Stockhausen - Xenakis Re: Weltraum, aka the electronic music from Freitag aus Licht

Jerry Kohl wrote:

> The other works you mention are, I believe, by Xenakis rather than
> Stockhausen, and I do not know Persépolis at all. La légende d'Eer is a
> considerable composition, certainly (to judge from the CD recording), but
> not the measure (IMHO) of Gesang der Jünglinge, let alone Kontakte or
> Hymnen. Bohor makes a lot of noise, but don't try to pretend it has the
> depth or complexity of anything Stockhausen has produced in the medium,
> except possibly the Konkrete Etüde (which, after all, was a student
> work).

In general, the nature of depth and complexity as they appear in Xenakis 
or in Stockhausen is not comparable. Stockhausen seems to me to have as 
his artistic mission to achieve maximum variety on as many levels as 
possible, to put the world in a piece. In Xenakis, degrees of complexity 
are the expressive point itself, creating more basic expressions, easily 
parsed surfaces that within the uniformity of their conception contain a 
great clarity of detail. What matters is the world of the piece.

It's as if the ear goes in opposite directions; listening to 
Stockhausen, you notice the richness first and it forms a dramatic 
whole, his forms feel like encyclopaedias of sonic possibility, shapes 
and structures that make richness possible and logical; in Xenakis, the 
dramatic gesture is the first thing that hits you, you're put in a huge 
flow from the start, you're engulfed in an atmosphere, and slowly you 
start attuning your ear to the richnesses within, the striking presence 
of all the sonic particles in the big field.

Bohor I haven't heard; Persepolis certainly could be described as a lot 
of layered noise but it draws the attention inward in a way that I 
haven't even heard in Stockhausen's more openly subtle works, which 
rather put you in the middle of lots of focused detail right away.

Weltraum I've heard only once. At the time, I certainly had to overcome 
a similar difficulty as the original poster; yes, pedal tones and 
organum, that seems like a good description (the whole Formel-way of 
composing reminds me of cantus firmus composing to the power of five). 
But Weltraum definitely also contains lots of subtle stuff in the tone 
that is very involving. I'd love to hear it again, now that almost ten 
years have passed.

In conclusion, I'd never want to chose between Stockhausen's work and 
Xenakis' work. They're for me the two greatest European composers of 
that generation. Striking imaginations and radical thinkers, both, but 
in totally different ways.

--
samuel
free.concerten.fr