Karlheinz Stockhausen: Mantra

Stockhausen

This concert has already taken place! 22
This concert has already taken place! 22
GrauSchumacher Piano Duo
GrauSchumacher Piano Duo © Andreas Orban
  • Doors open 18:30

  • Start 19:30

  • End ca. 20:40

Each note a sun

Mantra for two pianos and ring modulators (1969/1970) assumes a special place in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s oeuvre. After a series of works that gave the artists performing them great freedom, this was a return to precisely specified sheet music. The work’s most striking feature is the use of live electronics in the form of a ring modulator that takes away the music being played and reflects it back into the two pianists’ playing as a modulated voice. 

Besides this advanced technology, Stockhausen also gives the soloists small antique cymbals, or crotales, that are used in ashrams and Buddhist monasteries. At the centre of everything is a twelve-tone melody of 13 notes, which Stockhausen understood as a mantra. Out of these he organised all the other musical processes in the work, which lasts over an hour. He saw every single one of these notes as a sun, around which he composed their own galaxies.

Performers

GrauSchumacher Piano Duo

Andreas Grau piano
Götz Schumacher piano

Jan Panis sound

Programme

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Mantra

Series

NDR das neue werk

Promoter: NDR

During your visit

Elbphilharmonie Plaza

A public viewing platform on the 8th floor of the Elbphilharmonie

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Food and Drink

Before the concert and in the interval

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Coughing, clapping, chatting

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