One of the ironies of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's career is the way in which his radical approach to music--once the epitome of the most esoteric avant-gardism--has been filtered into popular culture. The influ... more »ence of this visionary pioneer of electronic music extended to the studio experiments of the Beatles (particularly in Sgt. Pepper's) and can still be heard in the sampling of today's techno records. The seminal Kontakte (1959/1960) introduced a brave new world of aural experience, replacing traditional music's linear flow of development with the concept of "Moment Form"--Stockhausen's catchphrase for concentrating on the validity of the "now," of each particular musical gesture independent of its larger context. He originally conceived of the work as purely electronic sounds, but this second version introduces two live players (a pianist and percussionist) interacting--in points of "contact"--with a prerecorded array of frequencies. On first impression, Kontakte may seem nothing more than a 35-minute babble of chaotic noises (though it is, paradoxically, planned to a very high level). Forget about the theory, forget about the once-utopian dreams of giving music the prestige of scientific objectivity, and just listen to the stream of electronic burps, squawks, whizzes, and--toward the conclusion--serene cloudlike mists as they metamorphose. It's a stunning soundscape and document of a particularly potent period of revolution in modern music. --Thomas May« less
One of the ironies of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's career is the way in which his radical approach to music--once the epitome of the most esoteric avant-gardism--has been filtered into popular culture. The influence of this visionary pioneer of electronic music extended to the studio experiments of the Beatles (particularly in Sgt. Pepper's) and can still be heard in the sampling of today's techno records. The seminal Kontakte (1959/1960) introduced a brave new world of aural experience, replacing traditional music's linear flow of development with the concept of "Moment Form"--Stockhausen's catchphrase for concentrating on the validity of the "now," of each particular musical gesture independent of its larger context. He originally conceived of the work as purely electronic sounds, but this second version introduces two live players (a pianist and percussionist) interacting--in points of "contact"--with a prerecorded array of frequencies. On first impression, Kontakte may seem nothing more than a 35-minute babble of chaotic noises (though it is, paradoxically, planned to a very high level). Forget about the theory, forget about the once-utopian dreams of giving music the prestige of scientific objectivity, and just listen to the stream of electronic burps, squawks, whizzes, and--toward the conclusion--serene cloudlike mists as they metamorphose. It's a stunning soundscape and document of a particularly potent period of revolution in modern music. --Thomas May
CD Reviews
Shoot the producer...
07/10/2000
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Kontakte is of course a stunning work, however this recording leaves a lot to be desired - put simply, the 4-track tape is incorrectly mixed into stereo. On the original Stockhausen supervised recording, the tracks are placed 1-hard left, 2-1/3rd left 3-1/3rd right 4 -hard right. Here, if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that 1&4 have been sent hard left and 2&3 hard right. Something like that. Anyway, what this comes down to is that the recording sounds dreadful, the tape track often only coming from one speaker, or leaping from left to right in a most unsubtle manner. On top of this, the tape track sounds distant - it has been mixed into the instruments rather than the instruments mixed into the tape. Unfortunately, the infinitely superior original recording is only available on postal mail order from Germany (details at www. stockhausen.org. When will S get his act together and offer online ordering? *sigh*) There is a also a new general release version of Kontakte just out (from the 'Caprice' label) but I havent heard it so can't comment. Oh and here's another idea - howabout a re-release of Kontakte, Hymnen, etc on DVD? Utilising DD, DTS or DVD-Audio, the music could be presented as it was originally intended, in multi-channel surround."
A master of pieces of electro/acoustic phenonmenon
scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 04/28/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"No one tops Stockhausen for the grand complex schemes he once brought to his music. The Fifties was an incredibly fertile time for the high musical avant-garde and Stockhausen, with experiments and innovations in every direction.And this piece coming at the end(written in 1959-60)is like a culmination of those innovations.Also serial concerns was coming to a screeching halt. One set of problematics, once electronic music came into existence was how to fuse and convincingly unionize it with the acoustic world. Recall, that acoustic instruments like the violin and piano, had hundreds of years of attenuation, nurturing and development,whereas in electronic music each piece seemed to create its own rules and language, a dangerous approach. But Stockhausen was one to solve that,the conceptual challenge of union, and admirably he does. The real payoff in this work is the seemingly freedom and eradication of the barline,free floating chirps and violence.Also choosing the piano and percussion as accomplices to fuse with the electronic sounds is a stroke of genius, Stockhausen knew he couldn't resolve this marrying problems if violins or winds were involved,those sounds are more directional and clique-bound for that the introduction of live electronics(and later computers) with acoustic instruments was how that got resolved, The work of the late Luigi Nono is fantastic in this realm,on a grand scale(his Prometeo). You see Kontakte live and the percussionist walks around the performance stage, adding an element of theatre to this coldly abstract work. It is odd that this piece still gets people off the ground.There is also a version strictly for electronic sounds"
Prefer the Electronic Version
a consumer | 01/07/2006
(3 out of 5 stars)
"I much prefer the all-electronic version of Kontakte: it's the same as the electronic parts you hear on this recording, only without the piano or percussion. The interaction of the acoustic instruments with the electronic parts on tape starts to seem predictable--the tape plays for a while then the pianist stabs out some violent staccato bits, the percussionist hammers out some violent staccato bits, then the tape plays a bit longer and the pianist responds with some violent staccato bits, and/or the percussionist hammers out some violent staccato bits...
