Zeitmaße

Last updated • 13 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Zeitmaße
Wind quintet by Karlheinz Stockhausen
Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F004566-0002, Darmstadt, Internationaler Kurs fur neue Musik.jpg
Stockhausen lecturing at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, July 1957
Catalogue5
Composed1955 (1955)–56
Performed15 December 1956 (1956-12-15)
Scoring

Zeitmaße (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtmasə] ; German for "Time Measures") is a chamber-music work for five woodwinds (flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon) composed in 1955–1956 by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; it is Number 5 in the composer's catalog. It is the first of three wind quintets written by Stockhausen, followed by Adieu für Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer (1966) and the Rotary Wind Quintet (1997), but is scored with cor anglais instead of the usual French horn of the standard quintet. Its title refers to the different ways that musical time is treated in the composition.

Contents

History

Paspels, the village where Stockhausen began work on Zeitmasse. Paspels Pavillon.JPG
Paspels, the village where Stockhausen began work on Zeitmaße.

Zeitmaße was composed more or less concurrently with three other works in contrasting media, which together formed the basis for Stockhausen's rise to fame in the 1950s. The others were Gesang der Jünglinge for electronic and concrète sounds, Gruppen for three orchestras, and Klavierstück XI for piano. [1]

In order to begin work on a commission for the new orchestral composition which would become Gruppen, Stockhausen interrupted work on Gesang der Jünglinge in August 1955, retreating to an inexpensive rented room in the attic of a parsonage in Paspels, Switzerland, recommended to him by a colleague in the WDR studio, Paul Gredinger. He had scarcely arrived in Paspels when a message reached him, requesting a short composition to celebrate Heinrich Strobel's tenth anniversary of service at the Südwestrundfunk, Baden-Baden. [2]

I had to write something quickly, by that evening. I did not allow myself to take any time over it. And then, suddenly, I hear this whole little four-minute piece. I really chuckled to myself about it. It was for voice and wind quintet [ sic ]. Later I replaced the vocal part with a cor anglais, and the "piece" is the first four minutes of Zeitmaße. [3]

The humorous, caprice-like song—for alto voice, flute, clarinet in A, and bassoon—sets an epigrammatic text written by Strobel, in a French translation by Antoine Goléa.: [4] [5]

On cherche pour trouver quelque chose. Mais au fond, on ne sait pas ce qu'on cherche au juste. Et cela est vrai non seulement pour l'Allemagne musicale.

(We are seeking to find something. But at bottom, we do not know quite what we are looking for. And that is true not only of German musical life.)

The song, in which Stockhausen omits the last five words of the French text, was later published in a memorial volume for Strobel. [6] Upon returning to Cologne, Stockhausen resumed work on Gesang der Jünglinge and returned also to Zeitmaße—now scored for flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon—completing a first version that was recorded for the radio in December 1955 by the Wind Quintet of the WDR Symphony Orchestra (led by their oboist, Wilhelm Meyer), and first broadcast in January 1956. Stockhausen subsequently nearly doubled the length of the work by inserting five "cadenzas", which became the defining moments of the composition. [5] The planned premiere by the WDR Quintet at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in July 1956 fell through, but Stockhausen brought the score there anyway and showed it to his friends. Pierre Boulez initially dismissed Zeitmaße with a characteristically cutting remark to the effect that Stockhausen would do better to stay in the electronic studio, but soon changed his mind and asked to programme it in Paris in his Domaine Musical concert series. Stockhausen agreed, and the world premiere took place there on 15 December 1956, "before a quiet and extremely attentive audience". [7] [8] Five months later, Boulez included Zeitmaße in a programme taken on tour to London—a performance which was broadcast by the BBC on 6 May 1957—and after returning to Paris, made the first recording for commercial release. This recording was made in the composer's presence over a span of eight days in June 1957. [9] [10] [11]

In the meantime, the WDR Quintet had made a recording for broadcast, and in February 1957 gave the German premiere in Bonn, followed in March by a tour to Baden-Baden, Linz, Vienna, and Venice, performing the piece twice on each programme. In a letter to Wolfgang Steinecke, director of the Darmstadt Courses, Stockhausen reported a "quite unexpectedly huge, genuine success" on every occasion, and that he was "especially surprised by the spontaneous reaction of the Italians". [12] Steinecke had already invited Stockhausen to give seminars at Darmstadt. One was titled "Time Composition" and focused on Zeitmaße and Klavierstück XI; Universal Edition had promised delivery of the printed score in time for the performance of Zeitmaße on 22 July. The other was on that year's announced topic, "Music and Speech", and discussed Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître and Nono's Il canto sospeso , as well as Stockhausen's own Gesang der Jünglinge. [13]

