Karlheinz Stockhausen: Tierkreis

Description

The number twelve is one of the most charged of symbolism in virtually all cultures of humankind. Its fascination derives partly from its being a harmonious composite of the binary and of the ternary (2×2+3), which leads to its being divisible by two, three, four, and six. Along with the numbers five and ten (which, in time, have led to the constitution of our decimal system), it is also mapped on our body. Five and ten, of course, are the fingers of our hands; twelve are the phalanxes of our longer fingers (not counting the thumb). But twelve are also the hours of the day, the months of the year, the signs of the Zodiac – as well as many elements pertaining to the Judeo-Christian tradition, e.g. the children of Israel, the Apostles etc.
In Western classical music, twelve are the semitones in which the octave is divided; and this is not an arbitrary choice, but one rooted within physical phenomena. These do not preclude, of course, alternative forms of division of the octave, but still constitute an (almost) objective and a historically sanctioned system.
Of these twelve “semitones”, as they are called, different cultures are used to select some (five, six, seven…) to constitute “modes” or scales, which organize the musical matter in terms of pitch. Although many great musicians in history found ways to incorporate nearly all, or all, twelve semitones, within a musical period, the possibility of actually employing them all in a constant fashion was inaugurated in the twentieth century by the Second Vienna School and by Arnold Schoenberg who led it. This is what goes under the name of “dodecaphony”, and which, once systematized with precise rules, gave life to serialism.
The Second Vienna School’s aesthetics was rooted within expressionism; for the composers belonging to it, the abolition of tonality was a matter of hyper expressivity, of an “explosion” of musical meaning. This explosion caused atonality, whose anarchy, however, seemed to require ruling – which serialism provided. Thus, the heirs of the Second Vienna School tended to downplay the expressionist dimension in favour of architecture, of structure, of form (thus promoting the birth of such phenomena as structuralism or formalism in music).
The school of Darmstadt embodied, in a greater or lesser degree, this kind of attitudes; the Western avantgardes were normally rather uninterested in the communicative power of music (which, at times, they simply denied), preferring such aspects as clarity and abstraction.
It may come as surprising, therefore, that a composer such as Karlheinz Stockhausen – who embodied many of the most typical traits of the Western avantgardes – decided to write a work such as Tierkreis, recorded here. Under many viewpoints, in fact, it may seem to contradict several of the tenets of the avantgardes. In spite of this, as we will shortly see, it is a composition which, deep down, represents the logical result of the avantgardes’ experiments.
Tierkreis, meaning “Zodiac”, was written in 1974-5. It is composed of twelve tunes, each associated with one of the astrologic signs and somehow symbolizing it.
The origins of the work should be traced back to another composition by Stockhausen, by the curious title of Musik im Bauch, meaning “Music in the Belly”. It was a theater piece, written for a sextet of percussions. Stockhausen himself recounts its genesis as follows: “I began to busy myself with the 12 human characters of the ZODIAC of which I had until then only a vague idea. In inventing each melody, I thought of the characters of children, friends, and acquaintances who were born under the various star signs, and studied the human types of the star signs more thoroughly. Each melody is now composed with all its measures and proportions in keeping with the characteristics of its respective star sign, and one will discover many legitimacies when one hears a melody often, and exactly contemplates its construction… Each melody is composed in such a way that one should play it at least 3 times. When one wishes to listen to several or all of them one after another, then each should be played 3 or 4 times in succession”.
The association between each melody and the corresponding sign is by no means arbitrary; there are precise links connecting a tune with its Zodiac sign. All are built around a “central pitch”, which works as a pivot or as a column of the melody itself. How the music relates to that central pitch depends on the character and qualities of the chosen sign.
Musik im Bauch was dedicated to (and probably inspired by) Stockhausen’s youngest daughter, Julika, who was born under the sign of Aquarius. Starting from that, the central pitch of the following tunes rise stepwise by a semitone at a time – so Pisces is built on E, and so on, up to Capricorn on D.
The mechanism ruling the performance of Musik im Bauch is described as follows by another of Stockhausen’s daughters, Christel: “For a performance of MUSIK IM BAUCH, the performers choose three melodies. Everything that they play is comprised of these melodies. In the marimba part, one melody is stretched over the entire duration of the performance. In the Klangplatten (sound plates), the three chosen melodies are played one after another, also stretching over the entire length of the performance. The other instruments interpret motives and single pitches from these melodies, and play the melodies simultaneously in various tempi”.
