# Stockhausen vs. Cage, bleeps and bloops



## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Today I’m listening to some early piano Klavierstucke as well as Cage’s Etudes. I’m not here to say I dislike this music, though I definitely don’t understand it. I do hear differences of course, differences in dynamics and how these clusters of sounds are manifested in the two respective pieces and in how much space there is between sounds. But I also feel like, on the surface, these compositions could have been written by the same dude for similar purposes.
How do you respond to this music? What are the major differences that you hear? Do you think these pieces are equally important, or important in their own right? Why? 
I’m also returning to Cage’s chance music for piano and Stockhausen’s Mantra. 
I'm always looking for a way into this type of music. Also, when it comes to avant garde piano, is this the pinnacle? 
Generally, I find Ligeti and Xenakis to be more approachable composers. How about you?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I have listened to parts of the Stockhausen and most of the Cage works you mentioned. These are simply studies of sound by the two composers. I honestly could not tell now which composition was by which of the two composers if I listened to them today but then again, as I said, these are studies of sound. So upon repeated listening, I might come to recognizing them as one would with any music or sound, rather than a composer's signatory style in composition upon first listening. It is worth noting that these sound studies were "original" for their times in the 1950's (Stockhausen's) to 1970's (Cage's). It was considered avant-garde back then. Today, I doubt anyone would compose like this anymore for the same reason that Romantic composers in 1821 wouldn't compose as if it were 1750 or 1770.

Xenakis is more forthright with his experimental music or more extreme. Here is an example:


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Cage and Stockhausen are meh on normal pianos. Much more interesting is Cage on prepared piano:






This sonata cycle demonstrates to me that Cage was a competent and creative composer, and not just some guy going against the mould (although he did plenty of that as well).

Stockhausen's piano music, to me, is not so interesting other than Mantra. But I find his electronic music to be some of the greatest music ever composed.

I think Ligeti and Xenakis both did better things for the piano, especially Ligeti with his Musica Ricercata and the Etudes, the latter being the cornerstone of 20th century piano music. Ginastera, Crumb, and Takemitsu also have incredible piano music.

But my favorite 20th century composer for the piano is still Messiaen.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

I thought Stockhausen's Klavierstücke were "meh" until I heard Sabine Liebner's recording of them. This one has some really cool parts - it's quite the journey.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I think Cage would have been a good composer of soundtracks for video games



hammeredklavier said:


> the melodies of Sonata II are actually cute:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


and Stockhausen for horror films



hammeredklavier said:


> It reminds me of Stockhausen's _Gesang der junglinge_, and I can't think of any other pieces of classical music that can do this better.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Portamento said:


> I thought Stockhausen's Klavierstücke were "meh" until I heard Sabine Liebner's recording of them. This one has some really cool parts - it's quite the journey.


You might like Pollini's version:


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

The major difference I hear between Cage's etudes and the Stockhausen is the sounds in the former are more isolated, while in the latter there is much more overlap. Cage's were based on star charts, so they are more like pinpoints of sound across the range. I don't think there is really much to "get". I prefer the Stockhausen more for sure, as there is more variety, but is not something I'll be listening to every day. I remember looking at the score for Cage's Music of Changes, and noticing how much David Tudor's version deviated from the written score in the little I saw of the first part. I think the music was important for its time, but has little value of its own outside of its novelty. The written notes are not as important as implications of the concept or idea. 

I also find Ligeti more interesting and something with more relistening value.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Re the Cage, does anyone have any details about his system in the piano and violin Etudes, and Music of Changes? How did he use the chance operations to generate a score exactly?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

milk said:


> Today I'm listening to some early piano Klavierstucke as well as Cage's Etudes. I'm not here to say I dislike this music, though I definitely don't understand it. I do hear differences of course, differences in dynamics and how these clusters of sounds are manifested in the two respective pieces and in how much space there is between sounds. But I also feel like, on the surface, these compositions could have been written by the same dude for similar purposes.
> How do you respond to this music? What are the major differences that you hear? Do you think these pieces are equally important, or important in their own right? Why?
> I'm also returning to Cage's chance music for piano and Stockhausen's Mantra.
> I'm always looking for a way into this type of music. Also, when it comes to avant garde piano, is this the pinnacle?
> Generally, I find Ligeti and Xenakis to be more approachable composers. How about you?


It sounds to me as though you're painting all the Stockhausen Klavierstücke with the same brush. My advice to you is to ignore the earlier ones, have a good listen to X for example.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I think the music was important for its time,


In what way was it important for its time?


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> You might like Pollini's version:


I know these pieces were in Pollini's concert repertoire, but did he ever record them?



Mandryka said:


> Re the Cage, does anyone have any details about his system in the piano Etudes? How did he use the chance operations exactly?


The Wiki page has a pretty decent explanation. Do you want more detail than that? I can look for some academic papers...