Material and form

Many of the conceptual bases of the work are explained in Stockhausen's article, "... How Time Passes ...", written in September and October 1956 while work on both Zeitmaße and Gruppen was in progress. [14] In this essay, Stockhausen developed a serial organizational principle centered on the concept of a twelve-step duration series possessing the same structural properties as the basic twelve-note pitch series. This became the basis for the entire process of serial organization of Gruppen, but also formed the basis for the concluding part of Zeitmaße. [15] [16] This duration series, however, is expressed not as single units—which would correspond to single vibrations of a pitch—but rather as metronomic tempos in sufficiently long stretches of time to enable musicians to change tempo with precision. However, because the resulting "fundamental durations" are not small enough for use in the musical detail, subdivisions corresponding to the transposition of the overtones of a pitch's harmonic spectrum are used. [17] The German title Zeitmaße can be translated as "tempos", but in this piece, the title has a broader meaning. There are five general categories of "time measures", which are found both separately and in various combinations: [18]

  1. Metronomically measured tempos, in twelve different degrees, measured as a chromatic scale
  2. "As fast as possible", dependent on the abilities of the player and the nature of the musical passage
  3. "As slowly as possible", with the passage to be performed in one breath
  4. Fast, slowing down to about a quarter the initial speed
  5. Slow, speeding up to "as fast as possible"

An important aspect of the piece is an absence of thinking in terms of separate voices. Instead, there are note complexes (or "chords") which may be shaped in several ways. The notes may be struck together and then drop out one by one, or do the opposite by entering one at a time and building up into a dense structure. During a sustained chord, the internal dynamics may change as different instruments enter or fade away. Individual lines tend to disappear in favour of changing statistical densities, and transitions between the linear and the simultaneous are always present. [19]

Although it is a serial composition, this matters most on the levels of rhythm, polyphony (control of density), and articulation. Serial pitch (dodecaphonic) procedures are not terribly important from the listener's perspective. The decisive thing is a very homogeneous and rigorous harmonic texture conforming to the principles of Webernism. [20] Put another way, what matters most is gesture, which is the product of contour, intensity, and note density. [21] However, in both the melodic and harmonic realms, and especially in slow passages, Stockhausen strongly favours the succession of a semitone and a major or minor third. [22]

The placement of the instruments on the platform as prescribed in the original version of the score [23] is slightly unconventional (from left to right: oboe, flute, cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon), and is intended to evenly distribute the edgy timbres of the three double-reed instruments across the stage, and balance them with the purer flute and smoother clarinet timbres. This stage placement is reflected in the ordering of the parts in the score. [24] In the revised edition, printed in 1997 and 2004, the order of the instruments on the platform is reversed to read: bassoon, clarinet, cor anglais, flute, oboe. [25]

The original version of Zeitmaße (before insertion of the "cadenzas") was in three sections: a quartet (for flute, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon), a trio (for flute, oboe, and clarinet), and a quintet for the full ensemble. This 4:3:5 proportioning is representative of a serial approach that operates throughout the work in many different ways. [26]

The first section (bars 1–29) corresponds to the original song. [27] Durations are governed here by sets of five values, arrayed in a basic square:

Zeitmaße (duration square, b. 1–29)
35412
52134
41523
13245
24351

The first series uses the quaver as counting unit, the next uses semiquavers, and so on. [28] The pitches begin with a twelve-note row—C D A C G E D F F B A G—which generates further series, where the last note of each row becomes the first of the next one, and the intervals of the first series are taken in succession as the starting points of the subsequent ones. [29] Because of this common-tone approach, each row is effectively reduced to just eleven notes. After completing the twelfth row, the pitches start over again from the beginning, omitting from each row the original second member, producing a succession of ten-note series. The section ends part way through the sixth of these reduced rows. [30] The dynamics, like the durations, draw on a field of five levels: f, mf, p, pp, and ppp. [28]

The second section is much longer, extending from bar 30 to bar 271. It is built upon a permuted series of seven character types:

  1. groups
  2. horizontal-polyphonic
  3. sustained notes and points
  4. points
  5. rapid chords or sounds, polyphonically, with long general pauses
  6. chords
  7. chords and a few independent notes, legato

These seven types occur four times, permuted as follows: [31]

