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Interpretation and Performance Practice in Realizing Stockhausen's Studie II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

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Abstract

In the 1950s, using electronic devices to make music seemed a new paradigm for composers eager to remove the effects of interpretation on their relationship with their audience. The promise was that compositional ideas could be directly made into sound with the help of a technician whose task it was to carry out instructions. By making a new realization of Stockhausen's Studie II, composed in 1954, I interrogate many of the original techniques and practices, and show that there are many sites which require interpretation and raise issues of performance practice. The implication of these discoveries is that there may be advantages to an analysis of early electronic music of the 1950s and 1960s from the perspective of the practice of instrumental music, and that where there are references to ‘technicians’, great care should be taken to understand and appreciate the range of musical skills often required by such individuals. This approach to realization also raises serious questions about the ontology of electronic music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 141 , Issue 2 , 2016 , pp. 445 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © Sean Williams 2016. All Rights Reserved.

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Footnotes

The author wishes to acknowledge the support of the Leverhulme Trust in funding this research, the Stockhausen Stiftung für Musik for providing access to the Stockhausen Archive, and particularly to Gottfried Michael Koenig for generously spending many hours discussing historic electronic music practice at the Westdeutsche Rundfunk Studio for Electronic Music in the 1950s and 1960s.

Supplemental material for this article is available at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059> and also at Edinburgh Datashare, <http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/325>.

References

1 Georgina Born, ‘For a Relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, beyond the Practice Turn’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 135 (2010), 205–43.

2 A realization score was published by Universal Edition: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nr. 3: Elektronische Studien: Studie II (London, 1956). Authorized recordings were released on 10” vinyl (Studie I, Studie II, Gesang der Jünglinge (1957), Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft LP 16133) and subsequently on CD (Elektronische Musik 1952–1960 (2001), Stockhausen Verlag CD3).

3 Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, ‘The Third Stage: Some Observations on the Aesthetics of Electronic Music’, Die Reihe, 1 (1958), 11–13.

4 According to Stuckenschmidt, the first stage of music is vocal, the second instrumental. ‘The Third Stage’, 13.

5 Evgeny Scholpo, ‘The Enemy of Music’, The Artificial Phonogram on Film as a Technical Means of Music, trans. Andrey Smirnov (Leningrad, 1939), 249, cited in Smirnov, Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia (London, 2013), 33.

6 Stockhausen, Studie II (score), iii.

7 Ibid.

8 Gottfried Michael Koenig, Essay: Komposition für elektronische Klänge 1957/Composition for Electronic Sounds 1957 (Vienna, 1960).

9 Although Rex Lawson's career as a concert pianolist demonstrates that there is an essential performance practice necessary to make the most of the instrument.

10 Koenig, Essay, 7.

11 Gottfried Michael Koenig, in interview with Sean Williams, Geldermalsen (28 May 2012; hereafter Koenig Interview 1), forthcoming in Contemporary Music Review.

12 Koenig, Essay, 109.

13 Koenig Interview 1.

14 Seppo Heikinheimo, The Electronic Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Studies on the Esthetical and Formal Problems of its First Phase (Helsinki, 1972), 43–7; Heinz Silberhorn, Die Reihentechnik in Stockhausens Studie II (Rohrdorf, 1980); Joachim Heintz, ‘Re-generating Stockhausen's “Studie II” in Csound’, Proceedings of the Linux Audio Conference 2010, ed. Maurits Lamers (Utrecht, 2010), 64–74, also available at <http://lac.linuxaudio.org/2010/download/lac2010proceedings.pdf> (accessed 1 June 2016).

15 Georg Hajdu's version for Max/MSP, Joachim Heintz's version for Csound and António de Sousa Dias's version for both platforms.

16 It should also be acknowledged that a significant reason for choosing Studie II was opportunistic: the acoustics department at my university has a reverberation room with a nine-second RT60 (reverb) time. Stockhausen specifies a room ‘with about 10 seconds reverberation time and a regular frequency response’ (Stockhausen, Studie II (score), vii), so the facility to which I had access was well suited.

17 Digitized versions of these realization tapes (Stockhausen Archive, Files EL 121 41–80) were made available by the Stockhausen Stiftung für Musik after being digitized at the WDR in 2008.

18 Stockhausen, Studie II (score), iv.

19 Gottfried Michael Koenig, ‘Studio Technique’, Die Reihe, 1 (1958), 52–4 (p. 53).

20 A composer may work out a clever scheme of microtonal intervals, but if writing for the piano, reworking the pitches into semitones is the only practical option.

21 Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kontakte Nr. 12: Für elektronische Klänge, Klavier und Schlagzeug (London, 1966); Kontakte: Elektronische Musik, Nr. 12 (London, 1968).

22 Koenig Interview 1.

23 Ibid.

24 Sound clips 1–3 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg1_group_67_KS.aif>, <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg2_group_67_60deg.aif> and <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg3_group_67_90deg.aif> respectively.

25 Sound clips 4–5 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg4_Studie_ii_60deg_5_6.aif> and <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg5_Studie_ii_90deg_5_6.aif> respectively.

