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These four improvisations are from 'Intuitive Music' in Stockhausen On Music: Lectures & Interviews  Compiled by Robin Maconie (Marion Boyers, London, 2000).

The whole article is worth reading. It's valuable for the following reasons.

1. To start with it could have been written as a statement about fundamental principles in ecosonics, even though ecosonics was developed without any knowledge of Stockhausen's views. He puts in a nutshell nearly all my concerns about the shortcomings of both 'strict' and 'free' improvisation. Stockhausen uses a great term - Intuitive Music - because he feels that the term 'improvisation' is not appropriate because of the practices with which it is associated.  I very much like the expression Intuitive Music, but from my internet searches I suspect that  it's  been hijacked and used  in ways that don't accord with Stockhausen's meaning.  However, I don't agree with Stockhausen that an improvisational genre is invalid as improvisation just because it involves a learnt discipline, acquired techniques and highly formalized structures - in fact improvisation can be present in every kind of music and at every level of music making. The relevance of this article is that ecosonics is concerned with 'primal' or 'primitive' music making - the raw music making process, before tones and techniques and abstract systematic structures start to shape a musical language. By primal, primitive, raw - I mean the human ability to convey meaning through unmediated sonic gesture and response.  This is what Stockhausen is so concerned with - getting rid of the self-consciousness and being able to play without all the 'musical' and intellectual silent conversations we hold within ourselves before we even make a sound; getting rid of all those thought out plans for sound patterns and techniques, the internal games we make before and as we perform.

2. Stockhausen is also concerned with listening as being more important than playing. Far too often when we improvise we use each other as background music and use improvisation as a canvas to indulge in our own ideas. We do this instead of listening and responding - we play what we want to hear, rather than engaging with what is around us. Stockhausen's demands on listening are rigorous, he requires that we not only listen to each other but that we listen to ourselves. That's why I included all four of these improvisations. I don't know whether they're all possible, or at least whether they're all possible for me but we need to damn well try to make them work. Listening - not playing - playing just a single idea - these are disciplines although my guess is they are totally natural in primitive music making. You have something to say - you say it without development, that's it - someone responds in the same way, no more no less, and that's it - and so on. Where it is right for sounds to interweave and overlap they do so, but never just for the sake of making sound. Listen, respond - gesture, listen.

Unlike me Stockhausen is short, concise and very easy to read, and invariably has interesting insights even when you can't agree with them.

Stockhausen improvisations 1

Stockhausen improvisations 2

Stockhausen improvisations 3

Stockhausen improvisations 4

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