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on November 28, 2007 at 10:34:48 pm
 

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Stockhausen 1 RIGHT DURATIONS

Stockhausen 2 UNLIMITED

Stockhausen 3 CONNECTIONS

Stockhausen 4 IT

 

These  Stockhausen's text compositions are examples of what he calls intuitive music - he thought the word 'improvisation' meant too many things which didn't necessarily accord with what he was aiming to achieve.  He gives these four examples in his lecture on 'Intuitive Music' (in Stockhausen On Music: Lectures & Interviews  Compiled by Robin Maconie. Marion Boyers, London, 2000). They are from Aus den sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days)  a collection of 15 text compositions.

For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aus_den_Sieben_Tagen

 

Some thoughts on Stockhausen's 'Intuitive Music' (in Stockhausen On Music: Lectures & Interviews  Compiled by Robin Maconie. Marion Boyers, London, 2000.)

This whole lecture is worth reading. It's valuable for the following reasons.

1. To start with the lecture could have been written as a statement about fundamental principles of ecosonics, even though ecosonics was developed without any knowledge of Stockhausen's views. He touches on nearly all my concerns about the shortcomings of both 'strict' and 'free' improvisation. Stockhausen uses a great term - Intuitive Music. He maintains that because of the practices to which the word 'improvisation' is applied that it (improvisation) doesn't describe what he considers to be spontaneous performance.  Depending on what you consider improvisation to be, you might agree with him, and certainly the word is generally used without any apparent awareness of the many possible techniques  that can make it possible to simulate improvisation while in fact very little real creation is happening. 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 a  genre is not improvisational just because it involves a studied discipline, acquired techniques and highly formalized structures or just because it uses quotation - in fact improvisation can be present in every kind of music and at every level of music making. But the points he makes are valid in terms of improvisational posturing.

2. But the particular relevance of Intuitive Music is that it is concerned the process of honest communication and total engagement. This is focus of ecosonics - concern with 'primal' or 'primitive' music making - the raw music making process that precedes tones and techniques and abstract systematic structures that we use 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' thoughts we have about music and the intellectual silent conversations we hold within ourselves before we even make a sound. He Intuitive music focuses on getting rid of all those thought out plans for sound patterns and techniques, the internal games we make before and as we perform.

3. Stockhausen is also concerned with listening being more important than playing. How could it not be? He doesn't talk about music being a fundamentally social action, but that is what ecosonics is, and that is what he is demanding. He doesn't use the words dialogue and conversation, which are the basic creative modes of ecosonics, but they are implicit in what he says. Mostly when musicians improvise they use each other as background music, they use the generalized sounds of others as a comfort zone for themselves to indulge in their own ideas. We do this instead of engaging deeply with each other in a social process of responsive interaction. Instead of listening and responding we play only what we want using the sound of 'others' as a surface off which we bounce our own ideas.

4. Stockhausen's demands for listening and his rules for playing are rigorous. He requires that we not only listen to each other and that we listen to ourselves, but we listen outside ourselves beyond even what we may know, and that we wait until sound comes to us. And we are not allowed to play if we don't fulfill those demands. 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 really try to make them work. Listening - not playing, playing just a single idea, playing what comes from our bodies and not what is imposed by our minds - these are demanding disciplines for musicians, although my guess is that they're totally natural in fully engaged primitive music making. You have something to say - you say it without artificial development, that's it - someone responds in the same way, answers what you've played, no more no less, and that's it - and so on - a sonic conversation of listening, responding and gesturing. 

5. Finally, unlike me Stockhausen is short, concise and very easy to read, and invariably has interesting insights even when you don't necessarily agree with them.

 

 

 

 

 

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