STOCKHAUSEN: Just a question! Do you want to leave the hall dark? Please put the lights on! In the hall! We cannot see the people!

[Audience laughter] [Lights go on]

Question: [General question about the creative act and its manifestation in a common day of the Maestro]

STOCKHAUSEN: You all know, that since I started composing I am performing, conducting and being also an acoustician; I take care of the sound equipment wherever I am, so I have been working in this hall since I began, the day before yesterday, yesterday, this morning, several hours, to prepare everything – and many things go wrong; so that is part of my life, and when I have free time for composing, I stay at home [in Kürten outside Cologne in Germany], and I compose about 10 hours a day.

[loud laughter from an uninitiated part of the audience, who came to see Burt Bacharach, and who subsequently is not aware of the way Stockhausen devotes himself to his life’s work. Stockhausen doesn’t show any reaction whatsoever to the untimely and un-called for laughter, but simply continues in his soft and intense manner of speaking]

At the moment I’m writing a big piece, which must be ready for the premier at the end of 2003. It is for choir, orchestra and synthesizers, and it’s a very simple day [Stockhausen’s everyday day], which means [that] everyday until about 10:30 PM to 11:00 PM I just write.

Question: What time do you get up?

STOCKHAUSEN: Oh… 7:30 AM, and then I can start composing at 9:30 AM, 9:45 AM. I’m preparing myself in a very special way everyday.

Question: Tell us!

[audience laughter]

STOCKHAUSEN: I take everyday a bath!

[Hollering audience laughter, applause]

STOCKHAUSEN: Then I pray for about 20 minutes, 25 minutes, then I have breakfast, and then I start working.

[audience laughter]

Question: And your prayer is directed to…?

STOCKHAUSEN: God! And Saint Michael, my protecting angel.

Question: You do this big choir piece now, but that is very small in comparison with another piece that I have in mind, which of course you all know is “Licht”, which will, I think, encompass some 30 hours of composed music.

STOCKHAUSEN: About 23.

Question: And you started it almost a quarter of a century ago?

STOCKHAUSEN: In 1977 in Japan.

Question: Did you know that you were going to start then?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yes! I made a plan in Kyoto - where I was working for six weeks - for the whole work of “Licht”, with all the 7 parts for the 7 days of the week. It’s called “Light For the 7 Days of the Week” for choirs, orchestras, electronic music, ballets, mimes, dancers.

Question: So you had the idea in your mind when you went to Japan?

STOCKHAUSEN: No!

Question: And there you…

STOCKHAUSEN: No, no, no! When I went to Japan I was commissioned to do a new work, and I called it “The Course of the Years” (“Der Jahreslauf” for orchestra and tape). In Japanese, then, my final title is “Hikkari”; “The Fast Light”, and I called it in German “Licht” (“Light”), and there I made the architectural plan for the whole work.

Question: It must be huge, this plan, for such a huge work? It’s the biggest work ever composed!

STOCKHAUSEN: Oh, it’s actually on a …[word lost in room noise]… sheet.

[audience laughter]

Question: It’s a kind of alchemistic formula?

STOCKHAUSEN: I call this a super-formula, because it has 3 layers… well, I have special spiritual concepts, and they are the Michael layer, the Eve layer and the Lucifer layer. These are melodies with very particular rhythms, but they all are synchronized, and for every note of these 36 notes; 11, 13 and 12 in the middle, there are very special directions; Michael descends, Eve mounts, falls and goes up again, Lucifer jumps right away at the beginning with the major 7th, and then he has certain intervals like …[word lost in room noise]…, preferably, etcetera, so they have various, specific shapes. For each tone I have a sound form, like a body, with a head, a tail, and an inside of each note, which concerns dynamics, timbres, duration… and even space projections, where the sound primarily should appear – so this is a super-formula that I am using every day since 24 years.

Question: Apart from that, “Licht” is more than that, of course. Have you stayed true to your original idea of 1977?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah, it’s not so difficult, because it is like a skeleton, but when it becomes alive through the daily work, I can always have new ideas, visions of sound, and choose material, which means performance material of all kinds. I am, at the same time [as I am] following my plan, very free – so I could go on, as a matter of fact, for another 20 years, with the same formula. It’s very interesting to work with a nucleus.

Question: I felt so amazed… I mean, to start such a grand, gigantic concept, and then keep loving it all the time; to stay true to your original idea.

STOCKHAUSEN: Well, that’s the way it is.

Question: Does the visual aspect help you when you create something?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yes! Several compositions I have seen in performance, in the dream, and then I made notes about this performance, and, as a matter of fact, when I worked it out, I tried to follow as well as possible these inner visions connected with …[words lost in room noise]… Also, there is, with every new work, combined a new inner vision of notation, so all this, of course, looks different, very different.

