CCXCIII. STOCKHAUSEN, Karlheinz: Stimmung

CCXCIII. STOCKHAUSEN, Karlheinz (1928-2007)

Stimmung (1968)
Theatre of Voices
Paul Hiller, cond.
(1:17:58)

It was difficult to choose a YouTube performance of this magnificent work. I chose the Hiller version, which is accompanied here by a spectral analysis in beautiful shades of purple and blue.

Ideally, one should listen to this piece in a dark room, in a comfortable, meditative position and allow the music to travel from ears to soul.

**

Stockhausen's notes:

"STIMMUNG for 6 vocalists was inspired by a commission from the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Cologne, an ensemble at the Rheinische Musikschule. The score was written during February and March 1968 at a house on Long Island Sound in Madison, Connecticut, where I was living for two months with my wife Mary Bauermeister and our two children Julika and Simon. Julika was 2 years old at the time, and Simon had just turned 8 months. Following a lengthy lecture and concert tour in the hot climates of Hawaii and Mexico, I arrived at this snowed-in house.

From the window at my working table, I looked across the snow-covered frozen surface of the sea as far as the horizon. I started to compose a vocal sextet for the Collegium Vocale Cologne and -- as usual when I compose vocal music -- sang out aloud while writing, until late at night. Sometimes Mary would come into the room and give me a sign that the children had to sleep. I then hummed to myself and in the process made a very strange discovery: when sustaining various vowels, I felt my throat and the oral, nasopharyngeal, and frontal cavities vibrating, and discovered that with each vowel, I could make a specific overtone loudly and clearly audible.

This precise emphasis of overtones fascinated me to such an extent, that I practiced overtone-singing for hours on end, made lists of the vowels with their corresponding overtones, drew the overtone circle from [u] through [a] to [i], to [œ] and back to [u], tried out overtone glassandi from dark to bright to dark, and immersed myself in this newly-discovered nature of the vowels so completely that I abandoned the vocal 'pitch-music' which I had begun, and started to sketch and compose from scratch.

This was the birth of STIMMUNG, in which no melodies in the usual sense of the word occur, but rather overtone-melodies within the overtone spectra of 6 fundamentals. These fundamentals are in turn proportionately related to each other like the overtones of the single overtone spectrum above the low B-flat fundamental, i.e. 2:3:4:5:7:9.

I composed 51 models, and in each model concentrated on a specific vowel combination and its coresponding overtone combination. If, occasionally meaningful syllables or words occur, their insertion into an overtone melody is primarily because of their vowel characteristic: their meanings are then spiritual-religious (Aum, Nemesis-Artemis, Phoenix, etc.) or humorous (Hipi, 'ge-gä-ga-g ɔ t - Gott noch mal - Gott noch mal - Gott noch mal!' etc.).

At certain places, I used poems which I had written during amorous days in April 1967 in Sausalito near San Francisco and at the beach between San Francisco and Carmel. In addition, I used names of the gods of the Toltecs and Aztecs which I had just learned in Mexico. I wrote to a friend of mine, Nancy Wyle, an American anthropologist, and asked her to compile names of gods from all cultures for me. Then, in addition to the through-composed models, I assigned 11 of these magic names to each of the six voices, i.e. I inserted 6 x 11 = 66 magic names into the score.

After the music had been completely notated, I chose the title STIMMUNG which has an ambiguous meaning: it can mean the pure tuning, in which the vocalists sing the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th overtones of the low Bb fundamental. Whenever the tuning has become impure, the singers must always return to this overtone spectrum (with the aid of a pure overtone chord which is very softly played via a tape recorder next to the singers). 'Stimmung' can also mean the tuning-in with which a vocalist begins each time he or she introduces a new sound model into the context; or it can mean the rhythmic, dynamic, and timbral attuning during the integration of a magic name which has been freely called into the context; and -- not least -- the German word 'Stimmung' (= mood) has to do with atmosphere, aura, with the soul's harmony (for example, one speaks of 'good Stimmung' or 'bad Stimmung', meaning the more or less sympathetic vibration among humans or between humans and their surroundings); and in 'Stimmung' lies Stimme (voice).

In the course of many months, the singers learned a competely new vocal technique: the notes must be sung rather softly, and certain overtones -- indicated by a series of numerals from 2 to 24 and by the series of vowels of the phonetic alphabet -- must dominate. No vibrato is used, the overtones resonating only in the frontal and other cranial cavities; breaths are long, calm, and even. Each voice is amplified via an individual microphone and loudspeaker, in order to make all nuances audible.

Each of the three female voices has 8 models, each of the three male voices has 9 models, and each voice has 11 magic names which can freely be brought into play -- according to the context and following the form scheme. The other voices react to the magic names with transformations, varied deviations, beats (which result from minimal pitch differences), and identity.

Once a magic name has been called by one of the singers, it is periodically repeated in the tempo of the model with approximately the same articulation as the model until identity has again been reached. It is thus integrated into the prevalent model. The lip and mouth positions of the model are retained as far as possible, whereby the name sounds more or less deformed. The reaction to a magic name -- due to the character and meaning of the name -- brings about a clearly perceptible change in mood.

Each of the 3 men recites a poem in the context of one of his models ('Meine Hände . . .', 'Langsamen . . .', difffff-dafffff . . .'), and one of the women recites the poem 'ruseralfrusel'. These poems are integrated in a similar manner to the way the magic names are integrated.

STIMMUNG is certainly meditative music. Time is suspended. One listens to the interior of the sound, to the interior of the harmonic spectrum, to the interior of a vowel, TO THE INTERIOR. The most subtle fluctuations -- rare outbursts --, all senses are alert and calm. In the beauty of the sensual shines the beauty of the eternal."