Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928-2007) 4-9 Jan

[Quarky]

Having lived for the past year or so with Schoenberg/Gould piano pieces on my CD player, the comparison with Stockhausen's "drawings", and other piano pieces on last night's H&N was immediate.

I don't know if Stockhausen and Boulez have pushed forward the boundaries of Serialism in any significant respect from Schoenberg's initial formulation - I guess they have, but it would not be apparent to my ears.

But the immediate and noticeable difference is that Schoenberg' pieces were so melancholic - full of Angst, I think the term is. Stockhausen's works in contrast are actually very happy and cheerful. Whether Stockhausen set out deliberately to distance himself from Schoenberg in this respect, and whether it might explain some of his clowning around (e.g. Helicopter pieces), I wouldn't know.

In any event congratulations to the H&N team for a brillant programme last night.

[Serial_Apologist]

Having lived for the past year or so with Schoenberg/Gould piano pieces on my CD player, the comparison with Stockhausen's "drawings", and other piano pieces on last night's H&N was immediate.

I don't know if Stockhausen and Boulez have pushed forward the boundaries of Serialism in any significant respect from Schoenberg's initial formulation - I guess they have, but it would not be apparent to my ears.

But the immediate and noticeable difference is that Schoenberg' pieces were so melancholy - full of Angst, I think the term is. Stockhausen's works in contrast are actually very happy and cheerful. Whether Stockhausen set out deliberately to distance himself from Schoenberg in this respect, and whether it might explain some of his clowning around (e.g. Helicopter pieces), I wouldn't know.

In any event congratulations to the H&N team for a brillant programme last night.

While raising a point of order regarding the characterisation of the Schoenberg pieces, I'll second this.

[pastoralguy]

?..., and whether it might explain some of his clowning around (e.g. Helicopter pieces)

One person who was not happy with this approach was Irvine Arditti who I heard on 'Music Matters' recently saying "...We (the Arditti Quartet) wanted a piece from Stochausen that we could play EVERYWHERE. Instead, what we got was a piece we couldn't play anywhere. It was very disappointing."

[ahinton]

One person who was not happy with this approach was Irvine Arditti who I heard on 'Music Matters' recently saying "...We (the Arditti Quartet) wanted a piece from Stockhausen that we could play EVERYWHERE. Instead, what we got was a piece we couldn't play anywhere. It was very disappointing."

There's something of this that inevitably reminds me of another composer with the initials KS noting his experience of listening to Ravel's Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé "Unfortunately I have never heard these wonderful songs sung. I have only heard them "interpreted". It was most unpleasant". Pure coincidence, of course, but a neat one nontheless, methinks...

[Richard Barrett]

Stockhausen's works in contrast are actually very happy and cheerful.

Reading your post sent me back to one I made on another now-defunct forum six years ago: What shines out from almost all Stockhausen's work, from beginning to end, is a sense of optimism, that there's a place in the world for music which proposes that each listener take the time and commitment to develop an "art of listening". Such optimism is somewhat thin on the ground these days. Something that happens several times in Stockhausen's composing in this period is that he carries out his systematic serial explorations to the point that a piece could be considered "finished", but then perceives additional possibilities in it with a sense of "wow! you could also do this!!!" and realises them, and these become some of the most memorable and defining aspects of the piece - the "panning" brass chords in Gruppen, the piano "cadenza" in Kontra-Punkte.

I don't know that I could even begin to make a comparison between the emotional components in the music of Stockhausen and Schoenberg, except to say that the former affects me a lot more deeply than the latter, and always has.

[Boilk]

What shines out from almost all Stockhausen's work, from beginning to end, is a sense of optimism.

There are several pieces by Stockausen that I have found to have anything but a sense of optimism ... Inori and Trans for starters.

[amateur51]

There are several pieces by Stockausen that I have found to have anything but a sense of optimism ... Inori and Trans for starters.

Perhaps your 'several' and RB's 'almost all' are congruent nonetheless?

[Richard Barrett]

Perhaps your 'several' and RB's 'almost all' are congruent nonetheless?

I don't think so actually... but on reflection maybe "optimism" is too simple a word to describe what I had in mind. Perhaps it would be better described as a sense of possibility, of the possibility of continuing to discover and explore new sonic and expressive domains, which would certainly be true of the two compositions Boilk mentions.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Stockhausen frequently uses (very earthy) humour in his Music - often as a gate into the most profound section of a piece, as in the "drunken bumble bee" moment in Kontakte, or the Second Pianist's calling a final "chock-a-hoyie" (transliteration mine) only to realize that the First player has moved on into the next, broodier section. Generally speaking, he had a much happier life (certainly after the age of twenty) than did Schönberg; but Arnie wasn't devoid of humour, even if, in his own work (as distinct from his mischievous adaptations of Handel, Monn & Brahms) this was of a rather bitingly ironic nature:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRr_Gtv4w7s (with apologies for the "Pub Piano" here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxFFmo_09Xs

[Richard Barrett]

Generally speaking, he had a much happier life (certainly after the age of twenty) than did Schönberg

On the other hand his early life was seriously traumatic. But let's not fall into the trap of trying to draw simplistic parallels between composers' biographies and (what is known of their) personalities on the one hand, and their music on the other. Schoenberg might have been a good laugh (which I'm inclined to doubt!) but when he tries to be humorous in his music it generally comes over more like hectoring, surely.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Schoenberg might have been a good laugh (which I'm inclined to doubt!) but when he tries to be humorous in his music it generally comes over more like hectoring, surely.

Well, heavy-handed, perhaps - but a lot of that is (?might be?) down to performers so absorbed in getting the notes in time and tune that matters of articulation and "character" get comparitively overlooked. "A lot", but certainly not everything: the Three Satires are very trying in their rough comedy, but Opus 25 and the Scherzo movements of the Wind Quintet and the Third and Fourth String Quartets have a light irony that doesn't/shouldn't hector.

[Nick Armstrong]

when he tries to be humorous in his music it generally comes over more like hectoring, surely.

The German sense of humour is no laughing matter...

[Serial_Apologist]

The German sense of humour is no laughing matter... whistle:

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The German sense of humour is no laughing matter...

Naughty!

(And Arnie was Austrian, btw.)

[Nick Armstrong]

Naughty!

(And Arnie was Austrian, btw.)

Ooops sorry, I thought we were still talking about Stockhausen! Silly me, assuming things might have remained on thread!

The perils of speed-reading as light relief from work