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Paul V. Miller

Music and Letters, Volume 94, Number 4, November 2013, pp. 712-715 (Article)

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For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mal/summary/v094/94.4.miller.html

Access provided by Duquesne University (24 Oct 2015 18:18 GMT) Salmenhaara’s dissertation became the first The inclusion of such reminiscences alongside published analysis of Ligeti’s work: Das probing source studies and historical and ana- musikalische Material und seine Behandlung in den lytical commentary makes Of Foreign Lands and WerkenApparitions,’ ‘ ‘Atmosphe' res,’ und ‘Requiem’ Strange Sounds a feast for not only Ligeti fans von Gyo« rgy Ligeti (Regensburg, 1969)). but also chroniclers of late twentieth-century The redoubtable Richard Steinitz follows his musical life. My one caveat with the physical intriguing remarks on the troubled genesis of book: the spine of my copy completely the Piano Concerto in his MusicoftheImagin- deteriorated before I was halfway through. ation (London, 2003) with a study of its AMY BAUER history, achieved primarily via a painstaking University of California, Irvine survey of materials in the Sacher Foundation. doi:10.1093/ml/gct110 The Piano Concerto was commissioned in the ß The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University early 1970s by the American conductor Mario Press. All rights reserved. di Bonaventura, but not completed until 1988. Steinitz found over fifty successive beginnings spread over six years, plus three preliminary Stockhausen: A Theological Interpretation.By plans projecting four-, five-, and seven- Thomas Ulrich, trans. Jayne Obst. movement versions. As work on the concerto pp. xii þ138. (Stockhausen-Stiftung fu« r overlapped with other works, Steinitz includes Musik, Ku« rten, 2012, E25/$39. ISBN 978- detailed sketches on the Horn Trio as well, 3-9815317-0-1.) and traces the history of sketches that have escaped the capacious embrace of the Sacher In the last decade, Thomas Ulrich has made a Foundation. Steinitz’s consideration of the significant contribution towards demystifying sketches is informed by his conversations with the rich theological associations in Karlheinz Ligeti and by his own translucent prose. The Stockhausen’s works. Recently, the Stockhausen reader will be impressed by the Herculean Verlag translated and published the first half task involved in teasing out a chronology of his book, which deals with Stockhausen among varied and often undated sketches, as (Neue Musik aus religio« sem Geist: Theologisches well as by the taut narrative Steinitz con- Denken im Werk von Karlheinz Stockhausen und structs, which leads to Ligeti’s ‘eureka John Cage (Saarbru« cken, 2006)). Not simply a moment’: a first movement design in which theologian with academic facility, Ulrich has piano and orchestra are distinguished by com- also distinguished himself by serving as the plementary harmonic casts, metres, and dramaturge for several recent staged produc- accent patterns. tions of Stockhausen’s works, including the My final category of student reminiscences memorable 2011 premiere of Sonntag aus Licht in steps away from the work and career to Cologne. Ulrich’s book provides a valuable but consider the man, as seen through the eyes of somewhat limited perspective on theological two students from Ligeti’s group classes in com- thinking in Stockhausen. position at the Hamburg Musikhochschule: It has long been known that Stockhausen’s Wolfgang-Andreas Schultz and Manfred creations are inundated with theological Stahnke. Both essays betray their authors’ meaning. The composer himself fancifully unease with certain aspects of their subject; re- called his works a ‘fast airship to the divine’. markably intimate revelations appear alongside While many have emphasized the variety of re- distanced, at times unsympathetic accounts ligious influences on his works, and Stock- of Ligeti as teacher and mentor. The heated hausen often alluded to a diverse array of discussions on aesthetics and compositional religious inspiration (perhaps most memorably ethics that marked Ligeti’s classes, and which in the calling of divine names in Stimmung but often set students against one another, remain also at numerous other moments, particularly vivid for Schultz and Stahnke. In both in the Licht cycle), Ulrich treats the compos- articlesçbut particularly in Stahnke’s lengthy itional project primarily as an expression of accountçwe see the class evolve from the mid- Christian epistemology. His main thesis is that 1970s to the late 1980s, through assaults from ‘Stockhausen’s theological aporia fuelled his the compositional ‘left’ and new developments artistic development until he found a stable in style and technique. Ligeti appears, in basis for his work in formula composition’ Schultz’s words, as something of a musicien (p. viii). Ulrich’s methodology seems cautious maudit (p. 219), an artist whose high standards but prudent: begin by examining the works often seemed to negate his own past work as themselves, not the ‘abyss of