Zeitmaße (part 2 permutations)
ABCDEFG
CEBAGFD
GBEDFCA
EADCFBG

These are interlaced with four of the interrupting cadenzas, which are long and complex. All of them are regulated by a single 9 × 9 number square. [32] [24] [33] [34]

The third section has the most complex rhythms (apart from the cadenzas), using duration sets of twelves, nines, sevens, sixes, and fives. It is interrupted in bars 275–289 by the last and shortest of the inserted cadenzas. [35] [36] A sketch found amongst those for Gruppen shows that the twelve tempo-defined subdivisions of the original version are derived from the inversion of the Gruppen row, [15] [16] a fact that had been previously discovered by York Höller through examination of the score. The counting values are varied among crotchet, quaver, and semiquaver. However, the fifth and twelfth elements (E = 66 and G = 80, respectively) are exchanged, probably because the fourth, fifth, and sixth tempos otherwise would have been too close together: [37]

Zeitmaße (part 3 tempos)
CFCDGDGAAFBE
112701086380608496907410266
Figure rythmique croche hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique noire hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique noire hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique croche hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique noire hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique noire hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique noire hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique noire hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique croche hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique croche hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique noire hampe haut.svg Figure rythmique double croche hampe haut.svg

The five cadenzas, which account for about two-fifths of the total duration of Zeitmaße, are spliced into the score in such a way as to flow out of and back into the previously composed music, and yet create a perceivable structure of mutual interruption. The first and last cadenzas are the shortest, and the central one by far the longest; the six segments from the original structure, on the contrary, begin and end with the longest values, while the four intermediate ones generally decrease in length. The result is an interlaced pattern of eleven sections, played continuously. [38]

Discography

In chronological order of recording.

Filmography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karlheinz Stockhausen</span> German composer (1928–2007)

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, having been called the "father of electronic music", for introducing controlled chance into serial composition, and for musical spatialization.

<i>Gesang der Jünglinge</i> Electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen

Gesang der Jünglinge is an electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog. The vocal parts were supplied by 12-year-old Josef Protschka. It is exactly 13 minutes, 14 seconds long.

Kontra-Punkte is a composition for ten instruments by Karlheinz Stockhausen which resolves contrasts among six instrumental timbres, as well as extremes of note values and dynamic levels, into a homogeneous ending texture. Stockhausen described it: "Counter-Points: a series of the most concealed and also the most conspicuous transformations and renewals—with no predictable end. The same thing is never heard twice. Yet there is a distinct feeling of never falling out of an unmistakable construction of the utmost homogeneity. An underlying force that holds things together—related proportions: a structure. Not the same Gestalten in a changing light. But rather this: various Gestalten in the same light, that permeates everything."

Kreuzspiel (Crossplay) is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen written for oboe, bass clarinet, piano and four percussionists in 1951. It is assigned the number 1/7 in the composer's catalogue of works.

Gruppen for three orchestras (1955–57) is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music ... probably the first work of the post-war generation of composers in which technique and imagination combine on the highest level to produce an undisputable masterpiece".

<i>Tierkreis</i> (Stockhausen)

Tierkreis (1974–75) is a musical composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. The title is the German word for Zodiac, and the composition consists of twelve melodies, each representing one sign of the zodiac.

<i>Telemusik</i>

Telemusik is an electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is number 20 in his catalog of works.

<i>Klang</i> (Stockhausen) Cycle of musical compositions

KlangDie 24 Stunden des Tages is a cycle of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, on which he worked from 2004 until his death in 2007. It was intended to consist of 24 chamber-music compositions, each representing one hour of the day, with a different colour systematically assigned to every hour. The cycle was unfinished when the composer died, so that the last three "hours" are lacking. The 21 completed pieces include solos, duos, trios, a septet, and Stockhausen's last entirely electronic composition, Cosmic Pulses. The fourth composition is a theatre piece for a solo percussionist, and there are also two auxiliary compositions which are not part of the main cycle. The completed works bear the work (opus) numbers 81–101.

<i>In Freundschaft</i> Composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen

In Freundschaft is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, number 46 in his catalogue of works. It is a serial composition for a solo instrument, first for clarinet, and later arranged by the composer for many other instruments, often in friendship to specific performers.

Carré (Square) for four orchestras and four choirs (1959–60) is a composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 10 in the composer's catalog of works.

Adieufür Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer is a composition for wind quintet by Karlheinz Stockhausen composed in 1966. It is Number 21 in the composer's catalog of works, and the second of Stockhausen's three wind quintets, the others being Zeitmaße (1955-1956) and the Rotary Wind Quintet (1997).

