30th July 2002
Stockhausen in Sülztalhalle, Kürten 30th July 2002
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin)
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
It’s 19 o’clock minus 10; 10 to 7. Please, if you want to say something… We can open the door, no? It’s pretty hot here.
|
|
|
Question:
What about the last Tonszene, it’s 22 Tonszenen […]
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
Where are the microphones? Here are two microphones now, because I have asked to put on two microphones. We have them connected?
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
Speak loud, please!
|
|
|
Question:
What about the 22 Tonszene? It’s […] 3 groups of 7 and one more.
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
Yeah, that is already for the next section, for ENTFÜHRUNG; the one more is for ENTFÜHRUNG. 3 times 7 are only for KINDERFÄNGER. Then there is one more Tonszene; then nothing else. And you see, the duration of that Tonszene is 27,5 seconds long, and then comes the section which is indicated in the form scheme on the opposite side; another one third of 17 minutes, which means one more 352,8 seconds.
|
|
Post-seminar discussion 30th July 2002, Sülztalhalle, Kürten
(Photo: Ingvar Loco Nordin)
|
Question:
I have a question about the nuclear formula of Michael. The F where the tempo is 71, and it’s written pre-echo, pre-echo…
|
|
|
Question:
It’s page 13, it’s not the last system; the one before…
|
|
|
Question:
Yeah, so this pre-echo for you is just that bar, or is also the bar afterwards, that means that […]
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
Only that bar! The next one is a dynamic modulation…
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
…of the note of the formula.
|
|
|
Question:
Yeah, but on the, on the nuclear, the nuclear formula of Michael goes from the E flat to the B or to the E flat to the F and then to the B?
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
I don’t understand. The nuclear formula has D, A, E flat, A flat, D flat, then C, E… C, E, G, E flat, and then comes the F.
|
|
|
Question:
So the F is part of the nuclear formula?
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
This pre-echo? No! It is the F, which starts with 75,5.
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
And the pre-echo is one of those accessories.
|
|
|
Question:
Yes, so the F is… in the nuclear formula the F is before the next B. Is it right?
|
|
|
Question:
Yeah, so on page… the next page, on 14…
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
There is no F! [audience laughter] I know!
|
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
Yeah! [audience laughter] Yeh yeh! I know! What shall we do? [growing audience laughter] It’s one of those… they call it nowadays… black holes, I think… [hollering audience laughter]
Yeah!
|
|
|
Question:
May I ask a more general question concerning your method, which you […] the first seminar? It’s more general; not concerning the KINDERFÄNGER specifically.
You’ve spoken of two main steps; which is the first; the image, and then the engineer, or first the vision and then the construction.
I’d like to come back to the end of the fifties… sixties, when you proposed the intuitive music, which is not supposed to be helped by the engineer, but it’s sort of pure intuition, which comes directly, and the question is why this way of making music didn’t arrive to a written form, in your project. It remained an intention […] to the players themselves, but then you came to engineering once more, and you didn’t remain in the pure intuition level and translating it to music directly.
|
|
STOCKHAUSEN:
When I wrote AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN, May –68, I had just finished STIMMUNG and KURZWELLEN, and one month after AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN I wrote SPIRAL, which is a composition, extremely complicated, very structured – so it was a moment when I wrote texts which were the result of the playing in a group PROZESSION and KURZWELLEN, which was one month before the texts of AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN. The premier was in [the] Bremen Festival, and there are these four players with four short-wave receivers, and they form, during the performance, events, with a certain dynamic shape, and then imitate it and transform it according to the score, so the transformations are written in an abstract notation, and they are quite difficult to be precise, so we rehearsed a lot, which means [that] the transition between determination and indetermination exists basically already in GRUPPEN FOR THREE ORCHESTRAS. It was always there, and then it expanded a lot in PIANO PIECE XI, and then in REFRAIN and CYCLE for percussionist, where elements move in a given space, I mean pitch wise and in duration, and can freely be changed in their order, and then this one moment of AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN came to a result which had happened many times during tours, when I toured with Kontarsky and Fritsch and then with Bojé in particular, with electronium and… Kontarsky, Fritsch…
|
|
The Famous photograph from 1968, left to right:
Alfred Alings, Rolf Gehlhaar, Stockhausen,
Johannes Fritsch, Harald Bojé, Aloys Kontarsky
(Photo: Maria Austria - Treatment: Thomas Hammelmann - Clean-up: Ingvar Loco Nordin)
STOCKHAUSEN:
… and Alings, the percussionist… and then [the] percussionist died afterwards, and he was replaced by Rolf Gehlhaar, partly, who was not a professional percussionist, but we were [a] small group, and many times we just improvised when we were sitting in a hall and had rehearsed, or were waiting for the technique etcetera, and the result of these improvisations was AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN, or FOR TIMES TO COME later, so it’s not that this is a principal adieu to rational determination, but the indetermination has existed in my works since GRUPPEN FOR THREE ORCHESTRAS. Even in PUNKTE, in the new version of 1961, where I had the skeleton of 1952, I allowed myself with these different shapes of sounds which enlarge or are compressed in different triangles, to add to the central notes certain shapes, freely – and until today the percentage has changed from work to work, how much is relatively determined and how much is absolutely determined… so you can go through any work; TRANS, or to INORI; there are always sections, like in this formula, by the way, where I say “the accessories”, which are free combinations, for a whole string orchestra. For example in INORI there are such sections where I give elements - just a few – some of two or three notes, and then the musicians are supposed to permutate, during the performance, these elements… so I don’t think there has ever been a contradiction in my work between determinism and indeterminism, except that [I] have perhaps in AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN written the most indeterminate… “score…”, if it is a score… or instruction for performance; that is better. In PLUS – MINUS, by the way, this is quite open, and yet it is the hardest task to realize this score.
I gave a seminar for a whole year in 1953, and then again in –54, -55, and quite a few of known composers – known nowadays as known composers – were in the seminar, and everyone had to make a version of PLUS – MINUS. It was a great choice, and yet every choice one had to make finally became the best result for every realizer, though we were discussing certain results written out, then […] would discuss if one version would not be much better than the other one, and this is still the case nowadays. You have heard PIANO PIECE XI yesterday, and the interpreters even begin to understand that certain interpretations are more… how can I say… more balanced, in dynamics etcetera. That’s why I have always suggested to pianists, id they would agree not to just look at the page and play anything they see, in any order, but to… after a long time of studying it this way, to make versions, so what, for example, Benjamin [Kobler] played last night, is a version he wrote, and I said to him: “Benjamin, are you playing the same version like in Weingarten a year ago?”, and he said: “No, no, no, I’ve made a new version!”… but I like that, so there are inumerable versions, and yet, once a pianist is free, not to express himself, but to find a good solution for the combination of elements, then there is no reason not to let him make a fixed version, because he does not look for a version which looks all for the elements of PIANO PIECE XI which lead up to an enormous crescendo at the end, with a big bang at the end, because this was what I was afraid of, when I said: “Look at the page without any intentions of making certain effects”, and for most of the interpreters, this is still quite a problem, to be objective enough, and to have judgement on a good form, [an] organic form, balanced form, without thinking of how much impression they would make personally, and that is the reason why such a determinate performance are in most of the cases better than performances which are very open. You know that from many compositions of other composers. The interpretations, in most of the cases, are very fragile.
|
|
