stockha sen 2010 un i v e r s i t y o f c o l o r a d o @ b o u l d e r Wednesday, 29 September Concert, 7:30 p.m. grusin music hall, imig music building Thursday, 30 September with generous support from Colloquium, 4:00 p.m. black box theater, President’s Fund for the Humanities atlas building cmap, The Atlas Institute Friday, 1 October The James L. D. and Rebecca Roser Concert, 7:30 p.m. Visiting Artist Fund black box theater, atlas building Sunday, 3 October Sound Demonstration 2:00 p.m. black box theater, atlas building + Concert, 4:00 p.m. black box theater, atlas building Welcome from the Dean Message from the Artistic Director The College of Music at the University of For many years after my Wrst personal encounter with Stockhausen in 2001, I Colorado is proud to host the Stockhausen dreamed of organizing a festival of his music in my home country. Stockhausen’s 2010 Festival. The programs we have works – 375 in number at the time of his passing – constitute one of the largest, assembled showcase some of the Wnest most innovative, and arguably greatest repertoires of music from the recent past. aspects of our College, ranging from But what was immediately apparent to me nine years ago was the way that talented faculty and student performers, to Stockhausen’s creations – for they often go far beyond the notion of “music” highly skilled sound engineers, to advanced alone – often suggest fruitful ways for musicians, artists, scholars and technicians scholars and researchers. But most of all, to come together and collaborate in concert for a common goal. This festival is bringing Stockhausen’s music to our College not just about forging musical, artistic and social bonds; the sheer crazyiness, demonstrates our strong committment to daring, eclecticism and exquisite beauty of his music are perfectly matched to the exploring new, challenging and unfamiliar unique environment of Boulder, Colorado. This is music that belongs here. realms of musical creation. Stockhausen’s works require an immense amount of preparation, technical Our connection with Stockhausen dates equipment, rehearsal and committment from musicians. In today’s Wnancial back to 1958, when the composer gave a climate, it is next to impossible to organize a festival that would meet lecture here during his Wrst breakneck tour of Stockhausen’s high standards in the United States. Fortunately, the University of our country. We are delighted to be able to Colorado and many generous individuals have provided a great deal of support reconnect with the composer’s legacy by for this project. Just as important, the College of Music has had the foresight inviting four renowned experts on his music over the years to invest in many pieces of high-quality infrastructure that have to our College. For an entire week they will contributed to this undertaking. And, our extremely talented faculty and perform, coach, lecture and advise us in this students are a uniquely qualiWed resource, never backing down from a challenge unusual musical repertoire. Special thanks that may at Wrst seem impossible to achieve. are due to the Stockhausen Foundation for helping to sponsor the festival, and to the The festival beneWts our community far beyond the concerts and lectures you various funds at the University, without will hear. Our four invited guests, who are all deeply invested in Stockhausen’s which none of this would have been possible. music, come to us from Seattle, Atlanta, Pforzheim, and Berlin. They will be working alongside our students, staV, and faculty, sharing their knowledge and We are conWdent that our festival will spark expertise for an entire week. more of what the College is already known for throughout this country: excellence in Even if you do not enjoy all the performances you experience, I hope that you performance, scholarship, experimentation, will at least be able to marvel at the possibilities that Stockhausen’s music and innovation. Enjoy the show. suggest, and the committment we have made to try to bring this unusual and challenging artwork to you. As Karlheinz used to say: Have a good trip! Dean Daniel Sher Paul Miller Without the support of the following organizations and individuals, this festival would not have been successful. Therefore, our deepest thanks & gratitude go to: The President’s Fund for the Humanities, The James L. D. and Rebecca Roser Visiting Artist Fund, cmap, The Atlas Institute, and the Musicology & Music Theory Colloquium Fund. Glenn Arndt (engineering & logistics), Gayle Sher (Dean, College of Music), Boethling (scheduling & logistics), Dan Boord Stephen Slater (scheduling & (Film Studies), John Drumheller (engineering & logistics), Michael Theodore housing), Laima Haley (publicity), Eric Harbeson (engineering), and Alex Vittal & (library & research), Kevin Harbison (engineering), Friends (housing). Peggy Hinton (logistics), Regina Houck (accounting), Myra Jackson (scheduling & Special thanks is due to the over Wfty logistics), Professors Jennings, Nguyen, and Silver undergraduate and graduate students (performance), Mary Jungerman (housing), Ira Liss who are performing on the three (publicity), Kellie Masterson (design & concerts. Their names are listed either construction), Gary McCrumb (engineering), Paul in a program book insert, or at the Miller (artistic director), Ron Mueller (CU opera), end of the program notes for the John Peterson & Amanda Samuelson (exhibit), concert on which they are Tom Robbins (design & construction), Daniel performing. 