2 October 2016

Stockhausen at the Henie Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden, 1969



Some more from the NRK archives, this time two performances by Karlheinz Stockhausen's emsemble on 29 and 30 September 1969. These were at the Henie Onstad Art Centre at Høvikodden outside Oslo. The Centre was opened in 1968 and soon became the most prominent venue for new music, electronica and even jazz. Among jazz events in 1969, the premier performance of George Russell's Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature and a concert by the Cadentia Nova Danica, an ensemble led by saxophonist John Tchicai.

We get to hear two pieces (in separate files), first "Kurzwellen" (Shortwaves) where short wave receivers play a key role as a sound source for emulation and improvisation. This piece was recorded and released by Deutsche Grammophon in 1970. The record lists six musicians, but as far as I make out, there are only five present in this concert. These are:

Karlheinz Stockhausen - electronics, mixing, harmonica (on "Es")
Aloys Kontarsky - piano
Johannes G. Fritsch - viola
Harald Bojé - keyboards
Rolf Gehlhaar - percussion

The second piece, "Es" (It), an excerpt from "Aus den Sieben Tagen" (From the Seven Days), features the same ensemble, but this piece is based on what may be called non-cognitive spontaneity, reminiscent of Eastern ideas derived from meditation and buddhism. Only when the mind is devoid of thought is the time to play. Once one starts to think again, one should stop immediately. Hence there is a lot of space and silence in this music, only broken by sudden otbursts of sound. Both pieces may sound random to many ears and to some degree they are, but there is, I sense, a strong procedural and conceptual element to this music nonetheless. The second half of the video is a Q&A session with musicians, including some of his own, where he gets to expound on his concept of biological time, space, natural sound and on what he calls intuitive music.

Same as for the Cathy Berberian programme, which I posted before, it's all in glorious black and white!

8 comments:

kinabalu said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
musiclova said...

thanks for this great share - but after the download, my spyware says that these files contain malware. could that be true???

Horst said...

Many thanks for posting such valuable, rare TV recordings. I already enjoyed your C. Berberian post. Great work!

kinabalu said...

Strange, downloading the same files, I get the same message on my work computer. The previous upload of Cathy Berberian worked fine, even though I used the same procedure for all three recordings. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that I've been using different file servers. Anyway, I will have to experiment a little to see what works.

Tantris said...

I'd really like to see and listen to both of these recordings, as I'm interested in all things Stockhausen, but am just a bit concerned about possible malware. Is this a false notification, perhaps, or is there really something embedded in the files that is best avoided?

kinabalu said...

Those files that were initially uploaded are clearly damaged in one way or the other. I've downloded them several times and I get the same warning every time.

So here are new files which have aslo been tested and they appear to be OK.

Kurzwellen

https://1fichier.com/?mik5dcbmkb

Es:

https://1fichier.com/?s821pepo41

Anonymous said...

apparently the files have "been deleted by the owner"

kinabalu said...


New links:

https://www.adrive.com/public/d8WgDj/NRK_TV_Stockhausen_Es.flv

https://www.adrive.com/public/bpfgvh/NRK_TV_Stockhausen_Kurzwellen.flv