Re: Stockhausen : London concert date


Jerry Kohl wrote:
> 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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