Klavierstuck IX

From Pérotin we take an Olympian step forward to post-war Germany in 1955. At that time, Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) was a 27-year-old lecturer in composition in his native Cologne. Having only begun serious composition studies in 1950, Stockhausen’s rise to international stature was meteoric. He became a leading figure at the Darmstadt Summer Institute, a global hotspot of the avant-garde, where he taught alongside John Cage, Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, Edgard Varèse, and others. The Darmstadt School tended to favor compositional procedures that used advanced mathematics or strict rule-based methods. That aptly describes Stockhausen’s Klavierstück IX (written 1955-61), in which the basic rhythmic values derive from the Fibonacci series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 . . .). On the other hand, he also developed a contrasting technique called “variable form” that infuses a fundamental degree of chance and license. In variable form, the performers are granted a far amount of control over exact note durations, timing of attack relative to other notes, voicing in chords, and level of volume. For example, Klavierstück IX starts with a repeated four-note chord that the performer is instructed to purposefully “unbalance” by changing which note gets voiced most loudly. Later, after periods of pointillist precision, there are passages in which the exact moment of attack is left largely to the performer’s discretion. In a way, Stockhausen’s interplay between mathematical precision and indeterminacy is kin to Pérotin, who relied on precisely determined rhythmic modes to help illuminate something beyond rational understanding: the mystery of faith.

(c) Jason Stell