The premiere of Musik im Bauch took place in Royan (France), in 1975, played by the legendary ensemble called Les Percussions de Strasbourg (who were also the protagonists of many works by Iannis Xenakis). They selected the melodies associated with Leo, Aquarius and Capricorn, performed in this order, “16 times slower than the tempi for music boxes – by the Klangplatten, whose pitches serve as time orientation for three other players”, as Christel Stockhausen tells us. Those tunes/signs were also the ones on which the world premiere recording of Musik im Bauch (1977, Deutsche Grammophon) was built. The B-side of the disk included all twelve melodies of Tierkreis, played by music boxes.
Thus, on the one hand there is an undeniable and causal connection between Musik im Bauch and Tierkreis. On the other, Tierkreis is also independent of its companion piece, and, under a certain viewpoint, it may be seen as originating Musik im Bauch rather than being originated by it. As described by Christel Stockhausen, “Independent of MUSIK IM BAUCH, there is a version of TIERKREIS for any melody instrument and/or chordal instrument. In addition, there are versions for soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass with chordal instrument, a version for chamber orchestra ( clarinet, horn, bassoon, and strings ) which can also be performed with alto or tenor, or soprano and / or bass ( the vocal parts must be specially ordered ); and there is a version for trumpet, soprano, bass clarinet, and bass which resulted in connection with the work SIRIUS”. This profusion of possibilities points to a concept which is seemingly radically opposed to the typical determinism of the avantgardes, i.e. that of improvisation and of chance. However, it has been noted that very similar aural results are caused by two seemingly opposing systems of composition and notation: the hyper-prescriptive notation and the chance production of sound (as in aleatoric music) paradoxically lead to similar effects.
Thus, Tierkreis may be likened to another work by Stockhausen (1968), Aus den Sieben Tagen (“From the Seven Days”: note the allusion to another “magical” number, i.e. seven [3+2+2]), whereby performers are solicited to play according to their intuitive responses to words and graphic notations.
The version of Tierkreis recorded here is therefore the creative response given by Sergio Armaroli to the promptings of the “score” and instructions given by Stockhausen. The instruments employed by Armaroli are the vibraphone, the glockenspiel and the crotales. These are all percussions (metallic idiophones) producing sounds with a determined pitch. Along with them, Armaroli made use of the music boxes’ recordings. The criterium he applied for the selection of the timbres was his wish to create an amplification of the music-boxes effect, to achieve a “meta-carillon”, a blend of sounds expanding the aural world of the music boxes.
By expanding the notion of mechanically produced music, Armaroli wished to suggest a process of “liberation from subjectivity”: a music evoking something similar to a gigantic clockwork, a great mechanism. The effect, as Armaroli himself says, is “a stellar feeling, a rather hypnotic constellation of sounds”.
He overdubbed the tracks, played over the music boxes. This caused a further degree of objectivity, since the performer is bound by the metronomic tempi prescribed by Stockhausen and mechanically reproduced by the music boxes.
For each sign, furthermore, he created a kind of an interlude, which is his adaptation for the vibraphone of Musik im Bauch (realized as an arrangement after the Percussions de Strasbourg’s marimba and glockenspiel version), with improvisations elaborating on the thematic nucleus. In these interludes, the other instruments are silent, and there is only the vibraphone with its motor, conferring a vibrato sound which corresponds to the subjective element inherent in the very idea of improvisation. In this case, different from the other, the tempi are adapted: Stockhausen had indicated the tempi for the marimba (each sign was dilated up to 25 minutes of duration), and Armaroli chose to respect his notation but not his durations. “In my improvisations, I took more liberties”, he affirms.
Thus, there is a constant transition from macrocosm to microcosm, from the astral/cosmic of the Zodiac to the personal of the performer/improviser, from the strictly metronomic to the freedom of improvisation.
The concept, in fact, comes from an idea Armaroli had had for several years: “Since many years I had thought of a version of Tierkreis for a solo percussionist, especially to be played on the vibraphone which is my first instrument. I got in touch with the Stockhausen Stiftung asking them if I could work with the music boxes: I was interested in the mechanical element of the carillon. It is strictly connected with Stockhausen’s main aesthetic ideals, since it nullifies the performer’s individuality, bringing music to a transcendent plane”.
The itinerary thus represents the three stages of Armaroli’s artistic research: “written music, performance, and improvisation; respect of notation vs expressive liberty”. And it all builds a “zodiac” of fascinating images and cosmic fascination.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024