Question: What about colors, like with Scriabin and Messiaen – do you see colors?

STOCKHAUSEN: I have used, in many scores, particularly during the last ten years, colors; up to 8 colors for different layers of the music, for different groups of timbres and of …[words lost in room noise]…, yes, I work a lot with colors.

Question: Was it correct that Markus [Markus Stockhausen] wore red trousers for “Aries”? [“Aries” for a trumpeter and electronic music was performed right before the interview, with Markus Stockhausen, trumpet, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, light- and sound projection]

STOCKHAUSEN: Yes, because Aries, in the Zodiac, is the color red, so in the whole Zodiac that I have composed, the 12 months have individual colors for the 12 months and human types, yes.

Question: You work a lot with musicians. However, there must be musicians who play the music of Stockhausen without you being present, able to control.

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah, but at least since I started; I was 22 years, writing for the choir; I was a member of the choir, at the State Conservatory of Cologne; “Chöre für Doris” and “Choral” from 1950. I was able to correct, immediately, what I didn’t like, and I changed my score, naturally, according to my learning; I learned during the rehearsals, and then I changed what I had done – and since then, every work I have written in my life, I have performed first, before I have published it.

Question: So you set the standard?

STOCKHAUSEN: I don’t know if I do, but I wanted to hear and correct, and to be satisfied until the very last detail, and then I recorded it, so I have recorded all my works up to now immediately after the world premier, and I don’t take a commission if I am not sure that I can have enough time for recording, and in particular for doing the mixing. I do the mixing for all my records, and now there are over 100 CDs after Deutsche Grammophon cancelled all my records. They were also, a few years ago, more than 100, and they threw them all out and then I started doing them myself – but every record is controlled by myself, from the first rehearsal on. It is true, that once the score is written, and I happen to come to a rehearsal with musicians whom I don’t know, very often I’m sad… and I try to tell them what is wrong, but it is true that the performance practice is nowadays not as thorough as it should be; too fast, and it is not careful enough, and musicians usually don’t really study the score. They play it quickly, one piece after another, and that isn’t good. I’m always trying to be there and to get an invitation when an important piece is performed. For example, not so long ago, a piece was performed – “Punkte” for orchestra – which I wrote in 1952, and it hadn’t been performed since 40 years, and then Nagano …[word lost in room noise]… with the Deutsche Orchester in Berlin, and I was invited to participate at the rehearsal, and at the end of the rehearsal I was asked by the manager: “What do you think about it?”. I said: “Well, he certainly gets along with the musicians very well, but he should swallow a metronome!”

[audience laughter]

Because all his tempi, which I had written between 30/40 and 160 etcetera, very precisely, he …[word lost in room noise]… all between 70 and 100!

[audience laughter]

Yeah, but this is a general habit. They – the conductors and performers – do not learn precise metronome tempi, but I have – very carefully – chosen these tempi. And they think it’s not so important. Even good friends of mine, after years, conduct approximate metronomic tempi, and I say: “No, no, no! I have written 63,5!”

[hollering audience laughter]

It is true – but you do not know why; because there are 12 metronomic tempi, which I use exactly since 1952, between 60 and 120. It’s a chromatic scale; 60 – 63,5 – 67 – 71 – 75 – 80 – 85 – 90 – 95 – 101 – 107 – 113, 5 – 120. There are 12 tempi within one octave of time. And I want every performer to learn this, and that the Japanese finally make metronomes which not only always have numbers of 2 or 4 in distance of tempi, which is ridiculous. They should have just 12 numbers from 1 to 12 between 60 and 120, and then I choose …[word lost in room noise]…

[audience laughter]

…and that’s it, so there should be only 12, and …[word lost in room noise]… between 30 and 60 or 120 and 240 etcetera, etcetera…

[audience laughter]

Question: Why don’t you ask Bob Moog [also on the stage with Stockhausen and Bacharach] to construct it?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah, why not!

[hollering audience laughter, applause]

Question: What about your “Licht” operas? Can you keep the control of every musician, every singer, or do they put in …[words lost in room noise]…?

STOCKHAUSEN: Oh no!

[audience laughter]

No, it’s really true; it’s unbelievable! I have premiered three parts of “Licht”; first “Thursday from Light” 1981, “Saturday from Light” 1984, “Monday from Light” 1988, in La Scala of Milan, and we rehearsed in Milan six weeks just for the staging, but I had before been, for example, with The Children’s Choir of Radio Budapest myself for two weeks. Kathinka [Kathinka Pasveer] instructed the children for another two weeks before me, and then we had to bring them near Cologne, in a place where they could rehears from morning to evening, twice a day, three hours, with their master, before we made a recording of all the parts of the children choir of “Monday from Light”, and then we went to La Scala for these final four weeks, which means [that] the elements for each part of “Licht” I prepare individually, and the soloists perform all from memory. They move on the stage like dancers, in unbelievable virtuosity of even the physical actions, and all the gestures are composed by me, so these interpreters are not replaceable. When one of them would get sick, we could not perform! This has happened now [been the case] exactly since 24 years.

