Dec
8
Stalin & Stockhausen
Filed Under Classical Music, Nonfiction |
No, I am not drawing parallels between Stalin and Stockhausen. Just saying that I was thinking about both yesterday. I went to the bookstore to see if I might finally buy Montefiore’s Young Stalin, the book that was high on my “to read” list. I’m sure the book has its merits, but I’m sorry to say that I could not stomach its first page. This is how the book’s Prologue begins -
At 10:30 a.m. on the sultry morning of Wednesday, 26 June 1907, in the seething central square of Tiflis, a dashing mustachioed cavalry captain in boots and jodhpurs…
You gotta be kidding me with those adjectives. We get “sultry” and “seething” in a quick succession, and the sentence is not even halfway done. I’m not so hot about “dashing mustachioed” either. And the writing in the first few pages is nauseatingly over-spiced with unfortunate adjectives and adverbs, shouting: INTRIGUE IS HERE! Very disappointed because I’m sure the narrative is as good as many of the reviewers have mentioned. Call me a fascist, but I don’t think I could get involved in the story past all that purple, purple, purple.
Later in the day, my friend M called me to see what I was up to, if I wanted to catch the Mayweather-Hatton fight tonight. Then he told me if I knew that Stockhausen died. I was caught off guard, not because I was stunned by his death, but rather because for some reason, I’d thought he died a long time ago. God, I thought to myself, he lived a full life.
So right now, I’m listening to the new recording of Stimmung, by Paul Hillier and Theater of Voices. Stockhausen composed the work after wandering through the ruins of Mexico, contemplating about the way that the Aztecs recited the magic names of gods through stimmung. The composition consists of 51 models organized around four eroto-spritual poems and the magic names of ancient gods (i.e. Aztec, ancient Greek). Six singers on six microphones (which are tuned to an inaudible harmonic of B-flat) progress through the models by singing in overtones. As you can see from the image, Stimmung is not a traditionally “written” work. The singers have a great amount of freedom, even in choosing the order in which the models and names should be sung; the order can be decided upon beforehand or improvised during the performance. I guess Cortazar’s Hopscotch may be a literary analogue, except that Stimmung allows for an even greater aleatory freedom and spontaneity. (For a fantastic explanation of Stimmung, go here.)
I’ve never been to a performance of Stimmung, but would love to, as it is very much a work which almost requires a live audience to convey its constantly morphing spiritual atmospheres. But Hillier’s luminous new recording is as close as you can get to a live experience, I guess. Stockhausen was once asked how he had arrived at the novel compositional technique of Stimmung, and his response is as beautiful and magical as anything you might ever read about creating a work of art -
After a few days, my work was only possible during the night. The children needed silence also during the day. So I began humming, did not sing loudly anymore, began to listen to my vibrating skull… Nothing oriental, nothing philosophical: just the two babies, a small house, silence, loneliness, night, snow, ice: pure miracle.
(The greatest Stockhausen photo, ever: by Betty Freeman)
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