Punctual music

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Punctual music is a method of composition that was used by numerous composers, especially in Europe between around 1949 and 1955. It is a special form of serial music . The term was u. a. applied retrospectively to the music of Anton Webern . It was originally created by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Herbert Eimert to describe works such as Olivier Messiaen's "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités" (1949). However, it is mostly associated with serial works such as the Structures by Pierre Boulez , Book 1 (1952), the Sonata for two pianos and number 2 for thirteen instruments by Karel Goeyvaerts , and Luigi Nono's Polifonica – Monodia – Ritmica , as well as some early ones Compositions by Stockhausen (e.g. Kreuzspiel ). But Herman Sabbe argues that “Stockhausen never actually composed punctually”. The hitherto little played Swiss composer Hermann Meier also worked with selective techniques at the same time.

backgrounds

A concept for punctual music was first published as a text by Pierre Boulez in 1954 ( Recherches maintenant , 1954), the Stockhausen article on the situation of the craft from 1952 remained unpublished until 1963. Boulez later wrote: “Nevertheless, despite an excess of arithmetic, we had achieved a certain 'punctuality' of the sound, by which I literally mean the intersection of various functional possibilities in one point. What did this 'selective' style bring? The justified rejection of thematicism . "

The term describes a music "whose structures predominantly take place from tone to tone without conventional vertical (sounds) or horizontal (melodic) 'shapes' becoming perceptible." The idea of ​​music as "space" or "gas" takes place as a body in space should be realized. The tone points should (in this or that concept) be in the room or even mark the room itself (the space in between) - for example comparable to differently sized and colored beads (see Hermann Hesse's influence on Karlheinz Stockhausen) of different materials, which are traced in a wire sculpture very specific laws (which relate to those combinations of qualities) are all arranged at the same spatial distance from one another (because there should no longer be any weighting between loud and quiet, high and low, etc.).

And the individual tone as a 'point' (i.e. the ideal point that has its counterpart in the ideal, infinitely small 'Nu' or 'Moment') should be represented. Above all, the duration of a tone was only determined by one quality like others (volume, color, height, etc.). The duration of the tone should no longer be understood in a metric-proportional system of ratios (elevation-lowering system), but rather “delimited” and “de-spatialized”. The “point” took the place of the “motif” or the “shape” and was now the actual object itself. Its 'shape' was no longer given in successive tone relationships, but was made up of the relationship of simultaneous and unmistakable parameter qualities in a single tone, in a single moment. It is comparable to walking through a gallery: You step in front of this picture, then that ... Karlheinz Stockhausen demands an 'attentive passivity' - this is the only way the (actually very strict serial) order of the whole set of 'points' ( 1952/53). And this (probably) only sublime anyway, i.e. without a 'rational aha experience'.

However, the demand for the elimination of vertical (simultaneous) tone relationships is disputed here, since the individual tone is provided with different spectral "colors" in a rather unsystematic manner, which from an acoustic point of view are "chords", i.e. simultaneous relationships of (sine) tones. In English and French there were problems of understanding, because the term was also translated as pointillisme or musique pointilliste , but the pointillism painting style has nothing to do with punctual music.

Methods, techniques

The procedure was that each individual note of a composition was assigned discrete values from scales of the four parameters pitch, duration, volume and velocity. Punctual dynamics means, for example,

“That all dynamic values ​​are fixed; a point is directly connected to another on the chosen scale, without any intermediary transition. Line dynamics, on the other hand, involve the transitions from one amplitude to another; crescendo, decrescendo and their combinations. This second category can be defined as dynamic glissando , comparable to glissandi of pitch and tempi ( Accellerando, Ritardando ). "

"The almost analytical focus on individual events and the transition between them brings a standstill to this music, which is far removed from the gestural quality of other pieces." According to Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht , the term "primarily the auditory impression of the isolation of the tones to points." " connected; technically he names "the tone of the music as tone - 'point', namely as the intersection of rows of elements of serially organized music."

literature

  • Christoph von Blumröder : The foundation of the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen . In: Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Ed.): Archives for musicology . Supplement 32. Steiner, Stuttgart 1993.
  • Pierre Boulez: Boulez on Music Today . Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1971.
  • Pierre Boulez: Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-311210-8 .
  • Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht: selective music . In: Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Ed.): On the terminology of the music of the 20th century. Report on the 2nd Colloquium of the Walcker Foundation 9. – 10. March 1972 in Freiburg / Breisgau; Publications of the Walcker Foundation for Organ Research . tape 5 . Musicological Publishing Society, Stuttgart 1974, p. 162-187 .
  • Karlheinz Essl : Aspects of the serial in Stockhausen . In: Lothar Knessel (Ed.): Wien Modern '89 . Wien Modern, Vienna 1989, p. 90-97 ( essl.at ).
  • Rudolf Frisius: Serial Music . In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present: general encyclopedia of music . 2nd Edition. tape 1 , 8 (cross-Swi). Bear rider; Metzler, Kassel / New York (Bärenreiter); Stuttgart (Metzler) 1998 ( frisius.de - ISBN 978-3-7618-1109-2 (Bärenreiter) ISBN 978-3-476-41008-5 (Metzler)).
  • MJ Grant: Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-war Europe . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK / New York 2001.
  • Michael Hicks: Exorcism and Epiphany: Luciano Berio's Nones . In: Perspectives of New Music . tape 27 , 2 (Summer), 1989, pp. 252-268 .
  • Edward Lippman: A History of Western Musical Aesthetics . University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London 1992.
  • Dirk Moelants: Statistical Analysis of Written and Performed Music: A Study of Compositional Principles and Problems of Coordination and Expression in 'Punctual' Serial Music . In: Journal of New Music Research . tape 29 , no. 1 , March 2000, p. 37-60 , doi : 10.1076 / 0929-8215 (200003) 29: 01; 1-P; FT037 .
  • Herman Sabbe: The unity of the Stockhausen time…: New possibilities of understanding serial development based on the early work of Stockhausen and Goeyvaerts. Shown on the basis of Stockhausen's letters to Goevaerts . In: Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Rainer Riehn (Hrsg.): Music concepts . 19: Karlheinz Stockhausen:… how time passed…. Edition Text + Criticism, München 1981, p. 5-96 .
  • Herman Sabbe: Goeyvaerts and the Beginnings of 'Punctual' Serialism and Electronic Music . In: Revue Belge de Musicologie / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap . tape 48 , 1994, pp. 55-94 .
  • Karlheinz Stockhausen: Texts on Music 1. Essays 1952–1962 on the theory of composing . Ed .: Dieter Schnebel. M. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1963.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Blumröder, p. 99, footnote 85
  2. ↑ Hermann Sabbe: How time passed , p. 68
  3. ^ Stockhausen: Texts 1
  4. ↑ Pierre Boulez: Stocktakings , p. 16
  5. ^ Karlheinz Essl: Aspects of the serial in Stockhausen . In: Lothar Knessel (Ed.): Wien Modern '89 . Wien Modern, Wien 1989, pp. 90–97
  6. ↑ a b from: Christoph von Blumröder: The foundation of Stockhausen's music . Stuttgart 1993
  7. ^ Pierre Boulez: Music Today
  8. ^ Grant, p. 78
  9. ↑ Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht: selective music , sections I and V