Question: No understudy?

STOCKHAUSEN: No, no, it’s not possible. The singers…

[audience laughter]

There was understudy once at Covent Garden. We had “Thursday from Light”, and they insisted, they said: “Our house needs understudies”, so we had two tenors and two sopranos and two bass singers for the solo parts, but I must tell you that none of the first singers ever got sick during these six weeks [at Covent Garden], and the second [singers] were there, but fortunately the first ones stayed, because one mainly rehearses with the first ones, and the second comes in only when the first one can’t sing – and this is practically impossible, because reactions between the performers in my works are so intricate and so well studied. For example the two girls [Kathinka Pasveer and Suzanne Stephens] who are playing tomorrow night [at the Polar Prize banquet at the Grand Hotel, Stockholm] “Ave” - a short piece which I composed – have rehearsed every day even here [in Stockholm], and they go there [to the Grand Hotel] before. They take care of when to put the costume on, “where is my room?”, “when can I enter the room?”, “when do I have to come on stage?”, “where is my microphone?” – they have their own microphone, they found out yesterday, because they [the Polar management] had prepared a microphone, and then they called up, and I said: “No, that’s the wrong one!”. They need a very special one in their costumes, so that their instruments can sound the way they are used to; the same about the speakers etcetera; it’s very delicate, and when the people come, they don’t anything about this. That is something else, but we know that every minute detail comes, and if there is a tiny little bit of disturbance the performers are very worried – so we cannot simply replace our performers, and I expect a new performance practice in all the conservatories of the world; a different attitude, that not any music can be played, but that certain musics can be played [only] after years and years of study, like for example the Nô players in Japan; you could not just replace them! It is impossible! Even in drama, in a Nô drama, he [the Nô disciple] sits for years – five, six years – behind his Master, and he wets the stick when he plays the drum… and some day the Master says: “Tonight it’s you!”. This is terrible! He has to know at least eight Nô dramas by memory, completely! – so this is a different kind of… a different attitude towards music! Not everybody is replaceable; the opposite! Everyone is a unique spirit!

Question: Let’s talk a little about words. You do your own words. Sometimes you invent them; new words. Do they come after the music or before the music?

STOCKHAUSEN: No, no! In every composition, that is different. I have composed “Momente” for nine years, and I used “The Song of Songs”, from the Bible, “Song of Love”, but I added also a few letters of a woman that I was in love with [Mary Bauermeister], and I added also words that I had heard [from the audience] during previous performances: “Stop it!”, “Shut up!” or something like that.

[hollering audience laughter]

So I dedicate part of the material that the choir singers would sing [with these exclamations], so the public was quite disturbed by this mixture. There is another work for choir, which I composed a few years ago, which is a purely phonetic composition. It starts with areas in five groups of the choir, mainly basing everything on “o”; all sorts of syllables with “o”, then it goes to “oa”, then “ah-au”, then to “ah”, then to “eh-ee” and after a long time – several minutes – I reach for the first time the bright sounds. First a whole scale of vowels, then every syllable with a different consonant, so I have two series of consonants: at the beginning of each syllable, and consonants at the end of each syllable, so also the consonants …[word lost in room noise]… with the whole circle of 24 consonants, at the beginning and ending, in order to create always new syllables, like an artful language, and only three times I used intelligible music [words]. “The Song of the Youths” [”Gesang der Jünglinge”] which you are going to hear – I don’t know if you will be in Berwaldhallen [The Berwald Hall] tomorrow; “The Song of the Youths” which I composed from 1954 to 1956, is a young boy – 12 years old – who sings in choirs with himself, up to 16 layers, and I used there the song, also from the Bible; “Praise the Lord”, “Praise the Rain”, “Praise the Skies”, “Praise the Clouds” etcetera etcetera – so this text was taken from the Bible [actually from the apocryphical Book of Daniel], but I have used it in such a way […] that it doesn’t matter if you understand exactly what he is singing, […] he is calling here and there [pointing around the hall] …[word lost in room noise]… all of a sudden “kält… …inter”, you see, […] or “Mond… … Son…ne!”, he sings, but the rest is al these swarms of sound, and it’s a mixture of these syllables that I have taken from the Bible, so it’s always different [the way Stockhausen utilizes words and language in his compositions].