<i>Samstag aus Licht</i>

Samstag aus Licht is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting and four scenes, and was the second of seven to be composed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche. It was written between 1981 and 1983, to a libretto written by the composer and incorporating a text by Saint Francis of Assisi, and was first staged in Milan in 1984.

<i>Spiral</i> (Stockhausen)

Spiral, for a soloist with a shortwave receiver, is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968. It is Number 27 in the catalogue of the composer's works.

The Konkrete Etüde is the earliest work of electroacoustic tape music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1952 and lasting just three-and-a-quarter minutes. The composer retrospectively gave it the number "15" in his catalogue of works.

<i>Punkte</i>

Punkte (Points) is an orchestral composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, given the work number ½ in his catalogue of works.

<i>Stop</i> (Stockhausen)

Stop is a composition for orchestra by Karlheinz Stockhausen, work-number 18 in the composer’s catalogue of works, where two performing realisations are also found as Nr. 18½ and Nr. 18⅔.

Unsichtbare Chöre is an eight-channel electronic-music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen. A component part of the opera Donnerstag aus Licht, it may also be performed as an independent composition, in which form it is designated "ex 49" in the composer's catalog of works.

A Garland for Dr. K. is a set of eleven short compositions created in 1969 for the celebration of the eightieth birthday of Dr Alfred Kalmus, the director of the London branch of Universal Edition. It is also the title of an album containing these eleven pieces of music, recorded in 1976.

<i>Rotary</i> Wind Quintet Chamber music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen

The Rotary Wind Quintet is a chamber music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the last of his three wind quintets and is Nr. 70½ in his catalogue of works. A performance lasts about 8½ minutes.

References

  1. Kohl 1998, p. 61.
  2. Stockhausen & Frisius 1989, p. 320.
  3. Stockhausen & Oesch 1978, pp. 577–578.
  4. Kurtz 1992, p. 85.
  5. 1 2 Maconie 2005, p. 146.
  6. Schatz & Strobel 1977, pp. 88–89.
  7. Stockhausen 1964, p. 46.
  8. Kurtz 1992, p. 86.
  9. Searle 1957.
  10. Vermeil 1996, p. 180.
  11. Misch & Bandur 2001, p. 169.
  12. Misch & Bandur 2001, p. 161.
  13. Misch & Bandur 2001, p. 136–137, 158–159, 167–168.
  14. Stockhausen 1963.
  15. 1 2 Decroupet 1997, p. 40.
  16. 1 2 Decroupet 1998, p. 352.
  17. Koenig 1968, pp. 90–91.
  18. Stockhausen 1964, p. 47.
  19. Grant 2001, p. 138.
  20. Pousseur 1997, p. 177.
  21. Zaparinuk 1989, p. 20.
  22. Marcus 1968, p. 144.
  23. Stockhausen 1957a, p. [i].
  24. 1 2 Kohl 1998, p. 64.
  25. Stockhausen 1957b, p. [ii].
  26. Toop 2005, p. 29.
  27. Rigoni 1998, p. 142.
  28. 1 2 Toop 2005, p. 30.
  29. Rigoni 1998, pp. 141–142.
  30. Kohl 2017, pp. 33–34.
  31. Decroupet 1998, p. 351.
  32. Decroupet 1998, p. 351–352.
  33. Kohl 2017, pp. 92–93.
  34. Rigoni 1998, pp. 142–143.
  35. Kohl 1998, p. 62.
  36. Kohl 2017, pp. 117–120.
  37. Höller 1994, pp. 86–87.
  38. Kohl 2017, pp. 120–121.
  39. Kohl 2017.