motives to which well as that of his contemporaries. Stockhausen occasionally refers’ (p. ix). He 712 arranges Stockhausen’s oeuvre by compositional (1952^3) includes a complete reworking of the technique, beginning with the early serial pitch material, while keeping the rhythmic music up to about 1954, then moving to Group structure invariant. In this light, Ulrich’s state- and Moment form, continuing with Process ment that ‘from the very beginning, the piece and Intuitive music, and concluding with emerged from one root’ (author’s emphasis, Formula and Superformula composition. p. 19) does not tell the whole story. Ultimately, Notwithstanding these four categories, Ulrich’s Stockhausen’s ‘hostility towards sensuality’ç underlying goal is to demonstrate unity in the this, despite the peculiar beauty that many composer’s life work. hear in the early worksçled to a dead end Ulrich identifies a compelling link between (p. 29). But this perspective also seems Stockhausen’s early serial music and the Neo- somewhat problematic: Goeyvaerts thought of platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus. Kontra-Punkte as representing the ‘baroque dir- These third- and fifth-century writers, steeped ection’ in early serial music (letter to Stock- in the Hellenistic intellectual tradition, hausen of 18 July 1953). In Ulrich’s narrative, influenced early Christian metaphysics. They the inabilityçor unwillingnessçto pursue abso- conceived of the ‘One’ as separated from the lute musical purity led Stockhausen to explore cosmos, yet simultaneously permeating it. By the ideas of Group and Moment form in his connecting early European serialism to these next stage of development. ancient thinkers, Ulrich opens up an appealing To clarify Stockhausen’s new orientation, way of understanding the young Stockhausen’s Ulrich begins by citing Ligeti’s description of Herculean efforts in serial determinism. In this serialism in die Reihe 4 (1958/1960) as inadequate reading, rather than manifesting a peculiar for Stockhausen. For Ligeti, serialism was control mania, Stockhausen struggled to reflect fundamentally characterized by a dualism nothing less than the divine order of the between what is mechanistically formed universe in a single musical composition. For through the series, and what is the free choice Stockhausen, this meant that any dialectic op- of the composer (p. 33). In Stockhausen’s position of material had to be eliminated Group and Moment forms, fixed and variable (p. 29). Another way to understand the effaced aspects of composition both became subject to dialectic has to do with Stockhausen’s awareness serial ordering. Referring to aleatoric elements of his historical situation. By the 1950s, Europe that found their way into his compositions had experienced such decay and destruction during this period, Ulrich writes that by that Stockhausen could see no way forward allowing ‘the performers’ subjectivity to deter- other than to evoke a ‘supra-individual’ and mine aspects of the composition ...the ‘supra-historical absolute order’çhence, the composer gains another area to form’ (p. 38). fixation on the ‘One’ and the almost obsessive In other words, Stockhausen’s move towards elimination of everything not emanating from Group and Moment form was yet one more it (pp. 28^9). step towards effacing (but specifically not In his attempts to govern many dimensions sublimating) dualities by expanding the realm of a composition through one fundamental of the composed. This is a sign that Stock- principle, Stockhausen’s early works such as hausen’s serialism has definite religious roots Kreuzspiel (1951) were hampered by a struggle (p. 48), for if one series (a stand-in for the forming the individual timbres, which were dif- ‘One’ being) is only part of the composition, ficult to bring into a relationship with the hierarchies and opposites form that destroy the underlying pitch or rhythmic structure. He ‘all-encompassing context of the serial’ (p. 49). found something close to an ideal solution in Order thereby becomes a context in which the electronic composition Studie II (195 4 ) opposites simply become differences. The more where even the sound-spectra are produced by Stockhausen tried to integrate order and the same basic material as other musical par- disorder within his plans, the more his work ameters. Here, virtually everything from the ‘points to transcendence, enables contact with timbres to the formal structure is ‘gleaned from God ...’ (p. 50). At this point it may seem as the One’ (p. 15)çspecifically, a five-element though the ever-expanding serial mechanisms series coupled to a table of frequencies, dur- threaten to overwhelm the work, and in this ations, and decibel levels. Yet Ulrich occasion- context one can understand the many accus- ally overlooks the astonishingly flexible way ations of totalitarianism levelled at the that Stockhausen dealt with kinks in his composer (something Ulrich has wrestled with compositional process. As Jerome Kohl in his more recent work). So, Ulrich next con- demonstrated in a fascinating unpublished siders the changes in Stockhausen’s composition 2004 paper, the peculiar history of Kontra-Punke during the mid- and late 1960s, which confront 713 this very problem head-on in an attempt to just character traits; they have their individual reconcile a hitherto unprecedented artistic histories woven into them with their own dis- freedom with serial order. tinctive musical turns of direction and interval- Grouping key works from Plus-Minus (19 63 ) lic content (pp. 86^7). Therefore, Licht is not to Aus den sieben Tagen (1968) allows Ulrich to merely an image and essence of divine order address the phenomena of Process and Intuitive (as in earlier serial music) but rather the music together. The central question of Stock- medium of communication between God and man hausen’s composition at this time has to do (p. 93). with the relationship between order and The metaphors of the arrow and the circle, freedom (p. 56). While Stockhausen certainly which have provided rich soil for discussion in did not abandon aspects of determinism and other related contexts, also figure into Ulrich’s their concomitant demands of precision in per- analysis. While the form of the circle captures formance, Ulrich argues that a good rendition the cyclic nature of many works (Zyklus, Sirius, of an Intuitive piece requires more than just ex- Tierkreis, Licht), the arrow conveys Stock- pressing the text-score correctly. Rather, Intui- hausen’s constant desire to push upwards tive music necessitates a kind of release from towards a higher form of existence. The spiral the ego, thereby opening a pathway to the (a synthesis of the circle/arrow dualism) serves ‘supraconscious’ (pp. 62^3). Ulrich finds a sur- as an even more appealing metaphor, since it prisingly apt metaphor for Intuitive music in symbolizes both unceasing growth outwards the practice that some religious communities (without abandoning the centre), and increased have of ‘speaking in tongues’. As the author concentration by cascading inwards. How big explains, St Paul viewed speaking in tongues is Stockhausen’s spiral? Ulrich gives a size of not as a way to communicate to one’s fellow 125 ‘musical octaves’çroughly the difference beings, but rather as speaking directly to God in time between the big bang and oscillations Himself (1 Cor. 14: 2). Analogously, Intuitive of gamma rays. Stockhausen’s intent, then, was music ideally facilitates a move away from ‘self- nothing less than to draw from all elements of centered behaviour’ towards Love of the One the universe, transpose them, and make them (p. 74). Of course, this stage of composition into musical experiences. This is why Stock- ended abruptly after an acute personal crisis, hausen’s music is not a mere representation of and notated music suddenly reappeared with reality, but reality itself (p. 68). Mantra (1970). Ulrich views this return as a While there are good reasons for using Chris- ‘mediating instance between the spirit and ego tian theology as the primary lens through of the musician’ (p. 76) though it is obvious which to explore Stockhausen’s spirituality, that after reducing an entire score of a piece to aspects of some other religious and cultural a few lines of text, there was perhaps not much traditions (such as the writings of Sri more room to move forward. Aurobindo and Satprem, and the Noh theatre For Ulrich, Stockhausen’s Formula and of Japan) might have lent more depth and Superformula composition opens up another breadth to Ulrich’s writing. Perhaps mindful of wide field of theological reflection that counts this lacuna, Ulrich considered Jewish and as some of the best work in his book. More Islamic concepts of Lucifer in his masterful than just a singable musical theme, a formula 2012 analysis of that character in Licht.But, orders musical structure on the large, medium, there is also the persistent question of the role and small scales. Thus, the listener can finally of the Urantia book, which has been considered perceive the formula’s (and the series’s) in several recent articles, including one by mediating effect that personifies the divine Ulrich himself. Here, the author surprisingly order while inviting musicians and listeners to dismisses the Urantia book and other esoteric participate in it (p. 82). This takes on added sources such as Jacob Lorber: ‘the basic direc- meaning in Stockhausen’s epic seven-opera tion of Stockhausen’s thinking remained un- cycle Licht. If ‘the music at the beginning of his touched by them’ (p. ix). As scholars such as oeuvre ...looked away from reality out of des- Leopoldo Siano argue, it is important to take peration about it, in order to make the pure the ‘big blue book’ more seriously, especially in heavenly proportions sound in a supra- the light of the Urantia pieces in Stockhausen’s personal music, now [it] dives into the sphere Klang cycle. of human destiny, tells about birth and Relating to questions of concinnity in death, striving and defeat, temptation and Stockhausen’s work, one pseudo-theological self-control’ (p. 88). Humans are ‘incarnations’ connection might also be worth considering in of the Michael, Eve, and Lucifer formulas in a