1963
Front cover compact disk, Max Neuhaus Zyklus (1963-1968)
Photography: Peter Moore
Four Realizations of Karlheinz Stockhausen
Including the following recordings: Wergo Studio,1963 – New York, June 1964 - Cologne, 1965 – New York, June 1968.
(Alga Marghen – plana-P23NMN.054, 2004)
This compact disc, with its four realizations by the solo percussionist Max Neuhaus of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Z y k l u s, is of interest in itself, because it sounds cool, but also for the larger careers of both Stockhausen and Neuhaus.The Stockhausen score and its realizations mark a time in music and in both m e n ’s careers when the roles of composer and perf o rmer were blurring, and when Neuhaus’ latent ambition as a comp o s e r, or architect of sound, were taking shape.
Stockhausen, born in 1928, is a strange case, but a strange case who has comp o s e d some wonderful music. He started as an ambitious young man of the Germ a n a v a n t - g e rde scene of the 1950’s, and Z y k l u s, composed at the end of that decad e , can be heard as an example of that era’s fascination with fragmentation and d i sjunction, yet with a powerful coloristc component that was to prove pre s c i e n t.
In the 60’s, after Z y k l u s had been composed, Stckhausen evolved into almost a f u l l - b o re hippie, extending into the early 70’s, remains his most powerful and beautiful, blending the freedom and mysticism of California counter- c u l t u re (although it was never purely popular in any commercial sense) with the grand tradition of European a rt-music. Since the 70’s, Stockhausen has been obsessed with his seven-part operatic cycle L i c h t; what posterity will make of these cosmic musical grab-bags remains to be s e e n . Stockhausen claims to have written the first notated score for solo perc u s s i o n i s t with Z y k l u s, although he was actually beaten to that mark by John Cage, with his 2 7 ’ 1 0 . 5 4 4. Neuhaus suggests that Stockhausen’s graphic notation here also owes much to Earle Bro w n ’s pioneering works from the early 1950’s. In any case.
Published in CD liner notes, Max Neuhaus, Four Realizations of Stockhausen's Zyklus, Alga Marghen, 2004. Original note first published on Columbia Masterworks LP, Electronics and Percussion, Five Realizations by Max Neuhaus, 1968.
9:50 Wergo Records, LP WER 60010, Baden-Baden: Wergo, 1963.
Zyklus was written in 1959 and is one of the first solo pieces to utilize such a large number of percussion instruments (twenty one). All the notes are written out specifically with respect to loudness (shown by one of twelve sizes of notes), the instrument to be played (by a symbol for the instrument), the pitch on that instrument (by a staff of some sort), and when the note occurs in time (by correlating time with horizontal space on the page).
However, in the case of many of these notated groups of notes the performer is given specific choices in their juxtaposition. These decisions can be made either before or during the performance. The performer begins with any note, plays through the complete piece, and ends with the note he began with. If the score is placed in one position, the performer's main playing area moves gradually in a clockwise direction; if it is turned upside down, so to speak, the playing area naturally moves counter-clockwise. These recordings include performances in both directions and with various starting points.
When I first started to learn to play Zyklus there were only three other percussionists in the world who could play it – one Japanese, a Frenchman and a German, Christoph Caskel. It was the later who did the first performance. Stockhausen's idea was that a performer would play the piece spontaneously, making its complex decisions on the fly. No one played it that way, it was too difficult. Everyone wrote out their own versions of the score and played from those. I decided to play it for my graduation recital from Manhattan School of Music. Coming from the world of jazz I also wanted to take up the challenge of playing it spontaneously.
At that time percussionists generally played only one instrument at a time. Playing twenty one simultaneously was unheard of. I quickly realized that the only way to do it, in fact, was to think of all of them together as just one instrument – one multi-surfaced bank of timbre. Actually playing this huge group of instruments as if they were one was quite another matter, though. The challenge was gaining control over such a large a number of surfaces. In order to be able to play a pianissimo on a surface behind your back, you without looking, you have to have a precise kinesthetic sense of exactly where the surface is. In order for this to happen the instruments always had to always have the same spatial relationships. I had to find a way that they were always in the same position every time I set them up, otherwise I would never find them with just may hands. I invented some special frames which allowed me to always place the instruments in the same precise relationships and that were possible take apart and light enough to transport.
I also had to invent some new techniques. For example several times in the work you have a trill on the vibraphone at the same time as you're playing fast riffs on other instruments. How do you trill on the vibraphone and riff on other things at the same time? You do the trill by taking two mallets in one hand; you put one under the vibraphone bar, one on top and quickly move them up and down. You play the riffs with two sticks in the other hand. It sounds simple but nobody had ever thought of that before.
I decided to travel to Europe and go to Darmstadt where Stockhausen was teaching. I wanted to talk to him about the piece. When I met him, he was interested in my idea that the twenty one instruments had to be physically formed into one instrument and in the fact that I had done so much work on it, already. Six months later, when he was preparing his US tour, he remembered our conversations and asked me to perform Zyklus on the tour. I was twenty three. It was a big opportunity.
He came to New York to hear me play it, but wasn't satisfied with my improvised version; it was too long. I was determined to teach myself how to do it for this tour. I had another six months. I got it down to seven minutes and I was still improvising it, not writing it out.
The first concert of the tour was in New York and Zyklus was the first work on the program. The whole music world was there to see who this young German composer was. Just before I went out to play, though, Stockhausen went out on stage and made an announcement disavowing responsibility for me, implying that a young American could never do justice to his music. It backfired. I was ready to play that piece, and I played it like nobody had ever heard it before. The applause afterwards was tumultuous. It was a nice moment.
Published in CD liner notes, Max Neuhaus, Four Realizations of Stockhausen's Zyklus, Alga Marghen, 2004. Original note first published on Columbia Masterworks LP, Electronics and Percussion, Five Realizations by Max Neuhaus, 1968.
9:50 Wergo Records, LP WER 60010, Baden-Baden: Wergo, 1963.