Question: I have a question about the creative process, and whether you are aware of specific points in your career when it has changed, and if so, for what reason it has changed.
You said at a press conference the other day [at the Grand Hotel, Stockholm in the evening of May 11th] that had you had Bob Moog’s synthesizers when you wrote “Sternklang”, for instance, it would perhaps not have changed the piece, but made it easier to play.

STOCKHAUSEN: Well, I’ve found out, no matter what I use, [that] I discover, and I use it to the maximum, every device, every instrument has its own possibilities, and many compositions, which I have made with older electronic instruments remain very original, because these instruments […] have disappeared. Originality is always the result of restrictions, of limitations, and every instrument has its limits in all aspects of the music – but that is only the material. If you want to know more about my evolution; if you …[words lost in room noise]… the process the gentleman wants to know about, then there are so many levels that this afternoon I have to limit myself for example to only two or three aspects.
When I started composing, a musical composition was maximum a quarter of an hour, and even the classical music [has] one movement and then another movement etcetera, and that bothered me immediately. The first orchestral work – “Punkte” – when I was 23 years old, lasted 27 minutes. It was already excessive for everybody; they said: “It’s too long!”. The next one was 25 minutes, and then “Carré” for 4 groups of orchestras and 4 choir groups; it was 35 minutes, and the next one was “Hymnen”, which lasted two hours in one bow; not in movements! I refused the concept of movements from the start! I said: “I don’t want movements anymore!”. Movements come from the music where you have to change after a certain number of minutes in order to get another rhythm, another character, mood – but my music has since the start always been an arch; every composition! It starts with a real beginning, and has a goal, and everything inside is developing many times in several layers; one layer is getting calm, another layer is getting active at the same time, or medium, and this has increased up to a concept that… “Sirius” was already 96 minutes; several works lasting more than two hours, and now the whole of “Licht”, as you said, lasts almost 30 hours. Every part of “Licht” lasts four, five hours – so this is a different concept; it’s like making music that can be used for certain moments when people have no time, so to speak, or very little time, and looking into the stars and understanding that there is nothing, and there is an eternal time! My music has moved away more and more – in 50 years – from the concept of pieces; I don’t want pieces anymore, I don’t like pieces, and I don’t want a music for myself, which is sub-divided in sections, movements and all that – but I want all this to make a process …[words lost in room noise]… in several layers… and the same applies to space. I started with mono. I’ve worked, as you know, in electronic music studios. I started in musique concrète when I was 23 years old in Paris, and then I started working in the electronic music studio [of WDR; Westdeutsche Rundfunk, Köln] – I started it, by the way, in 1953 – until the present days, so I composed more than 100 works for electronic music, starting from mono music, spectral composition inside of the sounds, becoming more and more complex and multifold. The next one was stereo, then four-track, and already five years later it was eight-track, and then now it is oktophonic, where the speakers are everywhere in the room, and sounds move vertically, diagonally in the space, and all the movements in the space – direction of the sound – are …[words lost in room noise]… for the composition they are written [for], and experimented, so space is another aspect, and I talked about tempi, so expansion of tempi between the fastest and the slowest tempo has – from work to work – increased. Many times I’m afraid myself if I could really keep the tension for 40 seconds, or there are even some silences in my work which lasts 45 seconds, in “Piano Piece X” for example, and I was very much afraid, naturally, if the resonance of a chord which still in the air can still be heard, or if nothing can be heard and the people don’t run away, or start shouting and talking etcetera; so there is an experiment through my whole life, to expand the durations of the silences, of the sounds, of complexes of sound – we talked yesterday about swarms of sounds which have a feature like a human body etcetera etcetera. There are many, many layers in timbres, in dynamics, in tempi, in development of nucleuses which become more and more like language, which start making longer lines of melodic fragments and so on and so forth…so that my whole life is simultaneous composition of such processes, and I learn most from studying the Hubble telescope and what’s happening in the stars, so I think everything has been …[word lost in room noise]… music up to my time, when I start composing, and trying to make music which brings us all into feelings which we have never experienced before, becoming Children… Children of the Universe!

