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5.2 Klavierstück I
- The statistical principle: creating a continuum. This concerns the structural coherence between the smallest and largest time structures and the ideal of finding within one sound all the relations of a complete structure. Stockhausen wants to develop a continuum between micro and macro structure by using the serial row, which balances all the musical values by working as a mediator between its extremes.
- The dynamic principle: integration. As important as these statistical aspects are the dynamic aspects. These connect both the new to what has already been aurally perceived and integrate both into ever-growing totals. Within this serial thinking there is room for every possible musical starting point. Gruppen für drei Orchester contains every form of pulsing that is known from time development in music and Hymnen features every possible tape manipulation of national hymns. Material that does not fit smoothly in the continuum is not dramatically highlighted or simply only quoted, but is surrounded by as many mediating, serially ordered in-between stages as possible, which completely assimilate the alien intruder, incorporating it into a higher structural ordering.141
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5.2 KLAVIERSTÜCK 1 Stockhausen’s first introduction to punctual serial music was Karel Goeyvaerts’ Sonata for Two Pianos, the second part of which he performed, together with Goeyvaerts, at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse of 1951. The criticism levelled against this work (and even more fiercely later against Boulez’ Structures I) was that this music could be heard as nothing but a completely static tone field, as the mechanical completion of a preconceived plan, and that this piece had no audible form, no direction, and no variation. Stockhausen responded with the concept of the ‘moment form’. This form consists of a number of musical units or moments (Gruppen) that have one or more statistically assigned characteristics, as condensing within the serial continuum.
Contrary to the mosaic forms discussed earlier (see Chapter III, 3.4), Stockhausen avoids patterns of repetition so that, unlike in the works of Messiaen and Stravinsky, there is no form rhythm with specific expectations. The moments have their serial starting points in common but do not constitute any narrative. Stockhausen himself suggests that it is quite possible to not listen to some moments—when one’s attention lapses—and still not miss the drift of the work.
141See: Herman Sabbe, Reihe, Stern und Spirale, Musik Konzepte ...wie der Zeit verging...(1981).
Klavierstück 1 consists of 36 moments that are ordered in six rows of six durations expressed in quarter notes, based on their duration. 5 2 3 1(=3/8) 4 6 3 4 2 5 6 1 2 6 4 3 1 5 4 1 6 2(=7/16) 5 3 6 5 1 4 3 2 1 3 5 6 2 4
Let us look at the first six moments: - Moment 1: 5 quarter notes – tending from low to high – quasi-unison – dynamics between pp and fff - Moment 2: 2 quarter notes – tending from high to low – multiple tones at once – dynamics between mf and ff - Moment 3: 3 quarter notes – rest and a static tone - Moment 4: 1.5 quarter notes (an exception, as this value should be 1) – all directions – quasi-unison – dynamics between pp and mf - Moment 5: 4 quarter notes – one static tone followed by chaos – ff - Moment 6: 6 quarter notes – static tone and unison line, order, from high to low – ff Each moment is statistically related to some of the other 36 moments, but not two moments are the same.
A number of moments have their own tempo mark. Because Stockhausen opted for a relative basic tempo (as fast as possible) all these tempo changes are also relative; these are marked as dotted lines. When, after practising, the tempo at which the pianist can play the fastest passages has been established, this becomes the basic tempo. For convenience sake, let’s say this is the = 60. The first bar then becomes = 66 ((60:10) x 11), and if needed the 7:5 can be replaced with = 92,4 ((66:5) x 7). The second bar is in the basic tempo of = 60.
Even with this replacement of all anti-metric figures with tempo markings this piece remains notoriously difficult and pianists can only approximately realise especially the tempo changes. For Stockhausen the most important result of the Klavierstücke 1-4 was that the metrically regular pulse - so clearly perceptible underneath the music of Messiaen and Boulez’ Structures I - is completely gone from his Klavierstücke 1-4. This music dances, tells, and breezes without metric pulse in the background. Yet despite this liberation from the metric straitjacket, the main characteristic of the Klavierstücke 1-4 remains the avoidance of tone repetitions and of any form of diatonism. Stockhausen applies two modes (the tone rows are not used in a fixed order and may therefore