have tried seriously to get to the bottom of it) takes almost two hours, one comes seven times across the symbol carrying this instruction. This then (referring to another thread) perhaps counts as the "most difficult piece of music ever written". Vetter has some interesting things to say about what this means to him as a performer. Looked at from another perspective, though, 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.

Let me preface what I will say by asserting that Stockhausen was one of the most conceptually sophisticated composers of all time, so when he sometimes "bit off more than he could chew", then usually it meant he bit off more than a human being can chew.

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 (I welcome contradictions on this point!).

Example: the 'traditional' serial parameters were pitch, duration, timbre, and dynamic. Though there never was an explicit "theory of serialism" at the time, register was not one of the parameters. Boulez in Structures Ia decided this parameter "freely", though one can observe some interesting ad hoc decisions on this front that can only be called "composing." Stockhausen, however, devised a serial approach to register as well in Kreuzspiel. Other kinds of systematic determinations of register can be found in the Electronic Studies from around the same time. One can evaluate this degree of self-imposed "unfreedom" how one likes; I am not trying to pass a value judgement in the Anal-Retentive Olympics.

Even with all this conviction, there is no end to the number of ways in which KS found ways to abandon the serial Flechtwerk ('scuse me) momentarily to, as it were, take Stock ('scuse me again) of the musical situation. These moments are, I think, among the saving graces of his music, showing him to be a keen abstract thinker but also one who refused to regard the row or rows or super-formulas as unbending authorities.

Example: the willfully interjected percussion "break" in Gruppen. Don't have a score here now, but others are welcome to submit examples... This is not the result of careful research..

The piece from this period of strong conviction that I know best is Klavierstueck X, in which his stated intention is to bite off much more than he could chew, i.e., to create a serial organization that, remarkably enough, mediates between order and disorder. There's Character I (maximum 'order') and Character VII (maximum 'disorder'). 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'. The definition of order is left enticingly vague in the program note: he lets fly with words like Durchhoerbarkeit, or aural clarity, and Vertruebung, or obfuscation, but for the sake of mystery or poesy, he doesn't make it more precise than that.

It would be easy to object at this point: how can something represent disorder if all of its parameters are precisely determined by serial technique? Is not only randomness truly disorderly? Ah but then one is conflating 'order' and 'organization'! Yes. Hm. Not sure what the difference is... more about that later.

Onward!

Anyhow, here's the delightful moment of contradiction: once the two extremes have been determined, i.e., Character I is 'order', and Character VII is 'disorder', with Character IV as the middle state, he decides to begin the piece by illustrating a state of maximum 'disorder' by creating a version of the entire piece in fast-forward, in other words, the seven Phases of the main piece are compressed into the length of one single phase. Of course, now Characters I through VII are shuffled together like a mind-boggling maelstrom, thus sacrificing from the very start their roles as purported extremes.

Am I making sense? In the end, having subjected the piece to extended study, I still cannot decide whether to consider Character I as order and Character VII as disorder, or whether the two taken together represent states of chaos with Character IV as the real place of order (repose? balance?). 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. Am I being too charitable to the old man?

rouge






windsor and newton's are just watercolours





  I really love Hymnen

I don't think you are at all, 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. This, however, might be what separates things like the 10th piano piece with what he's written since the late 70s - those risks aren't being taken any more.

I suddenly have the feeling that what I've just written is either total nonsense or painfully obvious. I should look at it again in the morning. Goodnight all.

But you can see why I'm ambivalent: the rest of his work and especially his writings are so drenched with a kind of positivism. I would like to see the maturity that I read into Klavierstueck X echoed in other pieces. As it is, he seems to have gotten spiritual and mystical at precisely the moments where his music approached contradiction. Here I draw upon Spahlinger's discussions of Zeitmasze from my student days -- the piece is supposed to represent shades of simultaneity of tempo, but it just comes across as various shades of density... and one doesn't get the sense of this contradiction being explored, investigated, or even acknowledged. Now perhaps I am being too uncharitable?? Benefit of hindsight?