Stockhausen: »Stimmung«
Hamburg International Music Festival
»Argumentative, always alert and ready to storm towards his vision of the future« – thus a description of Karlheinz Stockhausen by the German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung. And it’s certainly true that the composer, who was born near Cologne in 1928, became probably the most uncompromising creator of new sound worlds. This predestined him to be the figurehead of a music festival entitled »Utopia«. The Stockhausen retrospective opens with a performance of his 1968 composition »Stimmung«, in which he makes use of overtone singing to create the impression of polyphony in the listener’s mind. He thus produced meditative music that penetrates to the interior of a sound, music where time itself seems suspended. The Hamburg-based vocal performer Frauke Aulbert is accompanied by the Forum Neue Vokalmusik, which was formed especially to perform this work.
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a great utopian, hence the decision to devote an extensive retrospective to him at the Hamburg International Music Festival. As head of the studio for electronic music at West German Radio (WDR), he used early forms of the synthesizer to create an entire cosmos of thitherto-unprecedented sounds, advancing into new musical dimensions in the process. His works breathe the rhythm of the stars, and get lost in the spiral nebulas of infinity.
»If we tax our mind to the utmost and arrive at the limits of what can be analysed and described, that’s where mysticism begins. That’s my home as a musician, that’s where I want to go.«
Towards the end, the eccentric esoteric even claimed that he was from the planet Sirius. Notwithstanding, Stockhausen was the best-known and most important post-war German composer, influencing artists as diverse as the Beatles, Björk, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, Amon Düül, Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk and Frank Zappa. Stockhausen believed firmly in a higher plane of human existence, and he believed that music was the key to it. It’s worth following him on this path: the utopia of music lives on.
Performers
Forum Neue Vokalmusik vocal ensemble
Christie Finn soprano
Natasha López soprano
Frauke Aulbert alto
Beat Duddeck tenor
Philip Lehmann tenor
Matías Bocchio bass
Sean Williams sound
Programme
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Stimmung für 6 Vokalisten