Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kathinkas Gesang für Flöte und Elektronische Musik

Описание: Kathinkas Gesang for flute and electronic music

Maconie, Other Planets: The Music Of Karlheinz Stockhausen:
In May 1983 Stockhausen devised a new version of Kathinkas Gesang for flute and electronic music. The electronic music was realised over two weeks at IRCAM in December 1983 and August 1984, with the assistance of Marc Battier. The electronic music consists of a sequence of six eightchannel digital whirlwinds of sound, like the flying saucer sounds of Sirius, but raised to a new level of acoustic complexity, and coming to focus in what one instinctively feels should be earth-shattering detonations, but in fact resemble plucked giant bass strings of the piano: a link with the bass sounds of Piano Piece XIII, and beyond that to Wagner's Montsalvat bell sounds from Siegfried. Stockhausen had been particularly fascinated by a demonstration by Giuseppe di Guigno, builder of the 4X (the first entirely digital music workstation. This system was used by Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen. To a certain extent it was a reference point for later digital instruments), of the gradual dissociation of phace relatinships of an overtone spectrum corresponding to the output of allegedly more than 700 phase-synchronized tone generators, an incredible number. From the time of Kontakte he had been well aware of the practical difficulties of synthesizing sounds that appear to move realistically in space, for precisely the reason that in real space, every partial frequency emitted by a moving sound source is affected to a different degree. The effect is familiar from the sound of a jet aircraft passing overhead, in the changing intensities and dynamic fluctuations audible within the sound. Although it could not deliver coherent rotation, at least the 4X offered a possibility of a rotation-like expansion and contraction effect similar in kind to that created in 1957 by Herbert Eimert and Heinz Schütz in Zu Ehren von Igor Stravinsky, using techniques of vocoder and tape loops, (and in doing so, reinventing the message of Kathinkas Gesang in the childhood image of Dorothy's magical journey by tornado to the colorful world of Oz, there to encounter the formidable visage of the Wizard himself).

© Stockhausen Foundation for Music, 51515 Kürten (www.stockhausen-verlag.com)