Hymns (Stockhausen)
Hymnen ( electronic and concrete music ) is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen , which was realized from 1966 to 1967 and modified again in 1969. In the Stockhausen catalog raisonné it bears the number 22. The work is characterized by a world-musical character in that around 40 national anthems are used as sound objects, which serve as the basis for electronic modulation and transformation and are thus linked to form a unit.
The only non-governmental song that was processed was the workers song " Die Internationale ", as well as the National Socialist Horst Wessel song .
Versions
Stockhausen's work exists in three versions:
- Hymns (electronic and concrete music) for 4-track magnetic tape, 4x 2 loudspeakers , mixer and sound control (approx. 114 min.)
- Hymns (electronic and concrete music with 4 soloists) with z. B. trumpet and synthesizer / trombone , euphonium and synthesizer / tam-tam and several other instruments / synthesizers, sampler and piano plus 4-track magnetic tape, 6x 2 loudspeakers, 4 monitor loudspeakers, instruments by soloists, mixer and sound control (approx. 126 min. )
- Hymns (third region), electronic music with orchestra and conductor plus 4-track magnetic tape, 28 microphones, 12 loudspeakers, mixer and sound control (approx. 42 min.)
Origin and structure
The quadrophonic electronic and concrete music was created in the studio for electronic music of the WDR in Cologne and was premiered on November 30, 1967 as a version with soloists in the auditorium of the Apostelgymnasium in Cologne-Lindenthal .
Stockhausen divided the work into different regions that focus on the following national anthems:
- Region: The Internationale and the Marseillaise .
- Region: The Deutschlandlied , the beginning of the anthem of the Russian Federation , several African national anthems and an original sound recording by Stockhausen himself with the sentences: " Otto Tomek said: 'The one with the Horst Wessel song gives bad blood.' But I didn't mean it at all; that was just a memory. "
- Region: The continuation of the Anthem of the Russian Federation, The Star-Spangled Banner and the Marcha Real .
- Region: the Swiss psalm .
The composer considered realizing other regions for which there is collected material but which was ultimately not realized:
- Region 5: The states of the former Eastern Bloc .
- Region 6: Arabia.
Guiding principle
When working on the hymns, Stockhausen used the following guiding principles that he formulated as compositionally trend-setting ideas:
“Hide what you compose in what you hear. Cover up what you hear. Put something next to what you hear. Put something way outside of what you hear. Support what you hear. Continue an event that you are hearing for a long time. Transform an event beyond recognition. Turn an event you hear into the previous one that you composed. Compose what you expect next. Compose often, but also listen for long periods of time to what has already been composed without further composing. Shuffle all of the instructions. Increasingly accelerate the flow of your intuition. "
Factory introduction
“National anthems are the most famous music you can imagine. Everyone knows the anthem of their country and maybe a few others, at least their beginnings. If one integrates known music into a composition of unknown new music, one can hear particularly well how it was integrated: untransformed, more or less transformed, transposed, modulated, etc. The more natural the what, the more attentive to the how. "
Stockhausen used the national anthems, which were "the most popular thing there is", as the what of his composition. By putting this general cultural knowledge in a new constellation and by adding other found objects such as bits of speech and radio events to create new sound connections, he opened up the possibility of hearing the "old" hymns anew. The work cannot simply be seen as a collage-like compilation of various national anthems. Rather, the sound objects are connected to one another by electronic modulations of rhythm , harmony and dynamics in such a way that the degrees of recognizability range from the raw material to unrecognizable.
Hymnen takes up a new idea in world music : With the two-hour work, which is divided into four regions, Stockhausen pursued the desire to write music that includes people of all ethnicities and nations. In this sense, hymns should also be understood as a utopian vision of the future of people of all nations living together. Stockhausen already pursued this point of view in the composition Telemusik , composed in 1966, and developed it further with hymns.
"The composition of so many national anthems for a common musical time and space polyphony could make the unity of peoples and nations in a harmonious human family tangible as a musical vision."
Stockhausen emphasized this dimension of meaning especially at the American premiere in New York in 1971 with the words: “America, land of refugees, displaced people, thrown together: I wrote this music for you. You could become a model for the whole world if you lived as this music announces. If you gave a good example ...! "
With this, the composer takes up the idea of a world parliament , which he later developed in depth and which he further concretizes in the opera Wednesday from the light cycle .
literature
- Bryan Wolf, Verena Großkreutz: Stockhausen's hymns as a European vision. In: New magazine for music. Mainz 2008.
- Christoph von Blumröder (Ed.): Texts on Music 1991–1998. Kürten 1998.
- Christoph von Blumröder: The vocal composition as a creative constant. In: International Stockhausen Symposium 1998: Musicological Institute of the University of Cologne, November 11th to 14th, 1998: Conference report. Signals from Cologne: Contributions to the music of the time. Volume 4, Saarbrücken 1999.
- Dieter Schnebel (Ed.): Texts on Music 1963–1970. Introductions u. Projects, courses, programs, points of view. Cologne 1971.
- Dieter Schnebel, Christoph von Blumröder (Ed.): Texts on Music 1970–1977. Work introductions, electronic music, world music, suggestions and viewpoints on the work of others. Cologne 1978.
- Dieter Gutknecht : Karlheinz Stockhausen's hymns and the aspect of spatial music. In: Hartmut Krones (Ed.): Stage, Film, Space and Time in the Music of the 20th Century. Böhlau 2003.
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Booklet to "Hymns". Kürten 1995.
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Booklet to “Hymns. Electronic music with orchestra ”. Kürten 1997.
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Hymnen. Lecture 1967. In: Karlheinz Stockhausen (Hrsg.): Stockhausen Texte. Kürten 2007.
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Education is great work. Karlheinz Stockhausen in conversation with students of the Musicological Institute of the University of Cologne on February 5, 1997. In: Imke Misch, Christoph von Blumröder (Ed.): Stockhausen 70: The program book Cologne 1998. Signals from Cologne: Music of the time. Volume 1, Saarbrücken 1998.
- Larson Powell: The technological subject. Music media and memory in Stockhausen's hymns. In: Nora M. Alter (Ed.): Sound Matters. Essays on the acoustics of modern German Culture. New York 2006.
- Nicholas F. Hopkins: Hymns. tractatus musica unita. Cologne 1991.
- Thomas Manfred Braun: Karlheinz Stockhausen's music in the focus of aesthetic assessment. In: Cologne contributions to musicology. Kassel 2004.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Musikfest Berlin 2012: Karlheinz Stockhausen - Hymns. (PDF; 1.1 MB) at: berlinerfestspiele.de
- ^ Heinz Josef Herbort: The musical world village . DIE ZEIT 49/1967 December 8, 1967 zeit.de
- ^ Stockhausen: Texts on Music 1963–1970, p. 99.
- ↑ Stockhausen, CD booklet for hymns, p. 26.
- ↑ Stockhausen, CD booklet for hymns, p. 28.
- ^ Stockhausen: Texts on Music 1970–1977, p. 79.