Camilla Lundberg: I’ll just tell the audience that those of you who can’t be in Berwaldhallen [the Berwald Hall] tomorrow; this will be broadcast live on television.

STOCKHAUSEN: No, but the piece [“Gesang der Jünglinge”] is four track!

[hollering audience laughter]

Write a letter to the Television that they should broadcast four-track!

[hollering audience laughter]

Question: What happened in 1980 when you and Miles Davis got together?

STOCKHAUSEN: That’s a misunderstanding, I never… Ah, doch!

[hollering audience laughter]

1980… Markus, are you here? Was it in 1980 in Copenhagen, when we met him? Yeah, there was a jazz party, and we met and we spent an evening together. We were eating together. I think it was in Copenhagen.

Question: It was no session?

STOCKHAUSEN: Oh, no, no, no! No, there was a concert of Russell before, and he [Miles Davis] had come to meet him, because they were friends. He has a jazz orchestra from the East Coast [of the United States], and oh! That was a day, my God!

[audience laughter]

I had a performance of “Gruppen” for 3 orchestras; I don’t know if you know… In Copenhagen, and then after the performance I met Russell. We played “Gruppen” for 3 orchestras, with 3 conductors surrounding the public, and then Russell played with his band, and then “Gruppen” was repeated, and then I sat around afterwards, and I said to him [to Russell]: “You seem to be a bit worried?”. He said: “It’s terrible to be sandwiched between Stockhausen!”.

[audience laughter]

So it was very funny, and then we went with Davis afterwards in the restaurant. Well, it’s like he [Robert Moog] talks now to me, and I talk to him. It is always our profession, which is important; we speak about professional experiences, instruments, players…

Question: He [Miles Davis] had some collaborative ideas with you?

STOCKHAUSEN: They tell me, because there are now book published…

[audience laughter]

Question: Anyway, we know that when you were very young, just after the war [Second World War], you did work as a jazz pianist?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah? Yeah, but not only jazz; also pop music, to make a living. I started, as a matter of fact, already when I was 11, 12 years to make a living by playing for dancing, and then in particular in the years when I was studying at the Conservatory in Cologne at the university, I played almost every night, and also in the afternoon in the cafés of Cologne, so you had to play all sorts of music.

Question: You have musically professional children; like Markus!

STOCKHAUSEN: I have six children. The oldest daughter is 47. Then came a second daughter. She is now 45, and then Markus, 44, and another daughter; she is… 35 [loud whisper from Christel Stockhausen in the audience:”39!”, and a giggle], and a son is 34. They all have been trained from childhood on – five, six years old – to play the piano, and very soon… No, I have left out Majella!

[audience laughter]

I mentioned five. Majella was born in 1962, so she is now almost 40 [which explains Christel’s loud whisper before!].

Question: And she plays the piano?

STOCKHAUSEN: Yeah, she is excellent. She is the first pianist of the Berlin Philharmonics! And …[word lost in room noise]… Markus became a trumpeter, but he started also with the piano, and studied music at the State High School for Music in Cologne [Staatische Hochschule für Musik, Köln]. He made his final exams there as a concert player. Majella made her final exams as a pianist. Christel is a flutist, and she is still teaching; she is here tonight from Oslo. She has five kids herself, and she’s teaching music; she is playing in the Symphony Orchestra in Oslo, and with the University Orchestra etcetera. She is always into music, everyday! Her children are always brought to musical situations by her. The same applies to Suja, who started, naturally, to play – she’s the oldest daughter – an instrument, and then she found out later that she didn’t want to become a professional musician; she studied genetics, made her final exams in cell genetics, and now she is a yoga teacher. She married a Frenchman; they have three children, and they are excellent as musicians! I listen to her son, and one daughter is an oboe player; fantastic! The second daughter is a wonderful clarinetist!

[audience laughter]

And my youngest son [Simon Stockhausen] …[word lost in room noise]… started as a percussionist, and now I think he is the best synthesizer player. He is fantastic! Simon! And he composes himself. So now he made himself independent. He lives in Berlin and he writes for all sorts of ensembles. It’s true that that they all got used to music as being part of life, self-understood! Several children I have taken – when they were very small; four, five years – on tour, and I put them on the stage when I was rehearsing, and so they have gotten used to my music and other music. Naturally we went also to other performances during the festivals where I was performing; so music for them – even new music – was never a problem, and they don’t know the difference between new music and old music. It’s all music! Markus now is an excellent jazz player. He is playing jazz all the time, and, naturally, what we call a classical player.

Question: Markus composes, doesn’t he?

STOCKHAUSEN: Markus composes also, yes! So music for them [for Stockhausen’s children and grand children] is like air, like air! You breathe!