The innumerable ideas encountered throughout Karlheinz Stockhausen’s work demonstrate his personal ideal of enforced novelty — to never repeat, even partially, material from earlier pieces — and the systematic integration of data gathered from other cultures in a irrefutably individualistic style. This link between the personal and the universal is articulated on two main axes: the omnipresent principle of unity and the definitive break from dialectic of confrontation.

The first of these two constraints is discernible in certain systematically recurring formal patterns such as the cycle, from 1959 (Zyklus, a circular chain through different percussion timbres) through his final works (Klang, 2005). Stockhausen’s predilection for sequential rather than cumulative behavior priotitizes the relation — perceptible at any moment — between the whole and its parts, while the reduction of confrontation sits solidly within the framework of unequivocal serial thought, like the elaboration of an infinity of intermediate grays to unite black and white. From the insertion of conjoint segments into disjointed statements brought about by the syntax of the 1950s (Klavierstück VI for example) to semi-systematic chromaticisms between the main notes of a motif — such as the glissando — (Licht), he concentrates ever more intently on the pertinence of the relationship between global organization and the identity of constituent elements. It is precisely this priority whcih demonstrates his attachment to serialism, electronic thought, and his later orientation towards melody and motif.

Serialism

Soon after the rupture with Schoenbergian heritage, considered inadequate for the new era, a definite alignment with Webern threatened to predetermine the material for all compositions in the immediate future. Faced with multiple voices, a by-product of the polyphonic complexity drawn from the final consequences of tradition (Schönberg), a new and different conception had to be imposed, an articulation of molecular arrangements controlled by a virtual theme. No longer voices, but rather individual sounds considered as bursts of a cryptic pattern (the tone row) or regrouped according to timbre or other sonic characteristics. This slow progression from “punctual music” towards “composition by groups,” the binary nature of this thought — which Stockhausen shares with Boulez’s Third Sonata (“Points — Blocs”) — is evident in the the earliest works which come to legitimize his written theories (1952).

Kontrapunkte, Kreuzspiel, and the Klavierstücke 2 and 3 take Webernian discontinuity to new extremes: the eradication of direct relationships between sounds forces the listener’s attention on each individual sound, an extension of Webern’s earlier pulverization of a simple double canon (Symphonie Op. 21, first movement). Here first appear hints of future revisions, such as the recurrence of a fixed pitch as a signaling (or thematic) device in the midst of the “mute indifference” (Adorno) that threatens to overtake the music (Klavierstück 2), or the quasi-melodic regrouping that suspends an outburst (middle of Kreuzspiel). Composition by groups quickly emerges as a promise of revitalization for a style extended to “the boundaries of the fertile land”…

Webern’s influence is again evident when the tone-row that opens the Concerto op. 24 is analyzed not as a global proposition, but as an articulation of four separate groups, each with its own shape (in terms of instrumentation, speed, intensity, phrasing, and attacks). The question is not so much whether Stockhausen sought to legitimize his personal theories through this sort of analysis, but rather how he would make use of the tools of extension garnered through this research. By considering groups of three sounds as unique objects, he radically displaces the principle of composing with prefixed structures such as themes or motifs, towards a system of “internal proportions” assigned to variable groups.

These first appeared as purely static elements (ascending/descending, monophonic/polyphonic, etc.), as in the first Klavierstück in 1951, and were quickly centered on principal sounds around which secondary sounds gravitate; this satellite-style organization — fundamental to the sense of his entire output — appears as early as Klavierstück 7 (1954) or the end of Klavierstück 9 (1961), and the revision (1962) of the first version of Punkte (1952) confirms the extent of this change.

As an extension of this decision, Stockhausen’s organization by groups has ramifications beyond questions of style and writing; when in 1961 he concentrated on the problem of form, this attitude nurtured the concept of the “moment” which Stockhausen defines through certain essentially qualitative criteria: global sonority, density, internal repetition, etc. Even when dealing with electroacoustic music (Kontakte), his preoccupation is unwavering: “partial moments” with specific properties are pointed out, as well as “groups” of moments sharing one or many properties. Again the overall control stems from an articulation of principal/secondary elements, more firmly rooted in the global architecture than the perpetual difference between details, revealing a crucial component of Stockhausen’s thought: the utopia of an eternity reduced to a single moment (theoretically stripped of all directionality) which is furthermore the sum of all moments, defining an uncontrollable tendency to “overtake time that drives toward a single end, death.”

