Radio New Zealand - Stockhausen Series w/Robin Maconie

[Billeke]

"Starts at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Karlheinz Stockhausen is the subject of this three part series written
and voiced by author and composer Robin Maconie in conjunction with
Radio New Zealand Concert producer Owen Armour and engineer Jeremy
Ansell

Program 1 - An Introduction to Karlheinz Stockhausen - 7pm on
Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Program 2 - Karlheinz Stockhausen's Electronic Music - 7pm on
Wednesday, 10 August 2011

Program 3 - Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Legacy - 7pm on Wednesday, 17
August 2011

From 1952 until his death in 2007 the German composer Karlheinz
Stockhausen was a dominating force in the postwar world of
contemporary art music: as a researcher into western musical DNA, as
inventor of complex musical puzzles, as time-travelling leader in
musical electronics, and as an emblematic tragic realist in the German
tradition of Faust and Nietzsche

Despite his leading reputation in European art music, extending to
Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles, as well as avant-garde jazz
trumpeter Miles Davis, Stockhausen's difficult and uncompromising
music is seldom performed outside Europe and remains largely unknown
to the general public

For over forty years - four-fifths of the composer's mature creative
life - New Zealand composer and writer Robin Maconie has studied,
listened, and reported on Stockhausen's aesthetic and artistic
development from 1964 until his death in December 2007. Since 1976 he
has published four books and a 1980 BBC television documentary on
Stockhausen, including Stockhausen on Music, coauthored with the
composer, and most recently Other Planets: the music of Karlheinz
Stockhausen (2005). These titles remain in print and are obtainable
online.

To explain how this strange music works, where it belongs in the
history of music, who it has touched, and how to listen to it, in
three copiously illustrated hour-long programmes Maconie examines the
life and development of Stockhausen as a cultural survivor and
artistic rebel, his contribution to musical electronics and the
aesthetic of the global village, and his aesthetic and creative
legacy, which has not only influenced younger generations of techno
musicians but also touched the older generation of Elliott Carter and
Stravinsky, leading them out of the doldrums of neoclassicism into a
new and luminous vitality of musical expressionism.

This series was produced by Radio New Zealand".

Taken from: http://www.stockhausen.org/radioNZ.html

[Nigel Curtis]

Thanks - but I didn't quite get it looking at the NZ website.

Can these 3 broadcasts still be heard ? I couldn't find how to do
this.

thanks. Nigel

[Mark Stratford]

> Can these 3 broadcasts still be heard ? I couldn't find how to do this

I wrote to the radio station asking how to hear, but they never
replied. Shame

ms

[Nigel Curtis]

It doesn't look like they have a BBC-style retention period.
So - did anybody manage to hear these broadcasts?

Nigel

[Jerry Kohl]

It was very badly timed for me. I was already on the way to Kürten on
the day of the first broadcast, in Kürten for the second one, and
still too disorientated with jet lag after my return to remember to
tune in for the third one. I, too, would be interested to hear about
their content.

--
Jerry Kohl
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."

[Mark Stratford]

Jerry Kohl wrote:

>> I was already on the way to Kürten <<

That reminds me - how was the 'integral' version of Pole ? I believe
this is very rarely performed in full.
Was it a complete concert in itself ?

thanks Mark

[Jerry Kohl]

On Sep 15, 2:45 am, Mark Stratford <mark_stratfor...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

Pole was performed twice, first in a partial performance lasting
perhaps twenty minutes, on an evening concert. Then came the
"integral" version in an afternoon performance. It lasted a little
over an hour.

For both versions Vetter and Nikeprelevic adopted a theatrical
scenario which they explained (in their seminar) was meant to
represent Stockhausen and Mary Bauermeister in a domestic setting:
discussing, planning, disagreeing, arguing, etc. The short version was
done "conventionally", which is to say with the spatial electronics
that give the piece its title. (It was written specifically for the
spherical auditorium at Osaka, and the spatialization is supposed to
begin with one performer projected from directly above the audience,
and the other below. The score offers other options for more
conventional spaces.) The integral version, on the other hand,
dispensed with the electronics. Considering the flamboyant theatrics
employed, the spatialization was scarcely missed in the second
version. I'm not sure if that is a criticism of the performers'
approach or not.

