This double-CD from Stockhausen-Verlag is a different one to review than any of the former CDs, since it is explicitly designed for study purposes, which is why I will restrain my comments more than usual, mostly simply relating the information that Stockhausen gives.

First of all, Stockhausen makes it clear what the purpose of this release is, by stating:

We all know – especially all of us who have attended the Stockhausen Courses, but also individual concerts or simply studied his CD booklets or indeed his Texte zur Musik – that Stockhausen is a very pedagogic artist, for whom it is important that the listener enters the listening in as prepared and initiated a state as possible.

Some composers enjoy being veiled and mysterious, assuming that we will all conclude that there is more depth in their compositions than, perhaps, there is.

Stockhausen never tries to achieve this, because he knows that mystery lies in life itself and all its expressions, and if there is mystery in his art, it is because existence – spiritual and material (just different aspects of the same) – is mystery, is beyond our reason and our speculations – but… at the heart of all things.

Stockhausen, therefore, never plays any tricks on us, never veils anything, but always tries to be as clear and instructive as possible, and this has never harmed him. On the contrary, he has brought us - listeners and musicians alike – deeper into the music, which is deeper into life. Stockhausen brings us into the Mystery with wide open eyes and a clear mind; not sedated and dreamy – and this is one aspect of Stockhausen’s attitude and general approach that I value the most; his artistic and human sincerity; never compromised.

Indeed, in this way, his music becomes cleansing, uplifting and scientific; scientific in the sense of fundamental research, navigating the inner and outer realms of our lives’ journey, that, parenthetically, in my view is an eternal one, in which these temporary bodies are mere vehicles to ride.

There are several means to bring a person into this more enlightened view of existence. In fact, any number of situations can serve as the instigator for this to happen, and in the long run I’m sure it happens to all – but Stockhausen’s music – if you let it work freely – surely is one such instigator, which is even the more valuable, since Stockhausen is so clear about his methods of composing that no one can suspect him of trying to lure anybody into any kind of sect-like secrecy. He shows us everything, and we hear the result and can decide for ourselves! The space is open, vibrant with flowing energies!

A double –CD like this one falls right into that crystal clarity, giving yet more insight into how his art is achieved, piece by piece, structurally – but as it is with human beings or a flower or an Earth sun rise, the result is much more and something else altogether than the sum of all the parts… and somewhere in that realm lies the real mystery; that elusive, vibrant core of beauty and truth which can’t be accounted for by mere speculation or the working of an accountant – so don’t get fooled by too scientific musicologists: the woods is something else than its number of trees.

You may gather all the facts together in a neat pile of observations and meticulous calculations, but you’ll just distance yourself from the music, from the art, from your own experience of it, if you’re not very careful.

If you’re not aware of this, aware of the difference between the understanding of how the notes are arranged or how the pitches are laid out or how motifs come and go – and how the music rises in beauty within you… then you’re like the ignorant archeologist who finds a Dead Sea scroll and studies the chemical make up of the ink that was used to write the spiritual messages, without ever letting the significance and the implications of the message take hold of him and alter his conscience and his mind.

Musicology is a science in itself, but one has to keep in mind that it is something else than the music. It cannot even describe or in any way explain or keep track of the effect of the music in a human spirit – but seen as it is; a meticulous science into the technical, historical – etcetera – circumstances of a musical composition, it can be tolerated, and must not always be regarded as a sign of artistic or emotional impotence.

This said, for the mindful and discriminating listener or musician all the knowledge about the structural science of Stockhausen’s music can only be of good, so even if it is unusual – or perhaps unique – to release CDs with the sole intent of casting some light on the make up of certain compositions, it is very interesting to listen through Edition 42 of the Stockhausen Edition, and perhaps especially so for the more trained listeners who are musicians and composers.

However, as you listen to Solo-SYNTHI-FOU, you still – after a while - tend to hear it as a complete work, though it isn’t. It is the synthesizer part laid bare and bright; the nerves and the vessels of a musical body seen by themselves, making obvious those electric currents and flows of energy that carry the full work onwards.

It may be fitting to insert here what Stockhausen said about SYNTHI-FOU as part of DIENSTAG aus LICHT:

My own comments pertaining to SYNTHI-FOU in the DIENSTAG environment of CD 40:

With all that in mind - and perhaps after listening through the DIENSTAG SYNTHI-FOU – it becomes yet more rewarding to listen through these bare synthesizer SYNTHI-FOU minutes, which, for that matter, can only be heard on this CD, since Stockhausen prevents this recording from being broadcasted or performed. This reminds me of many times during the Stockhausen Courses, when Stockhausen has broken down his compositions and recordings into their constituencies, playing all the layers or all the channels separately to us, and then in escalating combinations, explaining and demonstrating the technical build-up of complex patterns and masterly compositions.

Stockhausen further explains SYNTHI-FOU:

The second work on Edition Volume 42 is SYNTHI-FOU (or PIANO PIECE XV) for a synthesizer player and electronic music.
This version can be performed in concert as one of Stockhausen’s approved versions. Stockhausen explains, however, that the electronic music in a concert situation is diffused though 8 x 2 cubically placed loudspeakers. The piece also calls for a sound projectionist who handles the spatial movements of the sound.

Stockhausen provides a very diligent and detailed booklet explanation of the piece, even listing the complete equipment used by Simon Stockhausen.

The electronic music of SYNTHI-FOU for a synthesizer player and electronic music can be heard separately on Stockhausen Edition Volume 41 as a stereo mix-down of OCTOPHONY.

Stockhausen says in his programme note for SYNTHI-FOU at the world premier in 1992 [here quoted in part]:

The entry of the electronic music is gradual, soaring, sweeping, densifying into ghastly, yet fascinating might, elastically contracting and extending, spreading a transparent layer of a certain mood, a certain state of mind all across the habitat of the living.

