This piece follows on from "Listening to Stockhausen". Here Robert Worby presents detailed notes on Stockhausen's early electronic work.

Electronic Study No.1

At the time he was composing this work, the 25 year old Stockhausen described the sounds in the piece as 'raindrops in the sun'. He was then an intensely devout Catholic and, for him, the ideas inherent in serialism resonated as much theologically as musically. The serial method was a metaphor for the Divine Perfection where all things exist in an all pervading equality.

This is the first ever composition constructed entirely from sine waves that are fused together to make previously unheard sounds. This is synthesis rather than musique concrete (where recordings of existing sounds are processed and edited to make music) and Stockhausen was the first composer to use this technique which can now be achieved on a computer in the blink of an eye. But when Stockhausen did this each, and every sine-wave had to be recorded onto separate pieces of tape and mixed together, by hand, to produce the individual sound colours which were then shaped dynamically. Then slowly, centimetre by centimetre, the piece was built up on tape. This process would be like making an animated film by firstly inventing new colours, by combining individual atoms to make a pigment, and then using these colours in uniquely designed shapes and forms which are then structured through time to become a film. The sheer amount of time-consuming labour involved is staggering.

The whole structure of this piece, from the microcosmic cementation within each and every sound to the grand large-scale form, is incredibly rigorous and meticulously executed. This is a fabulous celebration of serialism; a study in purity, unity and proportion.


Electronic Study No 2

This materials of this work are again immaculately hand crafted. No synthesizers or computers here; the piece was composed in 1954. The sounds are the fragile, crystallised auras of single chords played into a reverberation chamber. Every chord is unique and is made of five pure sine-waves whose frequencies were determined by a complex mathematical scale, based on 25¹, especially composed by Stockhausen. This scale has inharmonic qualities which, coupled with the reverberation, produce a sound world with an intriguing, glass-like quality. The shape of each crystal, chordal block, is carved by hand; some glide and float, others are brittle and harsh.

The piece is structured in fives. There are five sections, each with five sub-sections and each sub-section has five phrases, each with 1 - 5 sounds. The music moves along quite quickly, sliding and bouncing, suspended in a curious, ghostly space. The score of the piece was the first score of electronic music ever produced and, unlike some other electronic music scores, has all the information necessary for a reproduction of the work. However, reproduction may well be a futile exercise, especially by synthesizer or computer. Stockhausen said of one such effort "It was awful. A farce, to say the least, a caricature of the work. You could say goodbye to the precision of the microtempi! And goodbye to the subtleties, to the movements of the spirit ..... Why? Because they let the computer handle the dynamic curves of sound which I had regulated, on the contrary, with manual controls."


Gesang der Jünglinge

The original idea of GESANG DER JÜNGLINGE was the composition of an Electronic Mass; this would be a proclamation of faith through the new media and it would provide a vehicle to enable vocal sounds to be integrated with electronic sounds. Stockhausen wrote ' .... audibly they (the vocal sounds) were to be as fast, as long, as loud, as soft, as dense and interwoven, with as small and large pitch intervals, and in as differentiated variations of timbre as the imagination might require, freed from the physical limitations of any one singer. Consequently, much more sophisticated electronic sounds had to be composed than heretofore, since sung speech sounds probably represent the most complex of sound structures - in a broad scale from vowels (sounds) to consonants (noise). A merging of all the colours used into one sound family can only be experienced if sung sounds can appear to be electronic sounds, and electronic sounds to be sung sounds.' Stockhausen's Electronic Studies I & II were experiments, try-outs, models of feasibility, but in this piece everything explodes - possibilities, vision, musical boundaries. He had been studying information theory with Werner Meyer-Eppler and had been made aware of the complex relationships between speech sounds, communication, information and comprehension.

A single Biblical text, from the Third Book of Daniel: The Song of the Youths in the Fiery Furnace, was chosen because the Church had made it clear that an electronic mass was unacceptable. Serialism, as always, was the guiding principle and scales were composed to manipulate sonic material, ideas and concepts. The technique was well established in avant-garde music - diametric, polar opposites were created eg. high/low, loud/soft, long/short, and the continuum between them was divided into discrete steps according to 'musical laws'. At a more sophisticated level, as in this piece, the dualistic opposites might be, for example, pitch to noise, comprehensibility to incomprehensibility, electronic to vocal etc.

In addition to all of these characteristics Stockhausen incorporated the parameter of physical space; included in the compositional process are decisions about the location of the sounds, the actual characteristics of the spaces in which the sounds are located, movement of sound, direction and speed of travel etc. These features are now commonplace, especially in popular music where sounds swirl and bounce, and reverberation and echo are plied in layers, but in 1956 the idea that physical space was musically important, and could be controlled and integrated into the musical process, was completely new.

A fantastic electronic sound-world merges with the lone voice of a single chorister from Cologne Cathedral and flies in space. Words are atomised into phonemes and reassembled into new utterances; as the composer elucidates " .... whenever language emerges momentarily from the sound signs of the music, it praises God."


