Hymnen
Hymnen is an electronic and concrete work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".
Musical form and content
The German title means "(national) anthems", and the substance of the work consists of recordings of national anthems from around the world. There are four movements, called "regions" by the composer, with a combined duration of two hours. The composition exists in three versions: (1) electronic and concrete music alone (2) electronic and concrete music with soloists, and (3) the Third Region (only) with orchestra (composed in 1969). This version of the Third Region can be performed by itself, or together with either the first or second version of the other three regions.
The quadraphonic electronic and concrete music was realised at the Electronic Music Studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. The world première was of the version with soloists, and took place on 30 November 1967 in a concert of the WDR concert series Musik der Zeit, at the auditorium of the Apostel Secondary School in Cologne-Lindenthal (Stockhausen 1971, 96). The soloists were Aloys Kontarsky, piano, Johannes G. Fritsch, viola, Harald Bojé, electronium, and Rolf Gehlhaar and David Johnson, percussion. Sound technicians were David Johnson and Werner Scholz, sound direction by the composer.
Each region uses certain anthems as centres:
- Region I (dedicated to Pierre Boulez) has two: "The Internationale" and "La Marseillaise"
- Region II (dedicated to Henri Pousseur) has four: (1) the German anthem, (2) a group of African anthems, (3) the opening of the Russian anthem, and (4) a "subjective centre", consisting of the recording of a moment during the studio work, "in which the present, the past and the pluperfect become simultaneous" (Stockhausen 1971, 96).
- Region III (dedicated to John Cage) has three: (1) the continuation of the Russian anthem (the only one made entirely from electronic sounds), (2) the American anthem, and (3) the Spanish anthem.
- Region IV (dedicated to Luciano Berio) has just one, but it is a "double centre": the Swiss anthem, whose final chord turns into an imaginary anthem of the utopian realm of "Hymunion in Harmondie under Pluramon" (Stockhausen 1971, 97).
Region I also includes a four-language "fugal" section featuring the voices of Stockhausen and his studio assistants David Johnson and Mesías Maiguashca. They speak variations on the colour "red". Stockhausen did not choose a political orientation, but rather used an enumeration of colours from the Artist's Water Colours catalogue from the English art supply company Windsor and Newton [sic], and Johnson concludes the section by naming the company out loud (Stockhausen 1995, 163–64).
Stockhausen originally planned to compose "many more" regions, creating a much longer work. He had collected 137 anthems, of which only 40 are used in the four extant parts (Maconie 2005, 275), and had organised materials for two further regions, according to contemporary reports (Schwinger 1967, 143; Lichtenfeld 1968, 70):
- Region V: Communist-bloc countries.
- Region VI: The United Arab Republic.
Stockhausen's original vision for the piece was also much freer. He referred to it as a work "for radio, television, opera, ballet, recording, concert hall, church, out of doors..." in his original program note. He added, "The work is composed in such a way that different scenarios or libretti for films, operas, ballets could be written to the music."
Performance practice
In the printed score, Stockhausen wrote, "The order of the characteristic sections and the total duration are variable. Depending on the dramatic requirement, Regions may be extended, added or omitted" (Stockhausen 1968, viii). However, in a text written on 18 March 1991 Stockhausen withdrew this option (Stockhausen 1998a, 95).
Stockhausen also withdrew the soloist version of Hymnen after receiving recordings of it from ensembles that displayed "arbitrary confusion and unembarrassed lack of taste" (Stockhausen 1995, 185).
Reception
Notwithstanding Stockhausen's planned but unrealised fifth region, composer Konrad Boehmer, a staunch Marxist, castigated Hymnen on political grounds, claiming that its use of anthems primarily from capitalist and fascist nations presents "emblems" indicating the composer's political alignment (Boehmer 1970, 137). He calls the utopian realm of Hymunion "irrational petty-bourgeois supra-nationality" (Boehmer 1970, 140).
Robin Maconie, on the contrary, regards any apparent political message as superficial, with less significance for younger audiences than for listeners who remember the student uprisings, Viet Nam, and other issues of mass protest from the time when Hymnen was composed, holding that the musical meaning of Stockhausen's chosen material is not what those sounds might represent, but what they are acoustically (Maconie 2005, 275).
