New Stuff: Zeitkratzer & Keiji Haino

Now this is an interesting combination of artists, can't wait to take a listen.

New Stuff: Karlheinz Stockhausen

In a recent interview Diedrich Diedrichsen mentioned how enthusiastic he is about the Stockhausen composition Setz die Segel zur Sonne, so I got me this cd.

New Stuff: Karlheinz Stockhausen

For ages I've been trying to get this on cd, and now I know: you can only get his works through his own website.

Indeterminacy 9

Down in Greensboro, North Carolina, David Tudor and I gave an
interesting program. We played five pieces three times each.
They were the Klavierstück XI by Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Christian Wolff’s Duo for Pianists, Morton Feldman’s
Intermission #6, Earle Brown’s 4 Systems, and my Variations. All
of these pieces are composed in various ways that have in common
indeterminacy of performance. Each performance is unique, as
interesting to the composers and performers as to the audience.
Everyone, in fact, that is, becomes a listener. I explained all
this to the audience before the musical program began. I pointed
out that one is accustomed to thinking of a piece of music as an
object suitable for understanding and subsequent evaluation, but
that here the situation was quite other. These pieces, I said,
are not objects, but processes, essentially purposeless.
Naturally, then, I had to explain the purpose of having something
be purposeless. I said that sounds were just sounds, and that
if they weren’t just sounds that we would (I was of course using
the editorial we) — we would do something about it in the next
composition. I said that since the sounds were sounds, this gave
people hearing them the chance to be people, centered within
themselves, where they actually are, not off artificially in the
distance as they are accustomed to be, trying to figure out what
is being said by some artist by means of sounds. Finally I said
that the purpose of this purposeless music would be achieved if
people learned to listen. That when they listened they might
discover that they preferred the sounds of everyday life to the
ones they would presently hear in the musical program. That that
was all right as far as I was concerned.

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 28

Now and then I come across an article on that rock
garden in Japan where there’s just a space of sand
and a few rocks in it. The author, no
matter who he is, sets out either to suggest
that the position of the rocks in the space follows
some geometrical plan productive of the beauty one
observes, or not satisfied with mere
suggestion, he makes diagrams and detailed
analyses. So when I met Ashihara, the
Japanese music and dance critic (his first name is
Eryo), I told him that I thought those stones
could have been anywhere in that space, that
I doubted whether their relationship was a planned
one, that the emptiness of the sand was such
that it could support stones at any points in it.
Ashihara had already given me a present
(some table mats), but then he asked me to wait
a moment while he went into his hotel.
He came out and gave me the tie I am now wearing.
¶ After he
heard this lecture which I first gave in Brussels
in the French Pavilion, Karlheinz
Stockhausen said, “You should have said,
‘the tie I was wearing yesterday’.”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 14

We’ve now played the Winter Music
quite a number of times. I
haven’t kept count. When we
first played it, the silences seemed
very long and the sounds seemed really
separated in space, not obstructing
one another. In Stockholm,
however, when we played it at the Opera
as an interlude in the dance program
given by Merce Cunningham and Carolyn
Brown early one October, I noticed
that it had become melodic.
Christian Wolff prophesied this to me
years ago. He said — we
were walking along Seventeenth Street
talking — he said, “No
matter what we do it ends by
being melodic.” As far as I
am concerned this happened to Webern
years ago. Karlheinz
Stockhausen once told me — we were in
Copenhagen — “I demand two
things from a composer:
invention and that he astonish me.”

- John Cage

Vignettes #7

This was about 25 years ago, I had just recently moved into my new apartment. It was a bright sunny and hot summer day, I had my day off from work at the film club's cinema and from my studies at the university. I was enjoying the apartment as it was comfortably cooler than outside and as always I was listening to some music.

I just had a Karlheinz Stockhausen record running, probably his work Kontakte. The doorbell rang, I opened the door. It was an acquaintance, Ingo, with a new girlfriend I hadn't seen before, quite pretty. Ingo is a member of the local independent art scene making short films, creating art and organizing art exhibitions. He had recently attended a meeting of our film club which had been held in my apartment. He said he liked my little apartment so much he wanted to show it to his girlfriend. So I let them in.

We did a round through the 2 rooms and also onto my miniature balcony, quite idyllic on that day considering the weather. All the time Stockhausen was still playing on the record player. We sat down and I offered the two of them drinks, which they gladly accepted.

Then Ingo asked: "What kind of caterwauling ('Katzenmusik') are you listening to?" I told him. He replied: "How can you listen to that? This could drive anyone to try and kill himself!"

I must admit I was a bit unnerved by this attack on my musical taste, and I had no intentions to justify what I was listening to. So I answered a bit provocative: "What's wrong with suicide? If it's a rational decision, it's quite OK."

What I hadn't expected was how fast both of their faces went stone-cold, and within minutes they said their thank-you's and goodbyes and were gone.

For years Ingo would make a weird concerned face every time he bumped into me.