The highlight of the "short" version came somewhere after the middle.
In addition to their voices, the performers employed "accessory"
instruments: Vetter occasionally made noises on a treble recorder, and
both he and Nikeprelevic used little toy harmonicas. After a
particularly large "argument", with a lot of arm waving and other
histrionics, both of them were "exhausted" and flopped down onto their
respective music stands, at which point Vetter's harmonica fell to the
floor. This made a huge clatter, since everything was amplified.
Vetter (who looks a bit like the actor John Savident, especially at
moments like these) suddenly looked up, opening one eye very wide, and
started whistling and gesticulating wildly, a la Harpo Marx, calling
Nikeprlevic's and the audience's attention to the little beastie that
had so inconsiderately fallen to the floor, and seeking Nikeprelevic's
assistance in picking it up again. They stumbled about for a bit, with
Vetter getting there first, recovering his little harmonica, and
triumphantly holding it up for everyone to see. He had us all
completely in stitches. His improviser's instinct had been right on
the money, turning a minor mishap into the comic centerpiece of the
entire performance.

Nothing remotely like this occurred in the integral performance, but
the longer format allowed more scope for the other, intentional
aspects of their version. The audience in both cases responded very
enthusiastically, and rumour has it that they have been invited back
again for next year's courses.

[Nigel Curtis]

talking about Pole at Kurten, here's a video of Spiral from the
courses a few years ago.
It's not online as such, but you can download from here:

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/1220732448/cf420514f19afef863405c96689a2c70

[Jerry Kohl]

Fantastic, Nigel, thanks for this! I remember that performance
vividly, especially the bit at the end when Matsudaira is given an
unexpected opportunity via the short-wave radio, and capitalizes on it
in exemplary fashion.

[Mark Stratford]

I heard that a version of Robin Maconie's NZ scripts will be
published in his new book "Avant Garde" sometime next year.

[Mark Stratford]

I had been interested in the publicity for these talks what influence
KhS might have had on Elliott Carter - one of the promised subjects.
And I read this interesting transcript, coupled with musical examples:


<In his ninetieth year a recording was issued of Symphonia, Carter’s
largest work to date, and I rushed out to buy a copy. Something about
the first movement sounded curiously familiar. The title “Partita” is
the Italian word for play. The word for play in German is Spiel . What
I was hearing was a tribute and gesture of support from the elder
statesman of American music in his eighties to the 24 year-old German
genius....And we end our survey with the rough and tumble of Spiel by
Stockhausen, composed in 1952, still full of life, still full of
tannin like a young red wine. Huge body, and a great finish.>

[Nigel Curtis]

RM is quite critical of the electro music in Dienstag, isn't he?

[Mark Stratford]

Nigel Curtis wrote:
> RM is quite critical of the electro music in Dienstag, isn't he?

<Dienstag.......These are supposed to be the sounds of war, but
compared to the handmade sounds of some of his earlier compositions,
the combination of Synthi harmonies and Yamaha glissandi, while
skilful in their own way, seem flabby and inert, giving the impression
of a war of knights in shiny plastic armour with light sabres in day-
glo colours.

[Nigel Curtis]

I couldn't really work out in these talks how seriously Maconie took
the Klang cycle. He says that at this time Stockhausen was "tired".

nc

[Mark Stratford]

Nigel Curtis <cn_cur...@runbox.com> wrote:

> I couldn't really work out in these talks how seriously Maconie took
> the Klang cycle. He says that at this time Stockhausen was "tired".

Well the exact phrase was

"He appeared exhausted. In these pieces the sense of approaching
death is quite palpable. "

But RM has been saying that for years. He wrote over 10 years ago that
HSQ was a validictory piece.

mark

[david...@aol.com]

>The title “Partita” is
> the Italian word for play. The word for play in German is Spiel . What
> I was hearing was a tribute and gesture of support from the elder
> statesman of American music in his eighties to the 24 year-old German
> genius....

This fanciful claim, hinging on the meaning of the two titles, is
almost certainly unfounded in reality. Any superficial resemblances
between the two pieces are just that, superficial, and Carter has
never been particularly interested in Stockhausen's music. In a
sense, Carter has striven to produce a music the Beethovenian dynamism
of which is antithetical to what animates Stockhausen's.