Johannes Fritsch calls Hymnen a "masterpiece", comparable to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Mahler's Eighth Symphony, and Schönberg's Moses und Aron (Fritsch 1976, 262). Maconie concurs, while pointing out that the conventional symphony's reliance on instruments and tempos (as points of reference), and on themes and key changes (as variables) are replaced in Hymnen with the anthems and with "ways of hearing", respectively. These ways of hearing include the discovery of highly accelerated events in the midst of very slow ones, or elements of stasis in a context of extreme turbulence; sometimes the anthems are only glimpsed, or become hidden, are overlaid, or broken into fragments and recombined. The result can be interpreted as "a magisterial response from the German musical and intellectual tradition to a US cold war agenda of speech recognition and translation", that at the same time "comprehensively addresses the same underlying issues of melody synthesis by interpolation and substitution programming" (Maconie 2005, 278, 280).
Discography
- Ausstrahlungen: Andere Welten: 50 Jahre Neue Musik in NRW. Koch / Schwann 2-5037-0 (2 CDs). Includes Hymnen: Dritte Region mit Orchester Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Köln conducted by Peter Eötvös (recorded 1979).
- Hymnen Elektronische und Konkrete Musik. Deutsche Grammophon DG 2707039 (2LPs). Reissued on CD as part of Stockhausen Complete Edition 10
- Hymnen Elektronische und Konkrete Musik; Hymnen Elektronische und Konkrete Musik mit Solisten. Aloys Kontarsky (piano), Alfred Ailings and Rolf Gehlhaar (amplified tamtam), Johannes G. Fritsch (electric viola), Harald Bojé (electronium). Stockhausen Complete Edition: Compact Disc 10 A-B-C-D (4 CDs)
- Hymnen Elektronische Musik mit Orchester. Gürzenich-Orchester der Stadt Köln, conducted by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen Complete Edition: Compact Disc 47.
References
- Andraschke, Peter. 1979. "Das revolutionär-politische Zitat in der avantgardistischen Musik nach 1965". Musik und Bildung 11, no. 5:313–18.
- Blumröder, Christoph von. 1999. "Die Vokalkomposition als Schaffenskonstante". In Internationales Stockhausen-Symposion 1998: Musikwissenschaftliches Institut der Universität zu Köln, 11. bis 14. November 1998: Tagungsbericht. Signale aus Köln: Beiträge zur Musik der Zeit 4, edited by Christoph von Blumröder, 188–97. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag. ISBN 3-89727-050-1
- Boehmer, Konrad. 1970. Zwischen Reihe und Pop: Musik und Klassengesellschaft, hrsg. in Zusammenarbeit mit der österreichischen Gesellschaft für Musik. Vienna and Munich: Jugend und Volk.
- Braun, Thomas Manfred. 2004. Karlheinz Stockhausens Musik im Brennpunkt Ästhetischer Beurteilung. Kölner Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 1. Kassel: Bosse. ISBN 3-7649-2701-1
- Cott, Jonathan. 1973. Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21495-0
- Custodis, Michael. 2004. Die soziale Isolation der neuen Musik: Zum Kölner Musikleben nach 1945. Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 54, edited by Albrecht Riethmüller, with Reinhold Brinkmann, Ludwig Finscher, Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, Wolfgang Osthoff, and Wolfram Steinbeck. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. ISBN 3-515-08375-8
- Frisius, Rudolf, and Ulrich Günther. 1971. "Politische und soziologische Bezüge im Musikunterricht, dargestellt an einem Ausschnitt aus den Hymnen von Kh. Stockhausen". In Musikunterricht an Gesamtschulen: Analysen—Berichte—Materialen, Reihe Curriculum Musik, Jahrgang 1, Heft 1 (May 1971), edited by Willi Grundlach and Thomas Ott, 42–65, 128–35. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag. ISBN 3-12-968950-8
- Fritsch, Johannes G. 1976. "Hauptwerk Hymnen", Schweizerische Muzikzeitung/Revue Musicale Suisse 116, no. 4:262–65. Reprinted in Feedback Papers, no. 16 (1978): 19–21.
