A line of lyrics from the song “Too Much of Nothing” from Bob Dylan’s double-CD “The Basement Tapes” (originally recorded on a simple reel-to-reel in Upstate New York in 1967, in seclusion with the members of The Band) reads:

However, when considering the works of Stockhausen, and the discipline that he executes in his daily life, as well as the circumstances – which are no secrets – under which he puts himself, i.e. no TV, no radio, no Internet, no email, no newspapers, no telephone… and a fax machine stashed away in a house at some distance, plus his internal (at home) retreats into meditation, this sensation of “too much of nothing” can prove very fruitful, which a glance at the prolific output of Professor Stockhausen, and indeed the awesome quality of that output, establishes.

I come to think of other artists who have benefited from refraining from the daily commotion of the insignificant ripples on the ocean of time, liker Swedish poet and aphorist Vilhelm Ekelund, who was very much tormented by the noise in newspaper headlines and the causal glances at coffee houses for the forced intelligentsia, which is why he withdrew into a sort of seclusion, albeit the fact that he wouldn’t see it that way. It was just a way of keeping his mind and soul clean and pristine; to enable his creative flow to shape and form the crystal purity of his writings, incomparable to anything else written in the Swedish language.

So be it also with the compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen; incomparable to any other music of contemporary origin.

I can sympathize with this feeling of contamination which might arise from too much communion with the daily noises of contemporeana, as I clearly recall certain times of my life when I’ve been very vulnerable to that, or rather when I lived in an atmosphere of a delicate equilibrium, reading Mika Waltari’s “Sinhue the Egyptian” and the aforementioned Vilhelm Ekelund, at which time I was extremely tormented by the noises from my neighbor’s raw drinking parties. The noises of the rawness cut like poison tipped knives into my delicate web of thoughts and feelings.

I recently had more proof of this aspect of seclusion, as I made a trip up to northernmost Swedish Lapland, in the vicinity of Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise, where I trekked into the rock deserts of Tarfala, a high altitude valley with permafrost, surrounded by a number of Sweden’s highest peaks and several glaciers which tower all around, some of which are calving ice into the green lake in rumbles resembling thunder through the nights, and I also at one time saw a very large rock tumble down a steep mountainside, undermined by the melting water from the glacier, echoing with an ominous thunder back and forth in the desolation of the valley.

During my stay in the hut that the Swedish Tourist Agency has built up there I was completely alone for much of the time, for even though the hut accommodates twenty hikers, I happened to be the sole soul when I arrived in slow-motion across the rock fields. The hut host, a young woman, staying in her own tiny hut some ways off, dropped by to tell me she was leaving temporarily, and as she disappeared across the rocks and down the canyon, I was by myself in a total way. Around me were just mountains and glaciers, the rock fields and the green lake with a water temperature of just below +4 degrees Celsius. I heard the silence, interrupted – or rather underlined – by occasional glacier calvings and the creaks of the wood of the hut, and else there was nothing. During the nights I started having these intense, clear and high-powered dreams, in an upsurge from my subconscious, taking shape as people from my life stood up inside me, talking to me. The subconscious delivers powerful messages during this type of deprivation of outer stimuli. I had some of my best thoughts up there.
This might be the state that Stockhausen reaches by refraining from parts of the so-called civilization that most people consider a must, like mobile phones, television sets, newspapers and Internet connections, but which in reality disturbs and destroys our finest moments, if we’re not very careful.

Of this I think as I submerge myself in the choral bliss of CD number 37 of the Complete Stockhausen Edition; GEBURTSFEST; version of EVE’s FIRST BIRTH-GIVING for choir a cappella and tape from MONTAG AUS LICHT. Surely these timbres rise out of a spiritual atmosphere not unlike my Tarfala desolation, and I appreciate them even more because of this recognition.

The work is divided into several parts: QUELLE DES LEBENS (Spring of Life), ERSTE GEBURTS-ARIE (First Birth-Aria), ZWEITE GEBURTS-ARIE (Second Birth-Aria), KINDERSPIEL (Children’s Game), TRAUER MIT HUMOR (Sadness With Humor) and a concluding LUNEVA – LUNMUNDUN. It is recommended, of course, to also study and listen to the complete opera MONTAG AUS LICHT, and you might also read the text on it elsewhere on this site, by clicking here!
As usual the booklet is extremely well thought-out and worked-through, and having it handy when listening adds a lot of pleasure, as you can easily know where you are in the work. The tracks number 69, so the durations of the different tracks are short, from 16 seconds to 3:07.

