Re: Stockhausen : London concert date

ludovicus wrote:
> Well, I stick to the more prosaic. I think if there was a Rosicrucian
> connection (very doubtful) there would have been more tantalisng clues
> for Jerry Kohl to explore.

I have already done so, and there are undoubted connections. To start
with, there are Arnold and Wilhelmine Keyserling. Just after World War
II, Arnold Keyserling studied with Joseph Matthias Hauer in Vienna,
with particular focus on the numerological/mystical connections between
musical tones and the human psyche. The Keyserlings published a book on
the subject that also expounds Hauer's theory of tropes, with the
emphasis on Hauer's ethical/philosophical interpretations. It is long
out of print, but remains a cult book on the subject--you should see
the prices being asked by used-book sellers on the internet (EU 199.00
on one ebay auction)! The book is titled _Das Rosenkreuz_ and, in May
of 1956, they presented Stockhausen with a copy which he has treasured
ever since. (Keyserling later became famous as one of the most
prominent leaders of the New Age movement and invented a tuning system
called PrimaSounds, based on the precise vibrational frequencies which
he calculated for the seven chakras.) Between 1986 and 1991, in
response to a series of annual queries from Josef Nyary at the
newspaper Welt am Sonntag asking celebrities a standard question:
"What book would you like to be given for Christmas?" Stockhausen
on three separate occasions said he would like a new copy of this book
(once he said seven copies, so he could pass them on to friends),
"which the authors sent me as a gift in May 1956, and I have never
been able to obtain more copies, because it is out of print" (Texte
10, 542).

> The news of the birth of Marcus resulted in an
> extra loud cluster in Study 2 (I swear there are jokes in Study 1 but I
> might be imagining them).

Markus was born on 2 May 1957. I think you will find the story you are
recalling involves Study 1 rather than 2, and the birth was that of the
Stockhausens' first child, Suja, on 25 September 1953.

> The people he knew in post-war Cologne
> sometimes appear - the shoe shiner is perhaps remembered in
> Michaelion, why an old lady in Donnerstag to address the audience,

It is possible, I suppose, that Stockhausen had some particular old
lady in mind when he created that role (perhaps the poet Recha Freier,
the dedicatee of Michaels Jugend), but the character is an archetypal
one from world mythologies. Pascal Bruno touches on this in his article
"Donnerstag aus Licht: A New Myth, or Simply an Updating of a
Knowledge?" in PNM 37/1 (1999), where he sees the old bent lady as an
embodiment of a knowledge opposed to that of the choir of angels (the
former a centripetal, the latter a centrifugal force).

Don't forget that, at the end of Montag aus Licht, Eve takes on the
appearance of extreme old age, and in the form of a mountain. Near the
beginning of act one of that same opera you hear associated with Eve
the names of a number of earth-mother goddesses from various cultures,
many of whom are commonly or sometimes represented as aged crones:
Erde, Inanna (aka Ishtar), Esa (aka Isis), Akkas (the eight
crone-goddesses of the Kalevala, three of whom are named separately:
Sarakka, Juksakka, Uksakka), the Norns (Urd, Werdandi, Skuld), the
Greek Fates (Lachesis, Klotho, Atropos), Jana, Samudra, Asura, Aditi,
the Dhisanas. In an article titled "And Dasein Becomes Music" (in
the same volume of PNM as Pascal Bruno's article), Ivanka Stoianova
also mentions Hera, Hecate, Persephone, and Rhea in connection with
Montag aus Licht, though I do not believe their names occur in the
libretto.

I also cannot help associating the contralto Eve in Düfte-Zeichen (who
sings a duet with the boy-soprano Michael) with this earth-mother
figure, though this may not have been Stockhausen's intention.

> is
> Michael not the archangel but the heroic M of German folklore whose
> statue can be seen in I've-forgotten-where

The "heroic Michael" is identical with the archangel, and there are
countless statues all over Germany. Perhaps you are thinking of the
Michael guarding the gate of the (hideous) Memorial of the Battle of
the Nations, in Leipzig:

<http://hapebaum.de/Sachsen/Denkmal.htm>

<http://www1.davidson.edu/academic/german/mccarthy/JYA02-03/Essays/Sarah-Englisch.htm>

Of more immediate importance for Stockhausen would probably be the
statue in the so-called "Cathedral" in Altenberg, where Stockhausen
spent his childhood and where he began his formal musical studies with
the Protestant organist, Franz-Josef Kloth. I believe Stockhausen also
has mentioned a similar statue in the church in Xanten, where he lived
in a boarding school during the war.

> I am sending KS a copy of a Spike Jones number which he
> must have heard the Yanks playing in post war Cologne - Baby Buggy
> Boogie! cf Montag

Heh! I'm sure he knows it already. Don't forget "I've got spurs that
jingle-jangle-jingle", which somehow ended up in Hymnen!

>
> All this leading up to the slightly German-humorous proverb being more
> likely to give rise to H-Z, than 16th century alchemy. BUT I COULD BE
> WRONG or pehaps its a combination of both.

I'd say it's likely a combination of both, and probably six other
things as well.

Jerry Kohl <jeromekohl@xxxxxxxxxxx>
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."

.

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