Karlheinz Stockhausen

1
Karlheinz Stockhausen

• Stimmung

2
Swingle Singers
Stimmung
Soprano 1, Soprano 2, Alto, Tenor 1, Tenor 2, Bass
Stimmung or agreement. The primary sense of the
title "implies not only the outward tuning of
voices or instruments, but also the inward tuning
of one's soul" (Hillier 2007).
1968
for 6 amplified voices
3
Background

• The post-war dilemma
• Stockhausen and his musical development
• Post Webern and the new musical aesthetic
• Music and complexity

4
Conception

• February and March of 1968
• Stockhausen had spent a month walking in the
  Mexican ruins of Oaxaca, Merida, and Chichenitza
• Noticed that the 3 wings of a Mayan temple were
  out of phase

5
Phase shifting

• Common amongst the minimalist composers of the
  1960s
• Overlapping phrases of continually shifting music

Terry Riley In C
Steve Reich Clapping Music
Steve Reich Come out
Steve Reich Piano Phase
6
Composing Stimmung
I started composing this work with a lot of
melodies, singing aloud all the time. But 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,
stopped writing melodies of fundamentals, settled
on the low B flat, started again and wrote
Stimmung, trying out everything myself by humming
the overtone melodies. Nothing oriental, nothing
philosophical just the two babies, a small
house, silence, loneliness, night, snow, ice
pure miracle!
7
Mother Chord
The mother chord lacks the fundamental
The work is based on 1 chord B flat 9
Duration 75 minutes
The chord is derived from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
7th 9th harmonic of B flat
9th
7th
5th
4th
3rd
2nd
8
The singers are required to sing overtones or
harmonics
This is achieved by exaggerated vowel sounds
9
C
Ab
D
Bb
F
Bb
Stockhausen treats each note as a fundamental
note in itself
The singers are required to sing harmonics, so
the harmonic series of these notes are present
C
B flat
F
D
A flat
Thus allowing 5 harmonic series to sound
simultaneously
10
You will hear my work Stimmung, which is nothing
for seventy-five minutes but one chord - it never
changes - with the partials of natural harmonics
on a fundamental, the fundamental itself isnt
there, the second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh,
and the ninth harmonics, and nothing but that.
And then the timbral changes of these
fundamentals. And the timbres are precisely
notated with the International Phonetic Alphabet
and numbers. So when I sing, lets say you can
focus on each partial very precisely. With two
breaths I could make the whole vowel circle, and
Ive written the numbers up to the twenty-fourth
harmonic and the singers six months to learn
precisely how to hit the ninth harmonic, or the
tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, up to the
twenty-fourth. You see, thats a real composition
with timbres where the timbres are rhythmetized
the way we formally rhythmetize pitches.
11
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
12
Stimmung
structure
There are 4 parts to the score
6 pages of syllabic models
6 pages of magic names
4 poems
formal plan
maps out 51 sections or moments
13
The pattern are magic names such as Chronos, Zeus
and Gaia or days of the week
Each subsequent section will overlap with the
proceeding section
Each of the sections begins with a pattern which
is imitated and developed by the ensemble until
the shape is complete
The names are chosen by the singers
The singers can add up to 6 names in a section
14
The 4 poems
written by Stockhausen
occur at intervals
one for each male voice, one for a female