Telemusik/Mixtur

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Telemusik/Mixtur

TELEMUSIK was composed between January and April, 1966, in the studio for electronic music of the Japanese Radio Nippon Hoso Kyokai, Tokyo. During my first 8 or 9 days in Tokyo I could not sleep: one vision came again and again, a vision of sounds, new technical processes, formal relationship, pictures of notation, human relationships - all at once and in a network too tangled up to be unraveled in one logical process. In all this I wanted to come closer to the realisation of an old dream: to take a step further in the direction of composing not "my" music, but a music of the whole world, of all countries and all races. I am certain you will hear them in TELEMUSIK, these mysterious visitors: from the Imperial Japanese court (the Gagaku Players), from the happy isle of Bali, from the southern Sahara, from a Spanish village fiesta, from Hungary, from the Shipibos of the Amazon, from the Omizutori ceremony in Nara, in which I participated for three days and nights, from China - fantastic virtuosity! - from the Kohyasan temple, from the Vietnamese highlands, about whom I read gruesome and distorted news every morning in an American-Japanese newspaper in the hotel, and again from Vietnam, and more fascination from Vietnam (what a wonderful people!), from the Buddhist Jakushiji temple, from the Noh drama "Ho Sho Riu", and who knows from where else. They all wanted to participate in TELEMUSIK, sometimes superimposed and interpenetrating each other. I had my hands full in keeping the unknown world of electronically produced sounds open to these guests - I do not know how I did it, I was moonstruck, but I believe I succeeded in composing this TELEMUSIK.

In MIXTUR [version for small orchestra] (composed 1964, premiere in the North German Radio NDR, Hamburg, November 9, 1965), the sounds of a woodwind group, of a brass group and two string groups - one of which plays predominantly pizzicato - are picked up by microphones; the 4 microphone groups lead to 4 mixers, where sound technicians balance the individual microphones as well as regulate the sum of each group.The output of each mixer goes to a ring modulator. According to instructions of the score 4 other musicians "play" sine-wave generators, whose outputs modulate the instrumental sounds in the 4 ring modulators. The results of this modulation are diffused over 4 loudspeaker groups, hence mixed in with the unmodulated orchestral sound: each instrumental sound thus results in a "mixture" sound.

A fifth orchestral group consists of 3 percussionists, each with a cymbal and a tamtam; these are picked up by contact microphones and amplified over 3 separate loudspeakers.

As a result, highly differentiated composition in timbres, as previously possible only in the field of electronic music, is possible here with orchestral instruments also. (Karlheinz Stockhausen)

Tracklisting:

Seite 1

1. Telemusik {17:11}

Seite 2

1. Mixtur {26:16}

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