Stockhausen - music for a new world

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Stockhausen - music for a new world
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2009
length 56 minutes
Rod
Director Norbert Busè ,
Thomas von Steinaecker
script Norbert Busè,
Thomas von Steinaecker
production Norbert Busè,
Christof Debler
camera Norbert Busè,
Christina Karlizek
cut Heidi Reuscher
occupation

Simon Rattle , Pierre Boulez , Holger Czukay , Mary Bauermeister , Johannes Fritsch , Doris Stockhausen, Simon Stockhausen , Josef Protschka u. a.

Stockhausen - Music for a New World is a documentary film co-produced by Arte and ZDF by Norbert Busè and Thomas von Steinaecker about the German composer and sound artist Karlheinz Stockhausen . The film premiered on August 10, 2009 on Arte.

content

The film tells the life story of the visionary artist and avant-gardist Karlheinz Stockhausen , from his formative youth during the Second World War to the time of his fame in the 1960s, when he did it except for the cover of the Beatles LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band made it.

The documentary first tells chronologically of Stockhausen's childhood, when he grew up in the simplest, Catholic circumstances. Formative encounters and events are described. At the end of the war, the 16-year-old, who had perfect hearing, was an orphan. With great privation he studied at the Music Academy in Cologne and later with Olivier Messiaen in Paris.

As a pioneer of electronic music, Stockhausen's first work, Gesang der Jünglinge , which he realized in 1955/56 in the WDR's studio for electronic music, almost caused a scandal. The filmmakers show how Stockhausen became the provocative enfant terrible of new music. “Atomic bomb music” is the verdict of the stuffy post-war society of the 1950s. His innovative sound research not only earned him the reputation of the founding father of the techno era, he is also considered one of the most important composers of his time in the academic music world.

His work groups for three orchestras, which he performs together with his friends Bruno Maderna and Pierre Boulez a few years after Gesang der Jünglinge , is featured in the film in excerpts from a concert by the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2008 under Simon Rattle , Daniel Harding and Michael Boder in the hangar of Berlin-Tempelhof shown.

The film penetrates Stockhausen's philosophy and searches for the universal in his work. The discovery of serial music and his experimental approach to sound production led Stockhausen to search for the vision of a new person who experiences sound as a spiritual experience under cosmic laws.

In the 1960s Stockhausen met the Fluxus artist Mary Bauermeister and moved in with her and his wife Doris. His composition Moments reflects the time of this difficult Ménage à Trois and the failure of his first marriage.

Stockhausen soon achieved the status of a cult figure; Musicians like Holger Czukay from “ Can ” want to study with him. But Stockhausen is finding it increasingly difficult to combine the high demands placed on his compositions with his extravagant private life; the high point of his career, appearing as the representative of the Federal Republic of Germany at the World Exhibition in Osaka in 1970 in a ball auditorium built especially for him, coincides with the failure of his second marriage to Mary Bauermeister.

As it grows in it to the end of his work, at the beginning of the 70s are very skeptical about the innovations of technology and he retired to devote himself to "intuitive" music and on his last opus, the opera cycle light to work. The documentary describes his last creative journey into the heart of the human soul: the musicians should only play what they hear inside.

In their portrait, the filmmakers describe Stockhausen as a pop star, creative adventurer and musical genius. In the film u. a. Simon Rattle , Pierre Boulez , Holger Czukay , Mary Bauermeister , Johannes Fritsch , Doris Stockhausen, Simon Stockhausen and Josef Protschka , who at that time sang the songs of the youngsters , had their say. A visit to the former electronic studio of the WDR can also be seen.

Web links