Hymnen

Short-wave. The aural window on the world. Babble and squeak. " .... get across the ocean in a few seconds". Cut the ether with the tuning dial and hit the edge of a station somewhere far, far away. A single speaking voice emerges. Or maybe it's a large choir voicing a robust melody. Perhaps it's the insatiable bleeping of a Morse code transmission, the actual message submerged in secret rhythms. At the edge the sound fizzes and swirls, then fades and tumbles back. Turn the dial. Slowly, precisely, deliberately. Searching for the don't-know-what. Hiss and crackle rub against high pitched drones that recall the burnished shriek of a jet engine. A voice reads a string of numbers, slowly and deliberately. Keep turning. Suddenly drums and trumpets and unison voices sing heartily, passionately, joyously - an anthem, a national anthem. It shifts and twists and begins to throb like a distant pulsar. Keep turning. Stations run together transforming noise, via melody, into speech then headlong into electro-gabble before swirling back again into noise.

This is the world of HYMNEN: short-wave scramble, voices, distant places and music. Recordings of familiar tunes, national anthems (in German: 'Hymnen'), are transformed as if filtered through a billion stars. Stockhausen writes, "Anthems, the national anthems, are the most popular music there is. They are sound signs, sound objects familiar to many people. Actually, everyone is familiar with two or three of these anthems, at least the beginnings of the melodies if not the texts. ..... That is why I chose them as objects, which I can now manifoldly modulate and compose into an unknown world of electronic music."

In this unknown world, recognisable 'found object' sounds interject and interrupt the continuity: scraps of speech, sounds of crowds, recorded conversations with the composer, a croupier, a recording of the interior of a Chinese shop, the launching of a ship. These interjections add layers of mystery, intrigue and curiosity. Who are these people? What are these events? Why are they here?

At the surface of HYMNEN the sound world feels chaotic, fragmented and multi-facetted like a Cubist painting or collage. But Stockhausen is emphatic. "The composition of HYMNEN is not a collage. Many-sided interrelationships have been composed among the various anthems, as well as between these anthems and new abstract sound shapes, for which we have no names. Numerous compositional processes of intermodulation were employed in HYMNEN. For example, the rhythm of one anthem is modulated with the harmony of another; this result is modulated with the dynamic envelope of a third anthem; the result of this is in turn modulated with the timbral constellation and melodic contour of electronic sounds; finally such an event is given a specific spatial movement."

Intermodulation is a kind of superimposition process whereby a chosen characteristic of one musical artefact (eg. rhythm or harmony or dynamic) is directly mapped onto a different musical artefact. The outcome of these complex compositional processes is transformation, a kind of sonic metamorphosis leading the listener from the familiar into the unfamiliar. So, in HYMNEN, the everyday musical material of a national anthems mutates into previously unheard sonic landscapes, Stockhausen's 'unknown world'.

The work is divided into four 'Regions', with a total duration of around 113 minutes, and each Region features several 'centres' that focus on specific anthems.

Region I (27 minutes 38 seconds) begins with layers of short-wave 'scramble', introduces the croupier, travels through the Internationale and the Marseillaise via a meditative 'fugue' on the colour red and into a bridge and intermediary piece that links straight into Region II (30 minutes 4 seconds). Here great clangerous, metallic chords lead into an unknown landscape and 'marsh ducks quack the Marseillaise'. The first centre in this Region is the German national anthem chopped, shredded and then fabulously extended into a huge downward glissando that twists, turns and then slides upwards to a shimmering plateau. This material is followed by the first transition, one of the 'found object' sounds, the launching of a ship. At the second centre 'God Save The Queen' is only just recognisable like a familiar landscape viewed through a frosted window. This centre is followed by a multi-layered 'studio conversation', between Stockhausen and his assistant David Johnson. Time jumps and then folds in layers as they 'go one dimension deeper' to reveal some of the compositional procedures. The third centre is an African anthem whirled about in space and into the Russian anthem which is the only one that is entirely synthesized; all the other anthems in the piece began life as recordings.

The first centre of Region III (23 minutes 40 seconds) continues the Russian anthem with the harmonies and duration greatly expanded as if recorded onto elastic sheeting and stretched to capacity. The second centre is the American anthem which is processed "in fleeting collages and pluralistic mixtures." The anthems of Israel, Turkey and Ireland lead into a transition, through young voices singing Glory, glory hallelujah and back into short-wave which becomes a vehicle to "get across the ocean in a few seconds" to Spain which is the third centre. Glockenspiel tones, shifted way down in pitch, echo like ghostly ships bells across this landscape and 'announcements' of the Swiss anthem concludes this Region and begins the next.