Crystal precipitation stings like sharp hail as the stormy configurations amass, yet inside the eye of the storm displaying a circling, hovering peace of mind, where elves’ bells tingle like your fingers just before you faint…
As the JENSEITS (BEYOND) part is entered, another mood is prevalent; deeper, calmer, more visionary, in soft-spun layers of audio that tantalize your auditory fantasies, opening wide landscapes; mirages all across the horizon engaging in a theatre of the mind, letting your unconscious appear before you in elusive metaphors, scale after scale of the archetypes revealing themselves in this dreamy mist of subdued colors of BEYOND.

The SYNTHI-FOU section crashes down into this dreamy environment in a splitting frenzy, shaking all thoughts out of place, stirring and revolutionizing.

The sound web becomes much more complicated and worrying, or for that matter; exciting! You would imagine you’d need to have the extremities of an octopus to be able to play this, as there is so much going on simultaneously. Stockhausen explains, in the booklet, how this is possible, by stating that the keyboard player (Simon Stockhausen) sometimes, when he hits a key, launches “a whole sequence, with speeds, tempo alterations, timbre sequences, and amplitude curves”.

SYNTHI-FOU is a magician’s paint shop, colors sprayed in complicated patterns, all sorts of audio adventures screeching past, some sticking to the rotating moment, some expediently flashing past into space, some filling up the dark spots with thick densities, rubbery and massive.

An illustrious tribe of submarine beings, as out of a Beatles song, spins undersea chords that sway like brown seaweed; the surface up above dancing with the bulging reflections of light from the local star. You let yourself sway with the soft currents of the fluid music in a mineral-rich aquatisme!

Veiled singing is sensed more than heard, maybe just in my auditory fantasy, while trickling and bubbling incidents rise and dissolve.

Bell-like percussive passages prepare for the beginning of the ABSCHIED (FAREWELL) part, which bounces in like bird-chirp embellished abruptions, stepping here and there, struggling across the summer warm meadow, one foot heavy here, the other stomping there, bees and butterflies and fairytale excursions through the grass, pollen rising in sneezing clouds over Bronze Age grave mounds; the music so packed with possible references and associations that your imagination is the sole limiter of visions.

The last section of the FAREWELL part (track 65 on CD 1) begins with the gradually slowing counting backwards from 13 to 1, after which a most beautiful, thin and slightly wobbling extension of soaring, layered audio slowly seeps out into distance and time, panning across the spatial perimeter of listening like a sonic expression of the passage of time, the passage of life, the relentless but unifying thinning of the dimension of the living, the almost imperceptible transition from sound to silence…

The last work of CD 1 of Stockhausen Edition Volume 42 is TUESDAY FAREWELL for choir, a synthesizer player and electronic music.

Stockhausen explains this piece:

Again the electronic music emerges inconspicuously, albeit quickly swelling into an overwhelming might.
The music moves in immense diversity and power through the EXPLOSION section, entering BEYOND, where the choir joins.

The character of the music changes drastically, as the timbres of the voices soften and deepen the impression. The music is angelic or demonic – or both: I can’t quite make up my mind. The male and female constituencies of mankind soar right and left, the humming of vocal chords climbing the layers of intelligibility, reaching a stage of morpheme dissemination that, however, appears, one would deduce, in a mimicry of linguistics, though Stockhausen provides a printed account for the words sung in the booklet.

At track 80 of CD 1 ferocity picks up as we enter the SYNTHI-FOU section, which this time around, with the added brilliance and mystery of the choir, comes across in an almost bewildering richness of sound and sound events, having you grasp for something to hold on to, while being swept along in this sound-slide of tumbling sonorities and crackling, thorny sound patterns out of the hat of the Magician from Kürten; the choir voices hanging like ominous smoke across the battlefield!

The choir adds a stabilizing angelic/demonic character also to the FAREWELL section; curtains of vocal timbres as a backdrop for all these manifold sound events that are played out in front of us – and these vocal timbres remind me of the crowds of angels in some of Gustave Doré’s Bible illustrations! It is grand and all-encompassing!

The end – which I have described above in the SYNTHI-FOU part – is a truly genial part, in a breathless, shimmering transparency that thins out into the void in which all things must sink, and from whence all things doth rise, like sounds out of silence.

CD 2 of Stockhausen Edition Volume 42 consists entirely of Simon Stockhausen’s sound demonstration of the sounds and timbres that he programmed for his version of SYNTHI-FOU.

As you can imagine, this is highly interesting for anyone who wants to get on the inside of this work, and I imagine that musicians and composers would have an extra urge to listen to this CD, which in reality is a seminar conducted by Simon Stockhausen, recorded by himself.

Karlheinz Stockhausen explains that Simon Stockhausen demonstrates the 131 sounds that he used for the recording, with commentaries. They were originally recorded by Simon on a DAT tape in July 1993.
However, Simon does not describe the sounds for the so-called improvisation windows that you’ll find in the score.

Professor Stockhausen goes on in the Volume 42 booklet:

The booklet of Stockhausen Edition Volume 42 – among many other informative texts – also contains the transcript of a lecture that Professor Stockhausen gave – without a manuscript – at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Weingarten in 1992. The lecture is called Clavier Music 1992, and was held in connection with a performance of Stockhausen’s Piano Pieces by Majella Stockhausen. It is a transcription of a tape recording, and adds fascinating insights into the creative thinking of Professor Stockhausen.

This double CD may not be the first choice for the general listener, since it claims to be primarily a pedagogic release, for the convenience of the listeners, musicians and composers who all share a special interest in the Stockhausen oeuvre, but I do not hesitate to recommend Volume 42 also to others, because of the easily accessible knowledge that Stockhausen generously provides herein.