Cited sources

  • Decroupet, Pascal (1997). "Gravitationsfeld Gruppen: Zur Verschränkung der Werke Gesang der Jünglinge, Gruppen und Zeitmaße und deren Auswirkung auf Stockhausens Musikdenken in der zweiten Hälfte der fünfziger Jahre". Musiktheorie (in German). 12 (1): 37–51.
  • Decroupet, Pascal (1998). "Une Genèse, une œuvre, une pensée musicale . . . en mouvement Zeitmaße de Karlheinz Stockhausen". Revue Belge de Musicologie (in French). 52: 347–361. doi:10.2307/3686934. JSTOR   3686934.
  • Grant, M[orag] J[osephine] (2001). Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-War Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Höller, York (1994). Fortschritt oder Sackgasse? – Kritische Betrachtungen zum frühen Serialismus. Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag. ISBN   3-930735-16-4.
  • Koenig, Gottfried Michael (1968). "Commentary". Die Reihe . 8: 80–98. Originally published in German in 1962.
  • Kohl, Jerome (Winter 1998). "A Seventieth-Birthday Festschrift for Karlheinz Stockhausen (Part One): Guest Editor's Introduction". Perspectives of New Music . 36 (1): 59–64.
  • Kohl, Jerome (2017). Thomas, Wyndham; Abingdon, Oxon (eds.). Karlheinz Stockhausen: Zeitmaße. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN   978-0-7546-5334-9. Includes CD with the 1971 recording by the Danzi Quintet with Heinz Holliger. Landmarks in Music Since 1950.
  • Kurtz, Michael (1992). Stockhausen: A Biography. Translated by Toop, Richard. London and Boston: Faber and Faber. ISBN   0-571-14323-7.
  • Maconie, Robin (2005). Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lanham, Maryland, Toronto, Oxford: Scarecrow Press. ISBN   0-8108-5356-6.
  • Marcus, Genevieve. 1968. "Stockhausen's Zeitmasse". The Music Review 29, no. 2 (May): 142–156.
  • Misch, Imke; Bandur, Markus (2001). Karlheinz Stockhausen bei den Internationalen Ferienkursen für Neue Musik in Darmstadt 1951–1996: Dokumente und Briefe (in German). Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag. ISBN   3-00-007290-X.
  • Pousseur, Henri (1997). Zeitmasze: série, périodicité, individuation. Musiques croisées (Collection Musique et musicologie) (in French). Paris: L'Harmattan. pp. 171–189. Preface by Jean-Yves Bosseur.
  • Rigoni, Michel (1998). Stockhausen: ... un vaisseau lancé vers le ciel (2nd ed.). Lillebonne: Millénaire III Editions. ISBN   2-911906-02-0. Preface by Michaël Lévinas.
  • Schatz, Ingeborg; Strobel, Hilde (1977). Blumröder, Christoph von (ed.). Heinrich Strobel "Verehrter Meister, lieber Freund': Begegnungen mit Komponisten unserer Zeit (in German). Stuttgart and Zürich: Belser Verlag. With photographs by Heinrich Strobel.
  • Searle, Humphrey (1957). "Le Domaine Musical". The Musical Times . 98: 386.
  • Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1957a. Nr. 5 Zeitmaße für fünf Holzbläser: Partitur. London: Universal Edition (London) Ltd; Vienna: Universal Edition A. G.
  • Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1957b. Zeitmaße für fünf Holzbläser, Werk Nr. 5 (1955–56): Partitur, new, revised edition [5th edition 1997; 6th edition July 2004]. London: Universal Edition (London) Ltd; Vienna: Universal Edition A. G.
  • Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1963). ... wie die Zeit vergeht ... Texte zur Musik 1 (in German). Cologne: DuMont Dokumente. pp. 99–139. (Revised and annotated version of the text first published in Die Reihe 3 (1957): 13–42. Translation by Cornelius Cardew, as "... How Time Passes ..." in the English edition of Die Reihe 3 (1959): 10–40.
  • Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1964). Schnebel, Dieter (ed.). Nr. 5: Zeitmaße (1955/56) für Oboe, Flöte, Englisch-Horn, Klarinette, Fagott. Texte zur Musik 2 (in German). Cologne: DuMont Dokumente. pp. 46–49.
  • Stockhausen, Karlheinz; Frisius, Rudolf (1989). Blumröder, Christoph von (ed.). Wille zur Form und Wille zum Abenteuer. Texte zur Musik 6 (in German). Cologne: DuMont Dokumente. pp. 320–346. ISBN   3-7701-2249-6.
  • Stockhausen, Karlheinz; Oesch, Hans (1978). Blumröder, Christoph von (ed.). Interview III: Denn alles ist Musik... Texte zur Musik 4 (in German). Cologne: DuMont Dokumente. pp. 569–586. ISBN   3-7701-1078-1.
  • Toop, Richard (2005). Six Lectures from the Stockhausen Courses Kürten 2002. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag. ISBN   3-00-016185-6.
  • Vermeil, Jean (1996). Schnebel, Dieter (ed.). Conversations with Boulez: Thoughts on Conducting. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. pp. 46–49. Translated by Camille Nash, with a selection of programmes conducted by Boulez and a discography by Paul Griffiths.
  • Zaparinuk, Peter (1989). Gesture and Musical Formation in Stockhausen's Zeitmasze (Thesis). Vol. 2. Rochester: University of Rochester.

Further reading