Stockhausen: Trans Concert Programme
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2017/18 season londonsinfonietta.org.uk #unfinishedBusiness stockhausen: trans concert Programme WeLCOME Welcome to tonight’s concert, the last major Welcome to Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival project in the autumn part of our 50th Anniversary Hall. Please do not hesitate to approach our Duty Season: Unfinished Business. Here, we have Manager and ushers with any questions you may been reflecting on just some of the brilliant music have. Please note that refreshments are from the London Sinfonietta’s history. Karlheinz not allowed in the concert hall. Stockhausen was one of the great advocates We hope you enjoy the concert this evening. for the ensemble in its first decade, helping us If you wish to get in touch with us following your establish a world-wide reputation. We are proud to visit please contact the Visitor Experience Team have worked not only with him, but also many of at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London his music’s interpreters – and I’m hugely grateful SE1 8XX, by phoning 020 3879 9555 or email to Pascal Rophé who has come to this project late [email protected]. We look in the day to replace the sadly indisposed forward to seeing you again soon. Oliver Knussen. Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward This is our third major Stockhausen collaboration Gallery are closed for essential refurbishment with The Royal Academy of Music’s Manson until 2018. During this period, Southbank Centre’s Ensemble – to whom we are hugely grateful – resident orchestras are performing in venues following Gruppen (2013) and Hymnen (2015). including St John’s Smith Square. We are proud of the fact that, working with Southbank Centre, we have been presenting such Find out more at southbankcentre.co.uk/sjss masterpieces of the 20th century for many years. And we know from working with young musicians in projects like these (and our own London Sinfonietta Academy) that we can inspire the next generation to make the curation and performance of new music their personal and professional passion. We celebrate our 50th Anniversary in a concert on 24 January – please do join us for this special occasion. Beyond that, for the rest of the season, we will be producing commissions, premieres and collaborations staged in both the concert hall and site specific locations, alongside schools work, public participation and projects to train young artists. The London Sinfonietta has evolved into an ensemble for the 21st century, but we will always make a more compelling future by taking account of our past. keep in touch Many thanks to our supporters for tonight and of the London Sinfonietta – not least Arts Council londonsinfonietta.org.uk England who provide such an important platform @Ldn_sinfonietta upon which we can build. And you can support us as well – we can promise experiences that will @londonsinfonietta last in your memory for the rest of your life. andrew Burke @londonsinfonietta chief executive stockhausen: trans Wednesday 6 December 2017 7.30pm, royal Festival hall karlheinz stockhausen Zodiac (Tierkreis) for orchestra 1. Virgo 2. Libra 3. Scorpio 4. Sagittarius 5. Capricorn 6. Aquarius 7. Pisces 8. Aries 9. Taurus 10. Gemini Interval karlheinz stockhausen Trans for orchestra and tape Pascal rophé conductor London sinfonietta side-by-side with royal academy of music manson ensemble sound Intermedia sound projection sophie motley stage director tony simpson lighting designer Jonathan Berman assistant conductor The London Sinfonietta is grateful to Arts Council England for their generous support of the ensemble, as well as the many other individuals, trusts and businesses who enable us to realise our ambitions. KARlHEInZ STOCKHAUSEN (1928–2007) Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mesias Maiguashea at the Studio for Electronic Music of WDR, Cologne, 1971 © Werner Scholz Not since Beethoven has one composer obtained The wildness of his cantata Momente and the such a mythical status as Karlheinz Stockhausen. cacophony of sound that is Gruppen owe much to A controversial individual whose candidness these other sources. and eccentricities have provoked as much With Gesang der Jünglinge he became the first revulsion as they have intrigue, Stockhausen composer to integrate seamlessly electronic and can nevertheless lay claim to the creation of natural sound sources, while iconic works such more new musical movements than any other as the Helikopter-Streichquartett pushed the composer of the 20th century. boundaries of musical performance to hitherto While Stockhausen claimed to have been undreamed-of limits. In itself, this was just one educated on Sirius, the brightest star in our sky, component of Stockhausen’s giant opera project, he was actually brought up in a village near Licht, which comprises seven full-length operas, Cologne and later studied with Darius Milhaud one for every day of the week, totalling some and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. 