-david gable

[Mark Stratford]

There's a great bit about RM meeting Stravinsky :

<<When Stravinsky came to Wellington in 1961 there was a press
reception in which the subject of electronic music came up.
Stravinsky said how much he admired Differences by Luciano Berio for
live instruments and tape. Knowing how slow and laborious the task of
editing tape can be, I still could not resist asking the eighty year-
old Stravinsky, do you think you will ever compose any electronic
music yourself? Laying a hand on my arm, with the air of betraying a
confidence, Stravinsky replied, “My dear, I know what electronic sound
is. I know what electronic noise is. But electronic music: I don’t
know, what that is.” But what Stravinsky meant by that remark was that
while his ear might be influenced by electronic sound and noise, his
music would always be delivered by conventional instruments.

There is no doubt that the electronic music Stravinsky heard in the
fifties changed the way he composed. It was not Webern who converted
Stravinsky to a miniaturist style, as much as the tape medium. Tape
music alters the way you listen to sounds, how you edit them together,
and how you transform them. Stravinsky’s last great work, the Requiem
Canticles, composed in 1966, is a sequence of short movements each of
which can be regarded as a study in techniques of musical
relationship. Every single idea is clearly imagined and beautifully
worked out. Many, indeed most of the Requiem Canticles, can be sourced
back to Stockhausen, like tiny contact prints of ideas from Momente.
<<

mark s

[Jack Campin]

> There is no doubt that the electronic music Stravinsky heard in the
> fifties changed the way he composed. It was not Webern who converted
> Stravinsky to a miniaturist style, as much as the tape medium. Tape
> music alters the way you listen to sounds, how you edit them together,

> and how you transform them. Stravinsky零 last great work, the Requiem

> Canticles, composed in 1966, is a sequence of short movements each of
> which can be regarded as a study in techniques of musical
> relationship. Every single idea is clearly imagined and beautifully
> worked out. Many, indeed most of the Requiem Canticles, can be sourced
> back to Stockhausen, like tiny contact prints of ideas from Momente.

And does Maconie offer any evidence at all for that bizarre claim?

Given what Stravinsky said on the record about Schoenberg (that he
was a grotesque example of over the top hysterical Teutonic bombast
except for lapses into utter tedium) he must have seen Stockhausen
(insofar as he knew anything about him) as more of the same only worse.

(Joseph Straus's book on late Stravinsky has a pretty darn convincing
account of where most of his ideas came from - Webern as reinterpreted
by Krenek, to a large extent).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
e m a i l : j a c k @ c a m p i n . m e . u k
Jack Campin, 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland
mobile 07800 739 557 <http://www.campin.me.uk> Twitter: JackCampin

[Jerry Kohl]

On Nov 25, 2:47 pm, Jack Campin <bo...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > There is no doubt that the electronic music Stravinsky heard in the
> > fifties changed the way he composed. It was not Webern who converted
> > Stravinsky to a miniaturist style, as much as the tape medium. Tape
> > music alters the way you listen to sounds, how you edit them together,

> > and how you transform them. Stravinsky¹s last great work, the Requiem

> > Canticles, composed in 1966, is a sequence of short movements each of
> > which can be regarded as a study in techniques of musical
> > relationship. Every single idea is clearly imagined and beautifully
> > worked out. Many, indeed most of the Requiem Canticles, can be sourced
> > back to Stockhausen,  like tiny contact prints of ideas from Momente.
>
> And does Maconie offer any evidence at all for that bizarre claim?
>
> Given what Stravinsky said on the record about Schoenberg (that he
> was a grotesque example of over the top hysterical Teutonic bombast
> except for lapses into utter tedium) he must have seen Stockhausen
> (insofar as he knew anything about him) as more of the same only worse.
>
> (Joseph Straus's book on late Stravinsky has a pretty darn convincing
> account of where most of his ideas came from - Webern as reinterpreted
> by Krenek, to a large extent).

Uh-huh. Straus's book is a valuable contribution, to be sure. IIRC, he
carefully examines Stravinsky's tone rows in comparison to Boulez's,
but remind me: what exactly does he say about Stravinsky's
relationship with Stockhausen?

--
Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net>