study of Stockhausen’s spirituality: the Licht because the formulas embody more than nineteenth-century discourse on musical or- 714 ganicism. In a passage from 1826 that seems John Cage. By Rob Haskins. pp. 180. Critical particularly apt to Stockhausen’s formula com- Lives. (Reaktion Books, London, 2012, position (but also to his serial composition in »10.95. ISBN 978-1-86189-905-7.) general), Lichtenthal wrote: Amongst the works of the great masters may be found In addition to documentary studies, three main innumerable pieces that are built on a single motif. areas of research can be distinguished more or What marvellous unity there is in the structure of less successively in John Cage scholarship. these compositions! Everything relates to the subject: Philosophical approaches range from esoteric nothing extraneous or inappropriate is there. Not a speculations to profound reflections on Cage’s single link could be detached from the chain without reconceptualization of music. Music analytical destroying the whole. (Quoted in Ian Bent, Musical publications based on sketch studies offer Analysis in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994, 13) information on how compositions are made With his book, Ulrich has shown us how (‘poetics’), the two most comprehensive contri- Stockhausen infused organicist thinking with butions being James Pritchett’s The Music of profound theological meaning through the John Cage (Cambridge, 1993) and Paul van technique of serial composition. While it is an Emmerik’s ‘Thema en variaties: Systematische important study by a knowledgeable and sym- tendensen in de compositietechnieken van pathetic writer, the book is hampered by a John Cage’ (PhD diss., University of Amster- number of issues. Ulrich originally conceived dam, 1996). Recently, music analytical studies his work as a study of theological meaning in based on the perceivable outcome of the com- Stockhausen and Cage together. The Stock- poser’s actions have appeared (‘aesthetics’), for hausen Verlag, while it ought to be commended instance Benedict Weisser’s ‘ ...The Whole for providing an appealing translation of the Paper Would Potentially Be Sound: Time- first half, might have also included the portion Brackets and the Number Pieces (1981^92)’, about John Cage, which would almost certainly Perspectives of New Music,41/2(2003),176^225; be of great interest and value to many (as well and Rob Haskins’s ‘An Anarchic Society of as a generous gesture to a great friend of Sounds’: The Number Pieces of John Cage’ Stockhausen). Second, Ulrich could have (PhD diss., University of Rochester/Eastman strengthened his argument for a monistic School of Music, 2004). approach by more thoroughly addressing Rob Haskins has now also produced a biog- writers (such as Ligeti and Jean-Claude Eloy) raphy of John Cage. Detailed biographical who have used a dialectical lens to view Stock- studies on Cage have been scarce: Haskins’s hausen’s project. Like Ligeti, Eloy also views new book is only the fourth of its kind after the Stockhausen’s written-out music and improvisa- biographies by David Revill (1992), David tory caprices as two sides of a classic dialectical Nicholls (2007), and Kenneth Silverman (2010). opposition. Finally, Ulrich’s focus on Christian The suspicion of the genre already raised theology to the virtual exclusion of other ideas in 1975 by Carl Dahlhaus (‘Wozu noch Bio- is somewhat limiting. Although it would be graphien?’, Melos/Neue Zeitschrift fu« rMusik,1 hard to deny that Christianity formed the (1975), 82) seems to be particularly relevant for centre of Stockhausen’s spiritual universe, any a biography on this American experimental picture of the composer’s life without consider- composer. By systematically trying to free ing other traditions overlooks ideas that often sounds from his own intentions and subjectivity, help to enrich the tapestry that formed Stock- Cage scorns the theory of self-expression, one hausen’s truly ‘catholic’ mosaic. of the pillars of biographical writing. More Despite these shortcomings, Thomas Ulrich’s than with any other composer, we do not need book is an important and appealing contribu- to know what Cage was feeling when writing a tion to the study of theology in late twentieth- particular work to be able to ‘understand’ it. century music. Those who may have been The decline of art religion, the second puzzled at how Marcus Bandur could call seri- argument invoked by Dahlhaus, is even alism ‘a philosophy of life’ might turn here to brought to completion by Cage. The third and discover one plausible Weltanschauung. fourth arguments, respectively irrelevancy in PAUL V. M ILLER the twentieth century of artist biographies as Cornell University moral exempla classica for youth and as catalysts doi:10.1093/ml/gct103 for patriotism, are invariably solid, although ß The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University the success of a composer presenting an alterna- Press. All rights reserved. tive to the European concept and practice of art music is of course greeted with enthusiasm in American scholarship. Soçto paraphrase 715