In terms of formal organization, this principle demonstrates its pertinence in the period 1963-1968, where strictly musical notation is momentarily abandoned in favor of a more general signal-oriented relative style of writing, favoring transformation over fixed notation. The performer actively decides how a sound metamorphoses into another (rhythmically) by changing sinusoidal frequencies (Mixtur, 1964), by  dding a vibration to a sonic continuum (Mikrophonie I, 1964), introducing intelligible speech on short waves into an ordered and rigorous form (Hymnen, 1967), etc. In each case the organization of principal sounds (or events) is infallibly coordinated with secondary sounds (or events), derivations… or, in a word. deductions. After a brief experimentation with total abstraction (“intutive music” with no notation whatsoever), the score of Stimmung (1968) explicitly synthesizes all of these experiments: a single chord — a singe vibration — generates fifty-one passages systematically centered on one of the constituent sounds, shedding a unique light on multiple sound objects (the exact opposite of a standard classical development).

This conjunction between the whole and its parts defines serialism not exclusively as a technique but as a thought process leading towards numerous changes in style, organization of material, and in the principle of unity, from electroacoustic works to melodic writing.

Thoughts on electronics

The goal of dissolving contrasts between different types of sonic classes, already hinted at in his earlier transformation-oriented music, is fully realized with the use of electronics that allow the “continuous passage from one perspective to another” that Stockhausen regards as the ultimate goal of composing. After Deux Etudes (1953) based on very simplified material and the groundbreaking Gesang der Jünglinge (1955), electronics are practially never used alone. Kontakte (1961) uses prerecorded sounds alongisde a piano and percussion, Hymnen exists in a version for electronics alone but also in a version with instruments, and in all other works involving electronics, from Mantra (1972) to Licht (2002), instrumental writing always forms a basic template. The various setups required all serve essentially the same purposes: the transformation of often limited material “integrated with the entire universe,” or to clarify complex polyphony beyond the reach of traditional instrumental ensembles. In this case the spatialization surpasses purely theatrical dimensions to render more tangible the directionality and speed of sonic motion (the sphere-shaped auditorium of the exposition of Osaka created for Kontakte remains the only concrete realization of this ideal).

But one of the most decisive influences of electronics on Stockhausen’s style is the unleashing of unlimited possibilities for the manipulation of time. The theoretical reflection dating back to the earliest works under the spell of Messiaen (the use of rhythmic modes in Kreuzspiel) expanded with the integration of qualitative criteria (groups as well as moments), culminating with the principle of The Unity of Musical Time (the title of his treatise of 1960). The chromatic idea of individual durations here becomes a continuous spectrum of sonic categories where differences of type are lost in favor of differences of degree. The fastest impulses produce pitches, countable impulses define the rhythmic domain, and the slowest impulses (lasting sometimes as long as a quarter of an hour) outline the form—a concept reinforced by the electronics through a progressive and continuous decomposition of a single taped sound (around an E flat) given a slower and slower rhythm, then enveloped in a sort of sonic halo until meeting its resolution, an E flat on the piano (Kontakte). Movement has described a sense of time. The passage from the first to the second part of Hymnen builds on this demonstration by revealing how, through an infinitely long slowing of the Marseillaise, ostensibly incongruous fields of sound (crowd noises, wild ducks, etc.) remain organically linked to a single phenomenon.

Stockhausen’s reference to Lewis Carroll developed in his interviews perfectly demonstrates his relation to time. Like Alice, a musical structure can become infinitely slow or infinitely fast (Mantra, 1970), and this profoundly idiomatic vision would influence a large part of the inventiveness of his works to come, particularly in the melodic domain.

