Stockhausen's Tierkreis - Presentation Notes [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

(SLIDE 1 - PICTURE OF STOCKHAUSEN) Stockhausen was one of many composers who felt alienated by the artistic traditions that “had been used as political propaganda and to support nationalism. So, seeking to start anew, this generation of composers sought to create a new musical language that fit their ideals. --Backstory Karlheinz Stockhausen was born on August 22, 1928 in Mödrath to a poor family. His mother suffered from depression and lost ability to care for her children after their 2nd child died during infancy. When Stockhausen was 4, she was treatment she was taken to a "special treatment" hospital. His father stuggled to find work as a teacher and when he did finally get a permanent job, it required him to be a local organizer for the Nazi party which caused him great anxiety and conflicted with his faith. By the age of 13, His still institutionalized mother, was “officially put to death [because of] a law during the war that these people could be killed because they were just useless, and because their food was needed.” Afterward, his father, unable to handle the anxiety, hastily joined the military and remarried to a young housekeeper. Stockhausen sensed he just wanted to die a hero so his life meant something and he was eventually killed in battle in Hungary. Robin Maconie For a number of leading young composers there was a private dimension to their public alignment with a policy of rejection of history. Family sufferings and wartime tragedy toughened the resolve of particular personalities, among them Stockhausen, Boulez, and Xenakis, to sever their music from all risk of contamination with the past. All three in their several ways came to maturity armed with a formidable conviction of having been chosen to survive, and to lead new music to a new level of consciousness --Didn't affect his progress as a musician as he graduated from the Cologne musicschool in 1951 studying music education and had an appetite for musicology, philosophy, and poetry. That summer he attended Darmstadt where he met a young belgian composer named Karel Goeyvaerts who introduced him to Messiaen. In 1974 Inspired by a dream that would become his work Musik im Bauch: (SHOW SLIDE 2 - MUSIK IM BAUCH) a scenic piece for six percussionists where near the end, three music boxes are taken out of the stomach of a bird man suspended above the stage. 12 melodies were written for the music boxes according to the characteristics of the signs of the zodiac and three are chosen for each performance depending on the occasion. This is the original use for the 12 melodies that for Tierkreis before it became considered a work on its own. --(SHOW SLIDE 3 - TIERKREIS COVER) On the front cover we see the signs ordered clockwise in a circle. The small noteheads indicate approximate range of melody and accompaniment and the large notehead

indicates the central note of the melody or ZENTRALTON and each signs ascends upward by semitones. Their tempos were derived from a cromatic tempo scale. He treated the melody and durations as wave cycles: If started simultaneously,it would take at least 3-4 repetitions before coming back into phase. (SHOW SLIDE 4 - TIERKREIS ROWS) Each melody is based off a tone row that reflects the characteristics of each sign and of people he knew. Many of which are not 12 tones. Characteristic of Stockhausen that although he wrote music serially, was not afraid to use flexibility and intuition within the systems he creates to attain the exact result. PLAY ON YOUTUBE LIBRA (7:55) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kR_wG0MYNoA#t=475s (SHOW SLIDE 5 - LIBRA MELODY B is the central pitch in the melody for Libra and acts as a melodic center of gravity. The other pitches swing out from it at growing intervals before returning back to the Zentralton (see figure 4). The sign Libra is symbolized by a scale, so the concept of balance is inherent in the melodic structure itself as well as in the rhythm which follows a pattern of alternating short and long notes. As for the pitches, they “‘have the following progression of intervals in respect to the central note B: +1,-2,+3,-3,+4,-6,+7,-8,+5,5,+2,-4,-1,0...The principle is that in each limb there are two new pitches. This aspect is also like a balance.’” Additionally, the durations of the measures are 2,4,6,7,5,3,1 (see figure 8). Here again is the concept of balance as the durations form a spiral around the central measure. PLAY ON YOUTUBE SAGITTARIUS (10:15) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kR_wG0MYNoA#t=615s SHOW SLIDE 6 - SAGITTARIUS MELODY In Sagittarius, Stockhausen use the high position of the Zentralton Db and the contour of the melody “quickly reaches the lowest pitch of the (fixed) range, and then ascends in a mostly chromatic, scalar line” (see figure 4). The high Db at both ends of the row (and repeated an octave lower in the center of the melody) act as points of departure and return as a trait of sign Sagittarius is a thirst for adventure and to travel. The melody’s duration is divided into two parts with the second immediately following the lowest note in the middle of the row. (SHOW SLIDE 7) These two parts “are then subdivided by a lowerlevel arithmetic series of 5, 6, 7 / 4, 3, 1, 2, 8 quarter-notes (each half = 18)” with two tones from the row assigned to each one except for the short 6th subdivision which has one. To accommodate this, two extra notes occur: Ab and F in the first half, and an Eb at the end to make a total of which makes fourteen main notes plus the Zentralton.

Irony of melodies Isn't writing melodies the exact thing that Stockhausen wanted to avoid? Is he giving up, beginning to conform back to tradition? I would say no because looking at the context of the piece, its main intention was to be used as source material for other works even though the 12 melodies stand on their own. Libra, Taurus, Aries, Capricorn became pieces on their own, and the melodies were used in his work Sirius to depict the changing seasons. The use of the zodiac melodies is more similar to that of Messiaen's use of his bird calls as material. Creating these short "simple" melodies provided material that would be used in future significant works. Although Stockhausen has a reputation for being a strict serialist composer, Tierkreis demonstrates that he is capable of flexibility within the complex systems that he creates.