Region IV (31 minutes 45 seconds) continues the Swiss anthem which is the 'First Empire' of the Region's double centre shared with 'an anthem of the utopian realm of Hymunion in Harmondie under Pluramon'. This is formed out of the final extended chord of the Swiss anthem. Surrounded by shimmering, descending glissandos it transforms into a pulsing abyss into which are shouted echoing names: Turid, Naçar, Iri, Maka. Suddenly the croupier appears again to announce "Messieurs, dames, rien ne va plus!" A solid metallic attack triggers an immense slide that glides down over the continued pulsations. This is an apocalyptic image reminiscent of Biblical paintings showing great fissures in the Earth with fire and brimstone and lost souls being devoured by demons. A slow, mournful, sine-wave melody emerges and the croupier makes his announcements again. The Region, and the piece, ends with 'the breathing of all mankind".

This huge work is a supreme manifestation of humanity and culture, of unity and structure, of technology and vision. It's an unmistakable landmark, a beacon in the landscape of mid 60s culture and counter-culture. It echoes those times: the delirium and confusion. It speaks simultaneously of madness and civilisation, of confusion and clarity, of noise and music.

Stockhausen wrote: " What I am trying to do, as far as I am aware of it, is to produce models that herald the stage after destruction. I'm trying to go beyond collage, hetrogeneity and pluralism, and to find unity; to produce music that brings us to the essential ONE. And that is going to be badly needed during the time of shocks and disasters that is going to come."


Kontakte

Kontakte is a giant leap forward from Gesang der Junglinge - it is more than twice the length, the electronic sound world is far richer and the musical ambitions are much greater. It was originally planned as a piece for three percussion, piano and four-track tape, with each performer controlling one track of the tape with a fader. During trial rehearsals it proved impossible for four musicians to synchronise with, and respond to, the tape as well as operate the necessary electronics. The piece now exists in two versions: Kontakte (electronic music) - as performed tonight - and Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano and percussion.

Nearly all of the sounds on tape are made with an impulse generator - an early electronic device made for producing short, sharp clicks of varying speeds and lengths. Stockhausen had discovered that if a click was played at a high enough speed (more than 16 clicks per second) it became pitch - a note. And if a note was slowed down it became lower and lower in pitch until it became a click. (This effect can be obtained by sticking a flat, wooden ice-lolly stick into the spokes of a bicycle wheel.) It is a phenomenon that is at once very simple and very sophisticated. He had discovered the continuum between pitch (very fast clicks) and rhythm (slow clicks) and this is demonstrated to great dramatic effect in the piece.

Physical space is again integrated into the compositional process and Stockhausen defines " ........ six forms of spatial movement: rotations, looping movements, alternations, disparate fixed sources (different sounds from each of the four loudspeakers), connected fixed sources (the same sounds in all the loudspeakers) and isolated spatial points." To control the spatialisation of the sounds he designed an acoustic, quadra-panning system comprising a loudspeaker mounted on a large, hand-operated turntable surrounded by four microphones that formed the corners of a square. Electronic sounds poured from the loudspeaker and Stockhausen turned it by hand diffusing them to the four corners that, via four tracks of tape, would eventually be the four corners of the concert hall.

The title refers to the way the musical material 'contacts' as it transforms between different sound colours and to the way distinct forms of spatial movement interact.


Telemusik

Telemusik is a precursor to Hymnen and was composed in the Electronic Music Studio of Japanese Radio (NHK) between January and March 1966. Stockhausen had already begun work on Hymnen when he made the visit to Japan. The two works are alike in that they share the technique of intermodulation and they draw on recordings of music from around the world; in this piece the transformed music is mostly non-western. They both share a feel of radio - that notion of sweeping through the airwaves and reception from afar - although Telemusik appears more stable as if a station has been found and atmospheric forces are moulding what is heard.

The work was composed on a six-track tape recorder (which has long ceased functioning) although the score shows only five layers because the sixth track was used for mixing material from other tracks during the compositional process. There are 32 sections or structures ("moments") which, apart from one very short section, were composed in the order they appear. An average of one section per day was composed and the sections simply follow one from the other. This makes the piece relatively easy to follow especially as each structure is announced by a percussive attack from a Japanese temple instrument: the hard, dry sound of the Taku or Bokusho (the first sound heard in the piece) for shorter sections and the resonant, ringing Keisu or Rin for the longer structures.

Sustained bands of high frequency material, heard throughout, suggest 'the resonance of consciousness', the 'sound' of the nervous system heard deep in the night just before sleep or in the intense silences of an anechoic chamber, and there are echoes of Kontakte manifested in the great downward sweeping glissandi of Structures 6 and 7 that end in soft wooden clicks. Whatever references can be inferred, Telemusik speaks of a world that was still to come in 1966, a world where every part of the surface is accessible through instantaneous electronic communications and all the musics of the world are instantly available. At that time Stockhausen wrote: "In all this I wanted to come closer to the realisation of an old and recurrent dream: to take a step further in the direction of composing not "my" music, but a music but a music of the whole Earth, of all countries and races ........... I do not know exactly how I did it - I was moonstruck - but I believe I succeeded in composing this Telemusik."


© Robert Worby 2001