Finally, from an entirely different perspective, electronics can be used to underscore quasi-incantatory processes as in the extension of Katinka’s Gesang (1984), an extract from Samstag aus Licht — each intervention on a single note played by a flutist is signaled by an explosion whose shrapnel envelops the sequence that follows — or in the indefinite timing of Choeurs invisibles (Donnerstag aus Licht). The tool here reveals its core signification, anchored in its origins: to participate as fully as possible in the creation of a spiritual, religious music; the only intelligible words that escape the electronic furnace in Gesang der Jünglinge are songs of praise to the Lord…

From melody to formula

Even the titles of the earliest works reveal: invention is at heart inescapably melodic, and the academic processes of inversion / retrograde are already integrated (Sonatine pour violon et piano, 1951) through habits formed through childhood musical games… But if the outburst of modernity forces these inclinations into retreat, they are nevertheless not systematically abandoned: the moment in Kreuzspiel where the dispersed sounds are concentrated within an octave to produce a truly singable outline before being again propelled into a complex disarray— this moment underscores what would become a constant of Stockhausen’s style: creating memorizable structures alongside complex operations in order to guarantee tangible relationships between a work’s fundamental elements and their more cryptic unfoldings.

1970 was a decisive turning point between athematic writing and the arrival of “formula composition” with Mantra and the emblematic work Formel (“formula”), premiered in 1971 … but first conceived in 1951, whose form outlines twelve successive stages of the gestation of a twelve-note melody. The concept of a formula controls the relationship between the tone row (12 notes), the group (each tone is the center of a specific complex, immediately identifiable) , and melody (with all notes appearing in a restrained space in order to create a true melodic structure).

Every piece written between Mantra and Licht relies on a generating formula which should not be confused with a tone row (which can serve as the base of more than one work at a time). The principle of generation ruptures literally any relation to the idea of development by its position within the cycle which serves, as a whole, as a sort of negation; the idea — the initial formula — does not become unrecognizable through its transformations but rather changes shape as a part of a totality which it has helped itself to describe. Thus the properties of each group (“member”) in the formula help to determine the envelope of the cycle in whose trajectory it plays a role (Mantra); less complex in principle, the formula behind Inori (1974) condenses four phases of musical history — rhythm - melody - harmony - polyphony — which become, respectively, and with the addtion of dynamics, the five key moments of the form. The predictability of this treatment becomes nearly didactic in In Freundschaft (1977): the formula is played seven times with sufficiently light variations so that their idenities outlast their differences, an approach quite similar to that of Licht (1977-2002). The excessive scale and duration of the work necessitated, to guarantee a perceptive continuity, an expanded cyclic perspective: a triple fundamental formula for the seven operas, a particular formula for each of the three key characters (Michael, the archangel, Eve, the archetypal mother, and Lucifer, the fallen angel); each opera is entirely constructed on a branch of the triple formula, and the one hundred and fifteen or so pieces that constitute the cycle are each based on different segments of individual formulas. The form thus represents a systematic expansion of the original idea, at once hidden and omnipresent: though each individual piece, exploring only material derived from a small segment (without extrapolation from the sounds thereby omitted), could point towards a loss of a sense of the whole, the connections to global form are never broken precisely because the reservoirs of available sounds remain limited, each element conserving its own una mbiguous semantic value — an interval, a grupetto, etc.

On the level of syntax, the unification of the whole results from a single prevailing force: deduction. But the larger dimension, the interpretation and actual writing out of what had been imagined, conjure up a utopia of eternity born out of the infinite duration of an idea. What the theory envisioned in 1960 (in the text on “Momentform”) is accomplished in this decantation of material alongside the return to melodic writing. Thus the aforementioned passage in Kontakte acquires a profoundly poetic dimension when, in Sirius (1976) a melody played in instrumental sounds (Aries) is progressively extinguished, and just on the verge of disappearing a new melody is born (Libra) fashioned out of the harmonics of absent pitches.

“Phoenix music” for Stockhausen. And probably the key to his entire output.

Translation: Christopher Trapani.