STOCKHAUSEN: We have a few minutes for a discussion. As usual in these seminars, if someone wants to say something, I’m at your […].

Question: Can I ask a question?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah!

Question: When you […] selected all the material from the radio archives, when you choose them; were you thinking of your own childhood at all, or when you listened to them, did they bring back memories of your own childhood?

STOCKHAUSEN: Well, that’s obvious. I have nothing else. I mean, all the… Even last night you must have heard what I like; these steam trains – they don’t exist anymore… This is essential, or these airplanes which had a totally different sound than now the jets, or… yes, I lived in the country as a child; not only as a child, still with 18, 19 years I was for a year [a] farmhand […] in a farm nearby here, to make a living, and… I mean, I lived with the animals closer than with human beings. All sounds that I have selected in Tonszenen in my works are preferred by me. It’s clear. Mh… Yeah!

Question: Can you explain what’s the difference between a musical image and a vision?

STOCKHAUSEN: A vision is already how it’s performed. I have had quite a lot of visions, for example HELICOPTER STRING QUARTET started with a vision and less with [an] acoustic image, with a sound image, or TRANS was that strange vertical […] orchestra; violet color – and these puppets sitting there and playing this wall of sounds and just moving in groups up and down, or standing still, and then all of a sudden the orchestra would move, and then stay and only… one of the groups would move, etcetera! That was a vision, a musical vision… or rather all kinds of combinations of sound… of musical visions and musical… images. I don’t know how to say that! I mean, it is… I mean imagination! That’s what I mean by that. An image is imagination, but in a special form.

Question: But there is always an image or an imagination before the work?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah. Yes, I couldn’t start without being fascinated myself by such an atmosphere, and then I want to make… I want to achieve, to create… I still don’t know how, but then I begin to choose material, and […] come other images… and visions also which are connected with that original state of… of my soul. As a musician I must be taken by something that I don’t know, that is mysterious…

Question: What about Sirius, because it seems to be more of a revelation which carries a message?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah. I burned my lips when I said that I sent to school on Sirius… so what can you explain then? All sorts of people came and said: “Explain more!” etcetera… but that’s it! I mean, Sirius is the Mother Sun, for me, as […] said with 200 000 000 suns rotating around Sirius, and I think that’s where the most musical spirits are in our universe. Yeah!

Question: Yes, when you choose the sounds for your sound scenes here, that we just heard, it seems like you allow yourself a great freedom of tapping into a kind of wilderness of sounds and inspiration, that you don’t really know why you do it, but you do it… on an urge, you know. You like this, and you take it out of there and… you never know what you find, but you bring something out.

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeh yeh! But it’s not a great freedom; it’s all freedom! I’m always free!

Question: Yes, but you bring it into… Otherwise it might seem very structured what you do, even though you have a freedom to structure everything, when you choose these sound scenes, you sort of just… It seems randomly, but it isn’t actually, but it seems, you know… letting it flow, and…

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeh yeh! Choice is not explainable, but it is the essence of a composer to make choices, [a] million choices, from the basic one for a work, for a new work, for a piece, as we say; this is a piece of MONDAY FROM LIGHT. MONDAY FROM LIGHT is a section of LICHT, so there is this concept of a Universe, and of solar systems inside of the Universe, and of planetarian life inside of solar systems, and of human beings inside of planetarian life, etcetera, etcetera, and then it goes down to the cells and to the atoms… Yeah, and it must fit together, so… the taste is very personal. Not two people have the same taste, you see. Yeah!

Question: It seems that the imagery is much more than dreams, because lots of people have dreams, and then they wake up and they don’t remember all of them. How are you able to… after you have the vision or something, how do you retain it for so long afterwards; how do you get to the point where you say: “Ok, I have to write this down, this is my [...] of these ideas…”?

STOCKHAUSEN: […] long time. When it comes I feel like… probably like a woman getting a baby or… […] long time, ok, sometimes I have to wait so long, until it comes… until it’s ready, but that’s… is probably similar. From there on one is limited to one thing.

Question: At which point […] would you like people to recognize the origin of these…

STOCKHAUSEN: By what?

Question: After which point […] would you like people, listeners, to recognize the origin of these sounds?

STOCKHAUSEN: What is that word?

Audience: Origin! [correctly pronounced]

STOCKHAUSEN: Origin! Ach so!

Question: I mean, is it important that people realize that this is a train, these are car doors, […]?

STOCKHAUSEN: Well I’m very pleased if someone becomes a researcher… [audience laughter], really interested in the details and not listens superficially, yes!… because I think – I’ve said it many times – that what I have experienced in making a piece, everyone who wants to know the piece, must go through the same process. It might take longer, even, than the time that I have worked on it, because I can go, many, many times straight forward, but before someone else can follow the same path, it will take him more time, and that’s why the sketches are so helpful… but I mean, we know that the so-called mankind is participating only extremely superficially in the creation of musical works of art music. Only very few have the time and take the time to dive into the details and to study how it was made, or how it is! It doesn’t matter how it was made; how it is!… and that is what we are going to do from tomorrow on. So if someone says “I don’t understand” or so, what can I say? I cannot say anything. I say, all right, you don’t understand! Try something else! Yeah!

Question: In sound scene # 37 there’s laughter. What are they laughing at? How […] make them laugh? Maybe […]. [audience laughter].

STOCKHAUSEN: I don’t know! It’s not… Probably… Let me see! It’s probably… A woman laughs and a car bangs. Yeah… I connected it, I don’t know…

Question: […] the circumstances in the actual recording. It’s a very particular laugh that she’s laughing, and I… I wonder, how did you work with her to provoke the sound; what were you doing or saying…?

Audience: She wants to know if there’s anything kinky going on, you know!

STOCKHAUSEN: Ach so! No, I was standing at a tape-recorder, and I had several loops, several tapes; I tried many, and then connected several and then I found that laughter and I said: “That’s it!”. Yeah!

Question: […] [too silent to hear]

STOCKHAUSEN: Loud!

Question: Were the […] scenes decided […] the super formula, […] example, or the super formula was first, and then you created the […] scenes, thinking […] the super formula […]?

STOCKHAUSEN: No! Listen! You know very well the super formula for LICHT I composed like an enormous skeleton, but it is reproduced here, it’s on one page, […] I mean, in 3 layers, in 3 formulas, superimposed, in 1977, -78 at the beginning, but this piece was made in 1986, so the super formula was there, and I had decided in 1977 to use only the super formula for the architecture of the whole piece, and then… when I had to decide about pitches, durations etcetera, then I went to the super formula and connected the found material with this architectural plan. Yeah!

Question: Is there a plan for the special movement, or just for […]?

STOCKHAUSEN: No, it’s not a plan, to say, like in a serial composition, first left and right and then front and then back and then left to right and then right to left and then front to back and back and front, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, with all the possible connections, no! I listened to the sections and each Tonszene, and I tried also the movements, until I found one which would fit the best for… but naturally I knew that when I had been – you can see that in the booklet! – for a while at the left side, then I would move to the right side, so that the space is used, statistically speaking, balanced, with equal importance of the different directions. That is always the case, no matter what I use; space, or certain effects. No effect is accepted by me, if I cannot, at some point, connect it with the other effects and vice versa. So then, the effect is no longer an effect, but the effect is related to something else, and then it becomes more than an effect. So… It’s five minutes past 7. Thank you for today, and tomorrow we continue with the Tonszenen, and I have to work now with Andrew for tonight.

To session 2