Karlheinz Stockhausen: STIMMUNG

»Stimmung« was inspired by a commission from the city of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln, ensemble at the Rheinische Musikschule. During the months of February and March 1968, the score was written in a house on Long Island Sound in Madison/Connecticut, USA. I used texts that I wrote during amorous days of April 1967 in Sausalito near San Francisco and on the ocean shore between San Francisco and Carmel. The Magic Names were compiled for me by the young American anthropologist Nancy Wyle. The score is dedicated to Mary Bauermeister.
After the music was finished notating, I chose the name »Stimmung,« which is ambiguous: the pure tuning in which the vocalists add the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th harmonics. The pure tuning in which the vocalists sing the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th and 9th overtones to the fundamental of the low B and always find them again after they have become impure (with the help of a pure overtone sound reproduced very softly on a magnetophone for tuning); the tuning in of a vocalist, with which he begins during the performance every time he brings a sound »model« into the context; the rhythmic, dynamic, tonal-colored tuning in during the integration of a magic name freely called into the context; and–last but not least–in the German word »Stimmung« there is the meaning of atmosphere, of fluidum, of mental mood (one speaks, for example, of »good mood« or »bad mood« and means the more or less harmonious balance of people and their environment); and in »Stimmung« there is »Stimme« (! ). The singers learned in many months a completely new vocal technique: the voice tones must be sung as quietly as possible, and certain overtones–designated by a number series from 2 to 24 and by vowel series of the phonetic alphabet as dominantly as possible; without vibrato, vibrating only in forehead and other head cavities; with long, calm, balanced breaths. If necessary, each voice should be amplified via microphone and speakers to make all the nuances of each singer audible. Each singer has 8 or 9 models and 11 magic names, which he can freely bring into play–according to a form scheme–depending on the context, and to which the others react with »transformations«, »varied deviations«, »beatings«, »agreement«. Nothing is conducted. In a given combination of voices, the model singer always leads, and he hands over the leadership to another singer when he feels that the right time has come. A Magic Name, after one of the singers has »called« it, is periodically repeated with the tempo, with approximately the same articulation of the model until it is again in agreement, and thus integrated into the respective determining model. Lip and mouth positions of the model are kept as much as possible, making the name sound more or less deformed. The reaction to a Magic Name makes clearly perceptible a change of mood, caused by the character and meaning of the name. Certainly »mood« is meditative music. Time is suspended. One listens to the inside of the sound, to the inside of the harmonic spectrum, to the inside of a vowel, to the inside. The finest of suspensions–hardly any outbursts–all the senses are awake and calm. In the beauty of the sensual shines the beauty of the eternal. (…)

(Karlheinz Stockhausen (1969/1982))