Question: What will your life be after “Licht” is completed?

STOCKHAUSEN: I want to compose the day; the 24 hours of the day. “Sirius” was the 12 months; the year – and then I composed for 25 years now; it will last even more: it will be finished about 2005; the week, the 7 days of the week, and I discovered the week, because when I started to compose the week, Monday was like Thursday, and even the people around me didn’t really know if it was Monday or Thursday, from every aspect of life, but since 25 years all the people have contact with my work – not only with me personally, but with the music; now they know very well what are the characteristics of a Monday.

[audience laughter]

…[words lost in room noise]… focal quality of the Monday, etcetera etcetera; there are about 20 different characteristics for Monday. Even my musicians now dress on Monday different than on Tuesday, etcetera.

[audience laughter]

Journalist: Well, I can well understand that, because I have some personal Stockhausen favorites from “Monday”.

STOCKHAUSEN: Aha!

[hollering audience laughter]

Journalist: No, really!

STOCKHAUSEN: No, you [the audience] probably don’t know what she’s talking about. Monday is the day of Birth, is the day of the Woman, of the Mother, of the Children. It’s five hours of music just about children and the woman. It’s a ceremony for the Woman! That’s “Monday”.

Journalist: Yeah, I particularly like this trio of basset-horns that opens “Monday”.

STOCKHAUSEN: Very good!

[audience laughter]

Journalist: I recommend it to everyone!

STOCKHAUSEN: Well, you see, I want to compose the Day. If God allows it; the hours, afterwards. I would like to know what the hours are all about, and the day will bring me, at any time of the night, outside; I live in a forest – to listen, and to know what is really 2 o’clock in the morning.

Journalist: What is your attitude towards deadlines, towards finishing, delivering?

STOCKHAUSEN: Well, there are for me two experiences of deadlines; one is the kind of deadline that I put to myself, for a work, and I have composed “Gesang der Jünglinge” for two years at the studio. The result is 13 minutes and 50 seconds. I wanted to compose it much longer. That was my personal deadline, because the text was given from the Bible, and I wanted to go through several more developments of my initial material, that I prepared, but then the Director of the Radio said: “We have to have, finally, a demonstration of the Electronic Music Studio”; it was in 1956, and he said: “Is your piece ready or not?”. I said: “It’s not ready, but I’m going to perform it”, so I performed it in this length. If that deadline had not been set by the situation at the Radio and in relation to the public and the public opinion of …[words lost in room noise]… the studio etcetera, “Gesang der Jünglinge” would be much longer. The same happened later with “Hymnen”, which lasts now two hours; electronic music. I had already prepared whole developments about the anthems of South America, of the Arabian countries etcetera, and I had a lot of material elaborated during months and months; very interesting – but even then, after three years of work, I finally decided to perform these two hours, and I left it the way it is. Since these experiences I have been becoming much more careful, which means I do not accept commissions anymore since… well, 30 years… even of parts of “Licht” …[words lost in room noise]… or of… they are called, by me, operas; six are ready; the seventh is not yet ready; it’s in the process of being made… but there I’m very careful not accepting a commission if I’m not sure that it is far enough in the future. Right now I’m working on a work which will be performed on January 31st in Las Palmas, of 2003 – and the choir piece that took me more than a year; it was finished last Christmas, which lasts about 35 minutes, will be performed on November 9th 2002, and I’m now working on making all the parts of for the choir. That is very complex, so I’m careful. I’m also very careful to keep that deadline which… everybody knows now; it’s announced – so that I can be ready practically, what concerns performance material, and working with the singers. They have to sing in seven different languages in that piece, so I have to prepare the choir singers, and bring an Indian in, bring a Chinese in, to teach the choir how to learn to articulate these languages, etcetera etcetera, so deadlines inside, deadlines from the world both are dangerous. It’s better to come to an end of the music itself. There is some kind of perfection even in time, within each composition. One has to come as close as possible to this inner perfection.

[applause! applause! applause!]