It says something about the magnitude and richness of Stockhausen’s operas that you can perform and record different aspects of them, and also perform and record concert versions, or, in this case, the choir sections, to release on CDs individually, out of the context of the operas themselves. It is true that knowledge of the origin of the pieces is recommended, to give you a richer experience, but, on the other hand, it is really possible to pick up this one CD by itself and simply listen through it, just for the sheer beauty of the music itself. It stands readily by itself, and you can love this music without the slightest knowledge of the operas or of Stockhausen at all; that’s the magic and the strength of this music.

When Stockhausen composes, he manages to fill the score with flowering life and so many possibilities and aspects, hidden to the causal listener or interpreter, but obvious to an attentive person, in an increasing degree as ears get trained and tuned. This never stops to amaze me, and I can honestly say I have never seen a trace of this particular quality in any other composer. I listen to all kinds of music, and love many different idioms, but in certain aspects Stockhausen is completely and utterly unique. The readiness with which his works allow for versions and quasi concertos and so forth demonstrates the quality and richness of them. A dull, boring, thin composition could never be subject to this modular handling. In the oeuvre of Stockhausen all these modular properties, these concert versions and solo versions and quasi concertos and so forth serve like differently angled mirrors, sending the musical light off in all thinkable directions, rendering unthought of aspects on music and life, life in music and music in life; the energies that flow through this vibrant life among the stars. I sometimes feel like the Universe is the music and Stockhausen one of its most versatile instruments.
In his best moments, Stockhausen delivers music that appears not be composed; just conveyed. Magic! These choral pieces belong in this extremely light-handed cadre of works.

Stockhausen explains in the CD booklet that the world premier of the concert performance of Act I of MONTAG AUS LICHT, without MONTAGS-GRUSS (Monday Greeting) and MONTAGS-ABSCHIED (Monday Farewell) was performed in a WDR concert in 1988, conducted by Péter Eötvös. Stockhausen recounts that the 8-track tape of the choir was spatially projected when the opera was staged in Milan, and “a ‘choir’ of actresses moved on the stage instead of the women’s choir”.
Stockhausen especially points out that the composition for choir with a tape for the sound scenes may be performed live as a separate work entitled GEBURTSFEST; Choir music with sound scenes from MONTAG aus LICHT.
Of course, this is what we hear here, in a studio-recorded mixed-down stereo version.

However, there are more performance possibilities, as three sections of this choral work with sound scenes may be performed by themselves, individually, really putting force behind the modular aspect of the greater Stockhausen works. The sections are QUELLE DES LEBENS; Choir music with sound scenes for a cappella choir and tape, KINDERSPIEL; Choir music with sound scenes for a cappella choir and tape, and TRAUER MIT HUMOR; Choir music with sound scenes for a cappella choir and tape.

At the end of TRAUER MIT HUMOR, LUNEVA and LUNMUNDUN from the beginning of Act II of MONTAG AUS LICHT; EVAs ZWEITGEBURT, is sung by the choir.

The texts, written by Stockhausen, are given in the booklet, but much more than is printed is heard, like “wordless vowel and consonant parts, mouth-clicks, finger-clicks (snapping), [and] kissing noises.” Also not present in the printed booklet text but present in the recording are the “text-doublings and the long drawn-out counter-pointing syllables of the tenors and basses […].

The sound-scenes inserted into the choral majesty are a chapter all to themselves. Stockhausen talked a lot about his work with sound-scenes at the Stockhausen Courses in Kürten, Germany in July/August 2002, as he held 8 seminars on DER KINDERFÄNGER from MONTAG AUS LICHT, which contains many sound scenes. Some of the things he said amounted to that he wasn’t precisely sure what made him pick certain combinations of sounds for the sound scenes, but that he chose the sounds according to what seemed to fit in his mind, and what appealed to him in the general context of the work. He also pointed out that the sound scenes have a trans-realistic quality to them, as opposed to a surrealistic quality. Trans-realism is a combination of events of sounds that cannot possibly happen in real life as they do in the sound scenes. As an extra note from the Courses of 2002 can be said that it was a true mindblower to hear the sound-scenes of DER KINDERFÄNGER in 24 channels, the sound moving madly across the make-shift concert hall in the gym of the Kürten school complex!

At one of the discussions that followed the seminars – this was the first one, on 28th July 2002 – Stockhausen responded to a question from one of the participants of the Courses about whether he was ever thinking of his own childhood when he selected the material for his sound-scenes. His reply was:

Another participant asked another question about how Stockhausen chose his sounds for the sound-scenes, and if it was a tapping into an irrational wilderness realm when letting not totally accounted-for reasons decide what to let in to his sound scenes.

