New Albion Records - Karlheinz Stockhausen


	NEW RELEASES \| TITLES \| ARTISTS \| SEARCH Karlheinz Stockhausen Select Discography The California EAR Unit The California EAR Unit: works by Steiger, Jarvinen, Torke, Stockhausen, Carter, Andriessen Karlheinz Stockhausen Mantra Music and the Centers of Man Each of us is, as you know, a person with many levels—there are after all whole cultures which have differentiated them. I have a sexual center, three vital centers, two mental centers and a suprapersonal center. If I can perceive that, I have come far enough to have awoken seven different centers in myself. And with different things I can bring each center into vibration. I can set my sexual center in vibration with a certain sort of music, but with another music I can set my supranatural center in vibration. And I will add to that: have you perhaps gone far enough yet to discover which parts of a type of music, or which pieces of music, set which of your centers especially in vibration? There is also music that goes through all the centers: hence there are moments in which you are addressed in a purely sacred, a purely religious way; and other moments in which you are addressed purely sensually, purely erotically. That is pretty reckless music. One must be very strong to be able to experience that completely. Above all, this music must be exceptionally well balanced, fantastically composed. If it is not, then there are overloadings, and when one hears it one is overexcited in a certain way, and brought out of equilibrium. Hence it is naturally better if one hears music that draws one up higher than one is by nature. We are mostly pretty physical sacks, are we not—all of us? Most of us spend most of our time on feeding ourselves, taking care of clothing and shelter, copulating and sleeping; primarliy satisfying physical desires, then. Now and again one reminds oneself: "We are spirits, and spirits should be connected with the superhuman, with the Cosmos, with God." Much music also serves for that! But such music is very rare today, extremely rare. Most music is just physical, and speaks to centers in us that belong more to the animal than to the superhuman (I mean here by "superhuman" what we are as spirits, when we are freed from flesh and bones). That is what should be the most important thing now: that each person should gradually become conscious enough to choose specific music and to be able to say: "I choose that within myself which comes to vibration through this music." The Composer and his Spirit There will be people who will discover this music. That is the wonderful thing on this earth: everything that exists has its meaning. Everything is consumed—that is the most remarkable thing... everything is found... if you do not eat it, another will... what we do not eat, the animals eat, what they do not eat becomes earth again. Everything is alive. So it is not so important for the whole whether anyone likes something or not. It cannot be decisive for me as a composer whether you like my music or not. If you do not like it, someone else will like it; if no one liked it, then that too would not make me despair. I work on something, and when it is finished I make something new. Naturally I am happy if I now meet someone who is sympathetic to me—in whom I detect waves that are beautiful—and who likes what I have made. But that is a purely personal matter, that is Stockhausen. That which in my music is not Stockhausen—the most essential part—is timeless, universal. "Stockhausen" is only a label, a name. When I have gone, it is no longer there. But the music lives on. Then my name is merely a word, as when I say "Moments" (Momente, 1962-64) to name something. But that no longer has anything to do with me. None of you knows "Beethoven." He is a myth! He is a series of letters. None of you knows the person. Seen from the exterior he was a decrepit little man who usually had pains in the ear and belly-aches, who now and then ate a hare and drank a glass of wine, who was usually grousing like a madman and quarrelling with housekeepers: he was certainly a complex and, to many, an unsympathetic man. With a very fine sensitivity to vibrations you might perhaps have understood what kind of a being the other Beethoven was, whom Bettina von Arnim described. She was a wise woman. She got him to talk, and saw what a wonderful soul lay behind this wild facade. So she quoted sentences of his that are fantastic, so wise and so enlightened! She managed it. For the others he was a taciturn type. Today of course, today everyone finds his music wonderful. But what is that? Everyone finds themselves wonderful, when they like it. They do not know Beethoven at all. While listening to this music they feel wonderfully alive, full of energy, elevated, divine. In every Beethoven-lover there lies hid this spirit that was in Beethoven. I will tell you: Stockhausen's music is not Stockhausen, but this spirit which is using me. And you, too, are not what you appear to be. Your human personality is quite limited and temporary. You are little lights, as I am, which flicker—which whisper something to one another, to pass the time. What it is that we say is fundamentally also not so important... what is important is that we are together like this... for twenty lights simply give off more light... than a single one... Reprinted from Music, Mysticism and Magic: A Sourcebook by Joscelyn Godwin, ARKANA/Routledge, New York, 1986. NEW RELEASES \| TITLES \| ARTISTS \| SEARCH © New Albion Records \| Box 25, Elizaville, NY 12523 \| t: (518)398.6265 \| f: (518)398.6265 \| email us.