I have the all-electronic version on an old DG vinyl recording. It can be very lyrical at times, and even though it's supposed to be completely "in the moment", eschewing old-fashioned compositional form, it nevertheless flows and evolves and feels like it has an inner musical logic. Or maybe the musical moments are just more musical. It's remarkable what Stockhausen could coax out of the primitive electronic sound-producing gizmos of the time.
The problem is that the electronic version is available on CD only from Stockhausen Verlag, which means you have to order it directly from Karlheinz himself for $30 plus $18 handling charges. But hey, a 180-page booklet is included! Nevertheless, I'm almost thinking of ordering it; in any event I'd rather spend the extra money to get the electronic version, which has moved me greatly over the years, than to spring for this electro-acoustic version which leaves me completely uninspired."
Stockhausen's masterpiece
John Harrington | anywhere, USA | 02/03/2000
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I miss my old Deutsche Grammaphon LP of this work (lent out and NEVER RETURNED! Steve Wright, I hope you're reading this). This recording is pleasing enough but I won't attempt a pocket review, since 1) it isn't possible with a work of this complexity and 2) I've only heard this performance once (borrowed from the library). The recording is superb and, as far as I could tell, the performance is very well done. It would be interesting to know what KS himself thinks.To the "witch" below, KS *is* a classical musician -- it is the pop musicians like Bjork who have copied him (and other classical composers) to make up for their own paucity of ideas. Furthermore, it has been classical musicians who have been at the forefront of this sort of experimentation in the 20th century. Before you pick motes of ignorance from the eyes of others, check out the beam in your own eye."
"Pulsing electronic tones, sustained and modified -- spiky dissonance on piano -- indefinable noises -- a scattered array of percussion sounds. Tied together by a strange logic where neither seems to exist for the sake of the other, rather they have a decisive wholeness, a `unity of opposites'. So goes this recording of Stockhausen's _Kontakte_. Unlike the electronics-only piece, here we have the marriage of electronics and acoustics, and it was a considerable leap for the fifties avant-garde, where movements like serialism were being abandoned and some radical futurists believed electronics the next progression for music. Stockhausen's _Kontakte_ for piano, percussion, and electronic tape is a world where the ostensible contradictions between tradition and modernity do not arise, but are simply realized with the tertiary ingredient being Stockhausen's imagination. Yes, there are relations to other contemporary works by Stockhausen, about which you can read more in other reviews and commentaries. Particularly there is the "movement form", where Stockhausen eschewed dramatic conventions, so his pieces, as he wrote, "lead up to no climax, nor do they have preprared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are rather immediately intense and -- permanently present - endeavor to maintain the level of continued peaks up to the end; forms in which at any moment one may expect a maximum or a minimum, and in which one is unable to predict with certainty the direction of the development from any given point; forms in which an instant is not a piece of a passage of time, a moment not a partical of a measured duration, but in which the concentration on `now', on every `now' makes verticals incisions, which break through a horizontal concept of time, leading to timelessness". It is worth quoting Stockhausen at length here for two reasons - firstly, to call attention to the parallel between this conception and methodology of musical-creation and that of Schoenberg's original forays into atonality, intended to be a more `egalitarian' form of music where every instant was equally as important as every other -- a means of resolving the separateness between the part and the whole. secondly, to say that conventions are always relative, and certain things among the radical artists would have seemed conventional by this time. What I am trying to torturously get across is that _Kontakte_ doesn't just combine existing ideas to make a new idea, but continues the pathbreaking progression without making concessions to the different approach. The music is excellent -- it is like a glimpse into a different world, with long sections of mysterious electronic noise, strange jazz-like sections where percussion and piano crash and plink, ringing bells over rumbling blips, and beautiful emergent dissonances. The acoustic players, pianist David Tudor and percussionist Christopher Caskel, deserve special credit for their attention to the alien nature of the overall soundworld -- you will forget that human players are involved. Being from 1959-60, it precedes many corollary threads like space-rock a la early Tangerine Dream and avant-garde jazz, and it is as good as the upper tiers of such offshoots. This is a powerful and historic work."
Track Listings (2) - Disc #1