Stockhausen replied, talking about a composer’s choice:

The first bars lift you immediately into a serene, and at the same time forceful and unstoppable, unavoidable flow of droning male voices, represented in the booklet by phonetic signs; rolling, spiraling vowels, onto which, in track 2, female voices are projected in lively, a little hurried and fluttering gestures of sound, including hissing sounds etcetera.
This is QUELLE DES LEBENS. The feeling of waves is indeed inherent in these progressions, as wave upon wave of male voices feel like the ocean with its waves, and the female voices like reflections of the sun on the waves and the sea gulls rearing in the salty breeze up above.

The cosmic aspects are there, as the text also plainly shows; words written by Stockhausen:

As to the meaning of these texts per se and their meaning at their set positions in the opera, I direct the reader to MONTAG aus LICHT in its entirety on Volume 36 of the Stockhausen Edition, and also to the review of the opera elsewhere on this site, since you could say that this release, Volume 37, and indeed the next, Volume 38, are off-springs of that grand opera.

As QUELLE DES LEBENS moves forth in its predestined path, I get sensations of gliding layers, pushed in above and under each other, while steadily moving along, like a tangent to the curvature of the Earth, or the curvature of space, as kissing sounds make me feel comfortable and earthy in all this brilliant light of the shining voices expanding space.

At track 16 the first sound-scene opens with a crowing cook and an explosion, and even though I’m aware of it’s inevitability, I jump – just like I always do at that one bang in the first part of Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony. If you’ve listened, you know what I mean.
The sound-scenes come quite densely for a while, with source sounds like lion, fireworks, shattering glass, ghost train, typhoon-horn, fair-horse, snare drum, fanfare, baby, Dutch woman, thunderstorm etcetera!
All these musically extraneous sounds all fit in with the general state of affairs in this very Stockhausenesque way, and a glare of grainy timbres well forth with the plasticity of a mudflow full of shining diamonds, in the surrounding scent of pine resin! It’s forceful, determined, shining and soaring, all at once. As said before, this music appears to just exist, without ever having been composed!

This sense of a standing wave of mighty motion, permeating existence and space and the anatomies of the living, keeps up as the work moves into ERSTE GEBURTS-ARIE. The collected impression of male and female in the choir is effective in the same way a gravel rake is effective in a Japanese rock garden. The traces here are the timbres of the male singers, while the females provide the gravel, and also a lofty canopy of sky above.

ZWEITE GEBURTS-ARIE gets it on with a prefatory sound-scene of farm animals and a concluding champagne cork flying! Track 29 is peculiar in its vision – in my head, that is! – of the seven dwarfs marching off to work, a little more absentmindedly than usual.

KINDERSPIEL of course corresponds to the BOYS’ HULLABALOO of MONTAG. It starts with female inhalations and high-pitched vocal glissandi, rising like meteorites across an evening sky, or like the seeds of dandelions in the calm thermals of late summer.
For the text, I again refer the reader to MONTAG itself; the score or the booklet for Volume 36, and parts of it can be read elsewhere on this site too, in the review of Volume 36.
The choral texture is, as always with Stockhausen, a perfectly woven sound of light, in all its prismed colors. The way the composer paints these darker male colors in sturdy strokes of the brush in an atelier shining with the brilliance of transparent female voices moves the listener through the ether of the composition, in weightless tendencies of the spirit.
This vocal music has its very own, stark effect on you! The best vocal music can move a listener like this, since voices are so easy to identify with, as they’re so physical, while simultaneously able to express evasive, lucid spiritual atmospheres. You feel these voices trembling in your own breast, in your own breath!

As the composition gets ready to enter TRAUER MIT HUMOR, a sound scene concludes KINDERSPIEL, in a sequence of a giant otter, a chain saw and a falling tree, plus a woman shouting “rhododendron”! I say “Yippy!” or maybe “Tally-hoe!”, or, as the American hippie would have expressed it in 1969: “Right on!” - or if he was a soul brother: “Right on, brother man!”

TRAUER MIT HUMOR draws the CD towards it conclusion in a mixture of choral passages of glaring, reflective properties and flowing elasticity, interspersed with other vocal expressions such as sobs and hissing sounds, with the addition of a few sound-scenes, and never once does the magic subside, but you’re rather attuned to this tonal world to stay there for a good while, and sure enough Stockhausen reveals his wonderfully whimsical and perhaps provocative, alluring sense of associative creativity when he delivers sound scenes such as the one of track 62; a hyena, a dive bomber dropping a bomb that explodes and a woman moaning in sexual pleasure! Yeah man! You name it, we like it!