26 Koenig Interview 1.

27 Heikinheimo, The Electronic Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 43.

28 Stockhausen, Studie II (score), viii.

29 Heikinheimo, The Electronic Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 45.

30 Sean Williams, ‘Stockhausen Meets King Tubby's: The Transformation of the Stepped Filter into a Musical Instrument’, Material Culture and Electronic Sound: Studies in the History of Science and Technology, ed. Tim Boon and Frode Weium, Artefacts, 8 (Washington DC, 2013), 163–88.

31 ‘Das es ermöglichte, die Familie der Geräusche in die Komposition einzubeziehen.’ Karlheinz Stockhausen, Texte zur Musik, ed. Dieter Schebel, 6 vols. (Cologne, 1963–89), ii: Texte zu eigenen Werken, zur Kunst Anderer, Aktuelles: Aufsätze 1952–1962 zur musikalischen Praxis (1975), 22 (my translation).

32 See above, note 16.

33 Oskar Bero, ‘Die rundfunktechnischen Einrichtungen im Funkhaus Köln’, Technische Hausmitteilungen des Nordwestdeutsche Rundfunks, 5/5–6 (1953), 98–108.

34 Koenig Interview 1.

35 To combat the more stubborn resonances still left at 222 Hz and 960 Hz, I used a TC Electronic 2240 parametric equalizer to attenuate these narrow band peaks by about 4 dB.

36 It consisted of a direct output from the Studer A80RC to the TC Electronic 2240; from there to a Genelec 1031 studio monitor in the reverberation chamber. The signal was picked up by a pair of DPA4006TL omnidirectional microphones feeding a MOTU Traveler with Black Lion modified pre-amps, recorded to Logic Pro at 24-bit 96 kHz.

37 Stockhausen, Studie II (score), vii.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., vi.

40 ‘Lichtzeigerinstrument: Braunbuch-Beschreibung C/B-J 47b’, Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH der Rundfunkanstaltung der Bundesrepublik (technical datasheet, 1950).

41 Originally the drivers were based on valve technology and were designated as Siemens U70, upgraded to U71; in the 1960s they were redesigned around transistor technology and redesignated U270 (Siemens) and U370 (TAB).

42 The meter is calibrated in dB units according to the DIN 45406 standard, or IEC 60268-10 Type I PPM, and this will be referred to throughout as dBVU. 0 dBVU is equivalent to +6 dBu or −12 dBFS (MOTU Traveler).

43 Volker Müller interviewed by Sean Williams, Cologne (26 July 2012); Werner Scholz interviewed by Sean Williams, Cologne (12 June 2012).

44 DPA 4006 TL microphones with exceptionally flat frequency response.

45 Stockhausen, Studie II (score), vii.

46 Mya Tannenbaum, Conversations with Stockhausen (Oxford, 1987), 22.

47 Ibid.

48 This is echoed by anecdotal evidence from Professor Peter Manning, who attended the concert and spoke with Stockhausen afterwards.

49 Although the shapes are all drawn with straight lines, I refer to them as curves, partly because the dB scale is non-linear, but mostly for consistency's sake.

50 These have a 130 mm travel and a tall, pinched cylinder-shaped cap, ideal for gripping between thumb and forefinger.

51 Sound clip 6 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg6_page15_sound_7.aif>.

52 Koenig Interview 1.

53 Sean Williams, interview with Gottfried Michael Koenig, Culembourg (12 November 2013; hereafter Koenig Interview 2), forthcoming in Contemporary Music Review.

54 Video clip 1 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg7_Studie_ii_fader_demo.mov>.

55 Spreadsheets 1–3 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg8_Studie_ii_exact_values.xlsx> and <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg8_Studie_ii_exact_values_CSV_format.zip>.

56 Actually only 149 are used. Unused groups are marked (in red) in the third sheet (headed ‘Group Identifier’) of spreadsheet 1.

57 Sound clip 7 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg9_Studie_ii_p14.aif>.

58 Koenig Interview 2.

59 Silberhorn, Die Reihentechnik.

60 Heikinheimo, The Electronic Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 42.

61 This section can be heard at 1’ 50”–1’ 55” in the final mix, illustrated in sound clip 9 (see below, note 64).

62 Sound clip 8 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg10_Studie_ii_p26_first.aif>.

63 Next Generation Sound Synthesis (NESS) is a physical modelling project which uses multiple graphics processing units (GPUs), funded by the European Research Council.

64 Sound clip 9 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg11_Studie_ii_p26_final.aif>.

65 Stockhausen, Studie II (score), vii.

66 Ibid., viii.

67 Silberhorn, Die Reihentechnik; Heintz, ‘Re-generating Stockhausen's “Studie II”’.

68 Mastering is the final process through which a recording is passed in order to make the whole piece sound right, especially within the context of other similar recordings, and is heavily dependent on the final delivery medium.

69 Sound clip 10 may be accessed at <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2016.1216059>; also available at <http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10283/887/eg12_Studie_ii_master_44.aif>.

70 Sound clips 4 and 5 (see above, note 25).

71 Koenig, Essay, 109–10.

72 Stephen Hill, The Tragedy of Technology (London, 1988).