The Work of Karlheinz Stockhausen Volume 2 by Menezes, Flo;

Short description:

This three-volume work is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken, of the musical compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), one of the major figures of Post-World War II classical music in Europe. 

Long description:

This three-volume work is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of the musical compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007), one of the major figures of Post-World War II classical music in Europe. Stockhausen’s impact on global music-making was huge and he has been influential for a wide range of music makers in classical music and on music creators in various popular music traditions. Flo Menezes provides both in-depth analytical studies of Stockhausen’s works from his entire career and also places these into broader cultural, technological, and political contexts. The three volumes address the three most fundamental phases of Stockhausen’s work: Serial Music, Intuitive Music, and Music by Formulas.

‘Anyone interested in the evolution of post-World War II music, particularly in terms of musical structure and thought, will find profound insight in the detailed analysis of the music of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Spanning three volumes, the analysis covers distinct phases of Stockhausen's work, from structural serialism, intuitive music, and moment-form, to his later development of formula-composition, culminating in the monumental work LICHT, Stockhausen’s seven-day opera cycle. Flo Menezes, who personally knew several key composers of the second half of the twentieth century, including Luciano Berio, Henry Pousseur, and Pierre Boulez, taught analysis classes at the Stockhausen Summer School in Kürten, Germany. Menezes even surprised Stockhausen by revealing structural insights in STUDIE 2 that the composer himself had not been aware of.

Although Menezes’ writings primarily focus on Stockhausen's work, readers will find it to be a profound treatise on composition in the second half of the twentieth century.’

Hans Tutschku, Fanny P. Mason Professor of Music, Harvard University

Table of Contents:

18 KONTAKTE (1958–60) 18.1 The origins of the piece 18.2 KONTAKTE and its mysticism 18.3 The versions of KONTAKTE 18.4 The surprising fusion between the instrumental and electronic universes 18.5 Innovations in KONTAKTE 18.6 About the differences of durations in the score 18.7 Regarding spatiality 18.8 The use of electronic pulses 18.9 Regarding timbre families 18.10 The iterative copy procedure (Dauerkopierverfahren) 18.11 Serial music? 18.12 The invention of the Moment-Form 18.13 The types of Moment in KONTAKTE 18.14 Motive recurrences 18.15 The use of the Fibonacci Sequence 18.16 The Unity of Musical Time

19 MOMENTE (1962–64/69) 19.1 The typology of Moments and the Love 19.2 Regarding instrumentation 19.3 Regarding the texts used 19.4 The open form of MOMENTE 19.5 The binary oppositions and their stratification 19.6 Harmonic center and expansions in MOMENTE 19.7 A review of MOMENTE and its actuality

20 Extensions

21 MIKROPHONIE I (1964) 21.1 The spectral extent of the physical instrument 21.2 The organological extent of the physical instrument 21.3 The internalization of polyphony: micro-phony 21.4 Serial numerology in MIKROPHONIE I 21.5 The microphone as an instrument 21.6 Towards words: sound categories and quasi-onomatopoeias 21.7 The Moments and form of MIKROPHONIE I 21.8 Rite and communion 21.9 Approaching and distancing in relation to musique concrète

22 MIXTUR (1964) 22.1 The strangeness with Boulez 22.2 Ring modulation and its complexity 22.3 Regarding instrumentation 22.4 The musical form: its characters and reversibility 22.5 Regarding serial thought and the organization of pitches 22.6 Tachism-music?

23 TELEMUSIK (1966) 23.1 Collage of materials or new polyphony? 23.2 The form and realization of the work 23.3 A work full of signals 23.4 Intermodulation 23.5 Music of the nervous system 23.6 An undeniable, yet unrealizable request

24 HYMNEN (1966–67) 24.1 Origins of the piece and its designation 24.2 The different versions of HYMNEN 24.3 Once again intermodulation and radical extensions 24.4 Regarding materials and form 24.5 The use of quotations and referentiality in HYMNEN 24.6 The controversy surrounding the anthems 24.7 The making of the magnetic tape and the sonorities
of HYMNEN 

25 Universals

26 STIMMUNG (1968) 26.1 The formants’ song 26.2 A vocalic music 26.3 Enjoyment or alienation? 26.4 STIMMUNG’s vocal micro-macro-spatiality 26.5 Regarding the form 26.6 As for the Poems used 26.7 Regarding the days of the week 26.8 Stockhausen’s Vocalic Square 26.9 The tempos, the rhythm of the Models, and their main vowels 26.10 The “error” as a deviation 26.11 From multiple to one, from one to multiple

27 KURZWELLEN (1968) 

28 Processes

29 AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN (1968) and FÜR KOMMENDE ZEITEN (1968–70)