...towards a pure land

Hymnen (1969). One of Stockhausen’s early electronic pieces using various national anthems as it’s concrete materials. During this period Stockhausen was interested in “music of all countries and races”. Like Gesang der Jungling, Stockhausen attempts to make connections between electronic sounds and familiar sound phenomena so that the listener may find her own bearing in the unique soundworld. 

Stockhausen’s notes about this work: “Naturally, national anthems are more than national anthems: they are “charged” with time, with history – with past, present and future. They accentuate the subjectivity of peoples in a time when uniformity is all too often mistaken for universality. One must also make a clear distinction between subjectivity and interaction among subjective musical objects on the one hand and individualistic isolation and separation on the other. The composition Hymnen is not a collage. Many-sided interrelationships have been composed among the various anthems, as well as between these anthems and new abstract sound shapes, for which we have no names. Numerous compositional processes of intermodulation were employed in Hymnen. For example, the rhythm of one anthem is modulated with the harmony of another; this result is modulated with the dynamic envelope of a third anthem; the result of this is in turn modulated with the timbral constellation and melodic contour of electronic sounds; finally such an event is given a specific spatial movement. Sometimes parts of anthems are allowed to enter the environment of electronic sounds in raw, almost unmodulated form; sometimes modulations lead almost to the point of unrecognisability. There are many degrees in between, many levels of recognisability. In addition to the national anthems, other “found objects” have been used: scraps of speech, sounds of crowds, recorded conversations, events from short-wave radio receivers, recordings of public events, demonstrations, a christening of a ship, a Chinese shop, a state reception and so on. The composition of so many national anthems into a common musical temporal and spatial polyphony could make it possible to experience – as musical vision – the unity of peoples and nations in a harmonious human family.”

Hymnen consists of four movements (“Regions”) - The first dedicated to Boulez (using the anthems “The Internationale” and “La Marseillaise); the second dedicated to Pousseur (using the German anthem, a group of African anthems, the opening of the Russian anthem, as well as a “subjective centre”); the third dedicated to Cage (continuation of the Russian anthem, the American anthem, and the Spanish anthem); the fourth dedicated to Berio (using the Swiss anthem, which transforms into an imaginary utopian anthem). It is well worth the two hour ride.

As a companion piece to ‘Six Melodies.’ John Cage’s ‘Thirteen Harmonies.’

This year marks the 100 year anniversary of John Cage’s birth. While he is most infamous for his pioneering work in aleatoric music, electronic music and non-traditional usage of instruments (not to mention 4’33’), he was also a master of “honest”, sensual and sublime music that was to be the progenitor of American Minimalism. One of my all time favourite John Cage pieces: Six Melodies.

Totok nejsem já, totok beli dědóšek! Oni mně o vás

veveveve, oni mně o vás vevevekládali.

It’s been more than 3 years since Miriam Makeba’s death and it still breaks my heart.