Ylem (Stockhausen)
Ylem is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen for a variable ensemble of 19 or more players, and is given the work number 37 in his catalogue of compositions.
History
Ylem is "
Analysis
The formal process of Ylem is notated verbally.[5] It requires a great deal of imagination from performers but is very simple in conception, consisting of the very slow attenuation and compression of a galaxy of musical points.[6] At the beginning, ten of the mobile performers stand close to the piano. After an initial explosive sound (on E♭ and A in the London version) these ten players move out into the hall, playing all the while, and take up positions around the audience, while the other players remain on the stage. This phase takes about eleven minutes, during which the players move their individual notes away from their starting pitches. At the same time, they diminish in volume and frequency of attacks, occasionally forming short melodic groups and increasingly are varied by trills and glissandos.[7][5] Toward the end, the mobile performers return to the piano and a second explosion occurs, after which all nineteen players (the nine fixed-position players now switching to small portable instruments) disperse again through the hall and out of the building.[3] In the London recordings, this second explosion is a tone higher than the first.[7] The composer held that the music works best "when the players establish telepathic communication with one another (they play with closed eyes) and with a 'conductor' who listens with the utmost concentration from the middle of the hall, but does not take an active part".[3]
Reception
British journalists reviewing the world premiere expressed a mixture of bewilderment and scorn. Writing in The Times,
Where Sadie found contrasts to Stockhausen's earlier works, New Zealand composer and writer
American film and television critic David Lavery's response to what he calls "the strangest piece of program music ever composed" was more visceral:
When I first listened to Stockhausen's Ylem, I was, at its close, nearly unable to move; the music seemed almost to have disintegrated my ordinary molecular structure, replacing it with its own aleatory form, and I waited a few moments before I attempted to move, as if I felt the need to reassemble my body.[2]
Explaining his personal reaction in the context of a recurring childhood nightmare of nothingness, Lavery invokes a similar idea underlying H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Music of Erich Zann" and sensations described in passages from Georges Poulet, Rainer Maria Rilke, Herman Melville, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Paul Valéry, R. Murray Schafer, and the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. Finding that Ylem represents the Vedic "unstruck sound of the celestial realm" or anahata nad, Lavery concludes that it is representative of Stockhausen's moment form, "music made out of nothing, one of Stockhausen's most effective attempts to create a 'sequence of silences'".[13]
Discography
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Stop for Orchestra, London Version 1973; Ylem for 19 Players, First London Version 1973. London Sinfonietta; Karlheinz Stockhausen (dir.). LP recording. Deutsche Grammophon 2530 442. [Germany]: Deutsche Grammophon, 1974.
- Stockhausen: Ylem: 2 Versionen, 1973. London Sinfonietta; Karlheinz Stockhausen (dir.). Recorded 21 March 1973, second and third versions. CD recording. Stockhausen Complete Edition CD 21. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag, 1992
References
- ^ Peters 1999, p. 98–99.
- ^ a b Lavery 1980, p. 21.
- ^ a b c Stockhausen 1978, p. 212.
- ^ Stockhausen 1992, pp. 2 and 5.
- ^ a b Frisius 2008, p. 234.
- ^ Maconie 2005, p. 348.
- ^ a b Maconie 2005, p. 349.
- ^ Sadie 1973.
- ^ Griffiths 1973.
- ^ Maconie 1976, p. 309.
- ^ Maconie 1990, pp. 203, 218.
- ^ Maconie 2005, pp. 320–321, 348, 350.
- ^ Lavery 1980, pp. 21, 23.
Cited sources
- Frisius, Rudolf. 2008. Karlheinz Stockhausen II: Die Werke 1950–1977; Gespräch mit Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Es geht aufwärts". Mainz, London, Berlin, Madrid, New York, Paris, Prague, Tokyo, Toronto: Schott Musik International. ISBN 978-3-7957-0249-6.
- Griffiths, Paul. 1973. Music in London: New Music: Stockhausen. The Musical Times 114, no. 1563 (May): 503.
- Lavery, David. 1980. "Dreaming Nothing". Parabola: Myth and the Quest for Meaning 5, no. 2 (May): 18–23.
- ISBN 0-19-315429-3.
- Maconie, Robin. 1990. The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, second edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-315477-3.
- Maconie, Robin. 2005. Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lanham, Maryland, Toronto, Oxford: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-5356-6.
- Peters, Günter. 1999. "'How Creation Is Composed': Spirituality in the Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen", translated by Mark Schreiber and the author. Perspectives of New Music 37, no. 1 (Winter): 96–131.
- Sadie, Stanley. 1973. "A Period of Cosmography: Stockhausen, Queen Elizabeth Hall". The Times (10 March): 11.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1978. "Ylem für 19 Spieler/Sänger (1972)" in his Texte zur Musik 4, edited by ISBN 3-7701-0493-5.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1992. "YLEM (1972) für 19 Spieler". Booklet notes for Stockhausen: Ylem: 2 Versionen, 1973. Stockhausen Complete Edition CD 21. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-306-80528-8.
- Toop, Richard. 2000. "Von der 'Sternenmusik' zur Musik des Weltraums: Karlheinz Stockhausens musikalischer Kosmos". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik161, no. 6 (November–December): 38–43.
External links
- Stockhausen rehearsing Ylem, Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt, 1992
- Moritz, Albrecht. 2005. "Stockhausen: Ylem (1972)" (Accessed 9 February 2012).
- Nordin, Ingvar Loco. Review of Stockhausen Complete Edition CD 21. Sonoloco Reviews (Accessed 9 February 2012).