Lowertown Listening Session
Stockhausen's Stimmung
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March 5, 2015
6 p.m. performance 5:30 p.m. doors open for mingling Studio Z: 275 East Fourth Street, Suite 200, St. Paul |
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Zeitgeist presents a performance and informal discussion of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Stimmung. A serial composition for six vocalists, Stimmung reflects on what it means to be in tune musically, in tune as a group of people, and in tune with one’s own soul.
Vocalists include Alyssa Anderson, Daniel Nass, Saijen Weihe, KrisAnne Weiss, Nicholas Nelson, and Philip Blackburn. Lowertown Listening Sessions invite curious listeners to enjoy adventurous sounds and insightful conversation with the music-makers of our time. Held at Studio Z, Zeitgeist’s performance space in Lowertown St. Paul, this monthly happy hour series brings guest artists from all genres of new music (jazz, classical, world music, folk, and more) for performances and informal discussion in an after-work setting with food and beverages from Lowertown eateries. Food will be supplied by Chez Bill Catering, prepared by chef/vocalist/composer Bill Kempe. Tickets can be securely purchased by credit card or through your PayPal account in advance, or by cash, check, or credit card at the door. Tickets purchased online will be held at the door.
Stimmung for six vocalists was the fruit of a commission from the ‘collegium vocale’ of Rhenish Music Schools in Cologne. The score was written during February and March 1968 at a house on Long Island Sound in Madison, Connecticut. I used texts which I had written in love-bitten times during April 1967 in Sausalito, San Francisco, and on the sea-board between San Francisco and Carmel. The Magic Names were collected for me by the young American anthropologist Nancy Wyle.
Once the musical draft was complete, I chose the title ‘Stimmung’, which bears many meanings: true intonation, for the vocalists have to sing the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th harmonics of a low Bb fundamental; the tuning up with which a vocalist always begins when he contributes a new ‘model’ of sound to the context; the tuning in, or attuning, of rhythm, dynamics, and timbre while a Magic Name which has been freely added to the context is being integrated into it; and—not least of all—there is in the German word ‘Stimmung’ the connotation of ‘atmosphere’, ‘ethos’, ‘spiritual harmony’; moreover, in the word ‘Stimmung’ is hidden ‘Stimme’—‘voice’! In several months, the singers learned an entirely new vocal technique. The notes actually sung must be as soft as possible, and specific overtones—indicated by a series of numbers from 2 to 234 and by series of voice sounds taken from the phonetic alphabet—must emerge as strongly as possible. Each singer has 8 or 9 models and 11 Magic Names which—in accordance with a ‘formal plan’—he can bring into play freely as the context may suggest, and to which the others respond with ‘transformations’, ‘varied deviations’, ‘pulsations’ and ‘assimilation’. In any given combination of voices, the singer of the model always takes the lead, passing it on to another singer when he feels that the right moment has come. After a singer has ‘called’ a Magic Name, it is periodically repeated in the same tempo and with approximately the same articulation as the model until it is finally assimilated, and thus integrated into the model prevailing at the time. Stimmung is indeed meditative music. Time is suspended. One listens to the inner self of the sound, the inner self of the harmonic spectrum, the inner self of a vowel, the inner self. The subtlest oscillations—barely a ripple--all the senses are alert and restful. In the beauty of things sensual shines the beauty of things eternal. |
