Kurzwellen (Shortwaves)

AMG Review of Kurzwellen (Shortwaves)

"Blue" Gene Tyranny
All Music Guide

This piece, probably largely influenced by John Cage's early works using "extra-musical" sounds including radios etc., was composed in 1968 for Stockhausen's touring group of six performers -- on piano, electronium, large tam-tam with microphone, viola with contact microphone, two filters with four potentiometers, and four shortwave receivers (some subsitute instruments are possible). Their task is to react on the spur of the moment to the unpredictable sounds received on shortwave radios. What is pre-composed is how they react: imitate, modulate, transpose, their rhythmic articulation, higher or lower in pitch, softer or louder, when and how often they play in combinations, how they call out to each other in order to share a single event among them, condensing that event, embellishing it, losing it, and so forth. The primary aim of each performance is to bring out the human spirit within a sense of nowness, "everything is the whole" (Stockhausen), thus bypassing dichotomies.