29 hours of music. His studies with Messiaen sparked an interest While his later works took on a mystical quality in exploring serial procedures, which led to that saw him fall out of favour in some circles, the his earliest works in this vein, the ‘punktuelle’ unparalleled levels of bold experimentation across (‘pointist’ or ‘punctual’) piece Kreuzspiel and his catalogue of 300 works in every imaginable his first set of Klavierstücke. But Stockhausen’s genre have left an indelible imprint on the history interest in rigorous formalism was tempered by of Western music that few composers of the future a sense of raw vitality and infectious energy – a will be able to replicate. hangover from the jazz music he had listened to during the post-war years. © Jo Kirkbride ZoDIac (1974/2004/2007) trans (1971) For orchestra For orchestra and tape The London Sinfonietta shared a special working Trans (meaning ‘across’ or ‘transition’) is as much relationship with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and a piece of theatre as it is a musical composition. across its 50 year history, the ensemble has given Its unusual and ethereal atmosphere is the result six UK premieres and three world premieres of a dream that Stockhausen had in December (including new versions) of his works since 1968. 1970. On waking, he jotted down some notes: Tonight’s programme showcases the challenging demands of Stockhausen’s repertoire, which has “Dreamt orchestral work...orchestra sits in come to form an important thread in the London series...sound wall opens with different intervals Sinfonietta’s programme. Stockhausen’s eclectic at periods of about twenty seconds, allowing and individual personality can be witnessed music behind this wall to come through – throughout tonight’s programme, with its dreamy brass and woodwinds mixed – and I hear low visions and astrological influences. instruments that are the fundamentals; in timbres Zodiac (or Tierkreis in German) was originally they’re coloured like organ mixtures. With each written for music boxes as part of a larger theatre low melodic line of one of the lower instruments piece for percussion Musik im Bauch (Music in the there are several instruments in parallel, playing Belly). It was reworked several times for various softer and colouring this low sound...at the same arrangements and in his final years Stockhausen time I hear the sound of a weaving chair.” produced tonight’s two versions for orchestra Trans is visual experience with the musicians which include five star-signs each. He completed of the orchestra (and conductor) obscured by a Fünf weitere Sternzeichen (Five more star-signs) vividly lit gauze. The only musicians you see are the night before he died on 4 December 2007, the immobile string players, who hold a series of just over ten years ago, and was thought to be sustained notes throughout, and are instructed to planning the orchestration of two more star-signs move ‘like puppets’. Stockhausen believed at the Cancer and Leo (his own) in the new year. time that orchestral musicians were losing their In tonight’s programme, the melodies of Zodiac artistic and technical integrity, as they churned represent ten star-signs and Stockhausen ensured out symphonies like factory workers – Trans is the specific characteristics of each are apparent perhaps a comment on this mentality. by studying friends and family. Aquarius is based Nearly all of the musical action we hear in Trans on the traits of his youngest daughter Julika, who is unseen, with three distinct layers that co-exist originally inspired Musik in Bauch. Although some through the entire piece: have more than twelve notes, the star-signs are 1. Four groups of wind and brass primarily based on tone rows. Libra, for example, 2. On stage string section holding a drone includes fourteen notes, with F sharp and D sharp 3. Tape part of a loom shuttle panning from left appearing in different octaves. Each melody to right/right to left is centred around a different chromatic pitch and distinct tempo – the score’s performance Stockhausen used the sound of the loom shuttle notes stating clearly that the metronome tempi structurally to divide the piece into sections and must be adhered to in order to represent each often as a trigger, activating or stopping certain characteristic accurately. Rhythms are also musical figures. The piece comes across as arranged serially and aim to create an element of episodic, yet sounds like it’s very loosely put contrast across the series of signs. together, playful and irreverent. Stockhausen is trying to make the audience imagine what In Cologne, as a tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen, theatrical misdemeanours are being played out the relevant Zodiac melody (according to time of by the musicians who are hidden away, whilst year) is played everyday at noon on the 48-bell teasing us with the monotony of the statically carillon in the tower of the Town Hall. visible string section.