2 Introduction to the Festival Perhaps no other composer active after the Second World notated score using Stockhausen’s “blueprint.” Later process War has been as inXuential as Karlheinz Stockhausen. Artists compositions, such as Prozession (1967), Kurzwellen (1968), and and composers as diverse as Helmut Lachenmann, Harrison Spiral (1968) employ simpler notation, and eventually led Birtwistle, Charles Mingus, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, and Stockhausen to explore “intuitive music.” The earliest example the Grateful Dead have all acknowledged Stockhausen’s of Stockhausen’s intuitive music, Aus den Sieben Tagen (1968), inXuence on their own music. Miles Davis commented that “I employs a collection of texts that describes abstract processes had always written in a circular way, and through Stockhausen without the use of any signs at all. I could see that I didn’t want to ever play again from eight bars to eight bars,” while Björk asserted that “when Karlheinz By the end of the 1960s, Stockhausen’s reputation had grown harnessed electricity into sound and showed the rest of us, he outside avant-garde circles, and he returned to more sparked oV a sun that is still burning, and will glow for a conventionally notated scores. In many works of the next long time.” decade, such as Mantra (1970), a singable melodic complex governs the work. This complex, or “formula,” may be While many critics acknowledge the importance of comprised of a single-, double-, or triple-line melody that also Stockhausen’s music before 1970, few have recognized the speciWes other musical parameters such as pitch, dynamics, numerous later works that are also worthy of attention. In duration, timbre, and tempo. Licht (1977 – 2003), Stockhausen’s making program decisions for our festival, we have sought to monumental operatic cycle comprised of seven individual remedy this bias. Alongside some early classics, we also present operas each based on a day of the week, is an example of the some representative later works that we consider to be among extreme to which Stockhausen took formula composition; a his more important achievements. one-minute “superformula” is expanded to over twenty-nine hours of music. The Xexibility of this technique is perhaps best Karlheinz Stockhausen was born on 22 August 1928, in demonstrated in the Helicopter String Quartet (1993) from the Mödrath near Cologne, Germany. From 1947 – 1951, Wednesday opera, in which each member of the string quartet Stockhausen attended Cologne’s Musikhochschule, where he performs in a helicopter that completes an individual Xight studied music education, piano, and composition. Subsequently, plan near the theater. Live audio and video are transmitted to he studied with Olivier Messiaen in Paris. While almost all of the audience in the concert hall. Stockhausen’s compositions employ serial techniques, his early works were often described as “point” or “constellation” music, Following the completion of Licht, Stockhausen began another an aesthetic which was probably inspired by Messiaen and the ambitious project in 2003. Klang was to be a cycle of twenty- Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts. Serialism is a four compositions, one for each hour in the day. Stockhausen compositional technique in which some continuous perceptual noted that Klang represented a return to “moment form,” a continuum is quantized, and the individual quantized elements technique that he pioneered in the 1960s with compositions are ordered according to a pre-determined row or series. In such as Momente (1961-64), Mixtur (1964), and Telemusik Kreuzspiel (1951), both pitch and rhythm are determined in this (1966). Perhaps as a way of responding to the teleological way, demonstrating Stockhausen’s interest in going beyond the aspect of most earlier music, moment form involves earlier technique of twelve-tone music, where only pitch is composing episodes that are not necessarily temporally related ordered. Around this time, Stockhausen also wrote Gesang der to one another, and may even sometimes be reordered in a Jünglinge (1955-56), a work that many scholars believe performance. In practice, however, one particular ordering is established the viability of electronic music. In Kontakte (1959- usually chosen. After completing twenty-one of the pieces of 60), Stockhausen added spatialization to the perceptual his Klang cycle, Stockhausen died suddenly at his home in domains he tried to serialize. Spatialization, an integral part of December 2007. Stockhausen’s craft, denotes the composer’s attempt to compose the movement of sound through and around the Brian Ferneyhough, an important twentieth-century English performance space.