Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kurzwellen (Radio Bremen Aufname), Teil I (1/2)

Kurzwellen, for 6 players (1968)

Composed By, Mixed By, Electronics [Filters, Potentiometers] - Karlheinz Stockhausen
Keyboards [Electronium] - Harald Bojé
Percussion [Tamtam] - Alfred Alings , Rolf Gehlhaar
Piano - Aloys Kontarsky
Viola [Electric Viola] - Johannes G. Fritsch

Recorded in the television studio's of Radio Bremen on May fifth, 1968, during the festival Pro Musica Nova

This piece, probably largely influenced by John Cage's early works using "extra-musical" sounds including radios etc., was composed in 1968 for Stockhausen's touring group of 6 performers - on piano, electronium, large tam-tam with microphone, viola with contact microphone, two filters with four potentiometers, and 4 shortwave receivers (some subsitute instruments are possible). Their task is to react on the spur of the moment to the unpredictable sounds received on shortwave radios. What is pre-composed is how they react: imitate, modulate, transpose, their rhythmic articulation, higher or lower in pitch, softer or louder, when and how often they play in combinations, how they call out to each other in order to share a single event among them, condensing that event, embellishing it, losing it, and so forth. The primary aim of each performance is to bring out the human spirit within a sense of nowness, "everything is the whole" (Stockhausen), thus bypassing dichotomies. [Allmusic.com]

Art by Arshile Gorky

Category:

Music

Tags:

• stockhausen
• boje
• alings
• gehlhaar
• kontarsky
• fritsch
• kurzwellen

[benjaminopie]

You can hear a few pops at the start. It's a vinyl copy, presumably the DG double-LP. I understand that at the time it was the worst selling release in their catalog. Now it's a prized collector's edition.

[Thrash0Jazz0Assassin]

Was this taken from the Stockhausen Verlag cd?

[shum65]

Amazing collage of sounds... ;)