- Fritsch, Johannes, and Richard Toop. 2008. "Versuch, eine Grenze zu überschreiten … Johannes Fritsch im Gespräch über die Aufführungspraxis von Werken Karlheinz Stockhausens". MusikTexte no. 116 (February): 31–40.
- Gutknecht, Dieter. 2003. "Karlheinz Stockhausens Hymnen und der Aspekt der Raummusik". In Bühne, Film, Raum und Zeit in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by Hartmut Krones, 275–84. Vienna: Böhlau. ISBN 3-205-77206-7
- Harvey, Jonathan. 1975. "Stockhausen’s Hymnen", Musical Times 116, no. 1590 (August): 705, 707.
- Herbort, Heinz Josef. 1967. "Das musikalische Weltdorf: Stockhausens Hymnen in Köln uraufgeführt". Die Zeit (8 December).
- Hopkins, Nicholas F. 1991. "Hymnen: tractatus musica unita", Feedback Papers, no. 37.
- Lichtenfeld, Monika. 1968. "Stockhausens Frischzellentherapie für Nationalhymnen". Melos 35, no. 2 (February): 69–70.
- Maconie, Robin. 2005. Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lanham, Maryland, Toronto, Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 0-8108-5356-6
- Schwinger, Wolfram. 1967. "Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt: Stockhausens elektronische Hymnen". Stuttgarter Zeitung (5 December).
- Skowron, Zbigniew. 1985. "Muzyka elektroniczna Karlheinza Stockhausena. II: Utwory z lat 1955–67". Muzyka 27, nos. 1–2:11–36.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1968. Nr. 22, Hymnen: elektronische und konkrete Musik. Mitlese-Partitur ("a score for reading"). Vienna: Universal Edition.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1971. Texte zur Musik 3, edited by Dieter Schnebel. Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg. ISBN 3-7701-0493-5
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1978. Texte zur Musik 4, edited by Christoph von Blumröder. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag. ISBN 3-7701-1078-1
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1995. Hymnen, CD booklet. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1998a. Texte zur Musik 7, edited by Christoph von Blumröder. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1998b. “Bildung ist große Arbeit: Karlheinz Stockhausen im Gespräch mit Studierenden des Musikwissenschaftlichen Instituts der Universität zu Köln am 5. Februar 1997.” In Stockhausen 70: Das Programmbuch Köln 1998. Signale aus Köln: Musik der Zeit 1, edited by Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder, 1–36. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2009. Kompositorische Grundlagen Neuer Musik: Sechs Seminare für die Darmstädter Ferienkurse 1970, edited by Imke Misch. Kürten: Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik. ISBN 978-3-00-027313-1
- Toop, Richard. 1981. "Stockhausen's Electronic Works: Sketches and Work-sheets from 1952–1967". Interface 10, nos. 3–4:149–97.
- Weid, Jean-Noël von der. 1985. "L’apocalypse de Stockhausen." Silences 1:169–77.
Further reading
- Fricke, Stefan, and Péter Eötvös. 2012. "Auf Weltempfang: Über die Aufführungsgeschichte von Stockhausens Hymnen". Dissonance: Schweizer Musikzeitschrift für Forschung und Kreation, no. 120 (December): 14–18.
External links
- Introduction to Hymnen by Stockhausen, Barbican Hall, London, October 2001 (audio, Accessed 30 June 2011)
- Hymnen with Orchestra Stockhausen's programme note for the world premiere, 1971 (Accessed 30 June 2011).
- Introduction: HYMNEN / ANTHEMS (Third Region) Electronic Music with Orchestra, score preface (Accessed 30 June 2011).
- Stockhausen HYMNEN (ANTHEMS), 1966/67 by Albrecht Moritz.
- Review of the Stockhausen-Verlag recording by Ingvar Loco Nordin.
- "Derribando fronteras", review by Paco Yáñez of Stockhausen Complete Edition CD10, Mundoclassico.com (Accessed 8 November 2011) (Spanish)