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Portamento said:


> The Wiki page has a pretty decent explanation. Do you want more detail than that? I can look for some academic papers...


Yes. I want to know which elements of the composition were determined by chance and which weren't. Presumably he had some process to move from the star maps or I Ching to pitches, but what about phrasing? And of course, where something wasn't determined by chance procedures, what did he do?

Re Pollini, he only played a couple of them.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Just a final point on the Stockhausen. There are more than 11 Klavierstücke.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> In what way was it important for its time?


I believe the idea was to make music and receive music in different ways than traditionally composed or listened to. It did sort of reach a dead end in both.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I believe the idea was to <snip> receive music in different ways than traditionally<snip> listened to.


That's interesting, I've never heard that before about the piano music.



Phil loves classical said:


> I believe the idea was to make music <snip> in different ways than traditionally composed <snip> to. It did sort of reach a dead end in both.


Total serialism you mean?

Is anyone still using chance operations to generate pitches etc? I don't know.

For me the remarkable thing about Cage and Stockhausen in this music is that what they produced sound so similar, and yet they seem to be coming from such very different places.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Does this music sound very old fashioned to people? It kind of does to me!


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Stockhausen vs. Cage, bleeps and bloops*



milk said:


> Today I'm listening to some early piano Klavierstucke as well as Cage's Etudes. ... I also feel like, on the surface, these compositions could have been written by the same dude for similar purposes.
> How do you respond to this music? ...


I remain an advocate of contemporary experimental art, art which redefines "art" and the "rules and/or expectations of art." Often, such advocacy pits one against works he or she doesn't much like. But that's okay. One needn't like every work of art, whether it is "new" or traditional. And sometimes, the artist of the "new", the experimenter and rules-breaker (who is conversely a rules-remaker!), will become known more for establishing techniques than for his art per-se, sort of having the role of the great teacher whose students may go out with wisdom learned from his or her lectern and become more famous for their accomplishments in the field than ever was their teacher, without whom they could not have accomplished what they did. I believe Cage (especially) and Stockhausen (to a somewhat lesser degree) will be remembered as influential innovators and experimenters moreso than for the importance of their particular musical endeavors.

Except for maybe John Cage's 4'33", think of it what you will. The work is so unique that it becomes essential, especially in the realm of philosophical art contexts of the 20th century.

I actually enjoy Stockhausen's piano music, for instance, the Klavierstucke which made a strong impression on me many years ago upon my first hearing of the works. All those clunks and bonks. It reminds me much of myself playing anything at the piano. 
Still, I can't escape the notion that Stockhausen may have benefitted both himself and us by composing a few of his current pieces rather as "silent" music in the style of Cage's 4'33".


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Does this music sound very old fashioned to people? It kind of does to me!


Of course it's old-fashioned! This stuff was composed mainly in the '50s and '70s. The music can still be great, though.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Portamento said:


> Of course it's old-fashioned! This stuff was composed mainly in the '50s and '70s. The music can still be great, though.


This may be wrong, but my guess is that the Stockhausen is more timeless. It's just that, listening superficially, things like Mark Andre's piano music, and Beat Furrer's third quartet, seem to be in the same vein. But this is only superficial listening.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

milk said:


> Today I'm listening to some early piano Klavierstucke as well as Cage's Etudes. I'm not here to say I dislike this music, though I definitely don't understand it. I do hear differences of course, differences in dynamics and how these clusters of sounds are manifested in the two respective pieces and in how much space there is between sounds. But I also feel like, on the surface, these compositions could have been written by the same dude for similar purposes.
> How do you respond to this music? What are the major differences that you hear? Do you think these pieces are equally important, or important in their own right? Why?
> I'm also returning to Cage's chance music for piano and Stockhausen's Mantra.
> I'm always looking for a way into this type of music. Also, when it comes to avant garde piano, is this the pinnacle?
> Generally, I find Ligeti and Xenakis to be more approachable composers. How about you?


Part of your problem may be that the piano is not the most interesting sound. Try Kontakte, which uses tape and piano, and is composed in much the same way as some of the earlier Klavierstücke.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

chu42 said:


> Cage and Stockhausen are meh on normal pianos. Much more interesting is Cage on prepared piano:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 I find the prepared piano stuff to be pretty accessible. I should make a thread about chamber music, a genre I favor. I feel like there as well, Xenakis is easier to take in and so colorful. I'm kind of lost as to more recent music. I'm sure some would argue it's better not to have the egos overshadowing things but I'd like to know who are then most recent "universally recognized" geniuses. I mean, people would say that you have to consider Cage and Stockhausen for their time at least. 
i have to pay more serious attention to Messiaen.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> Part of your problem may be that the piano is not the most interesting sound. Try Kontakte, which uses tape and piano, and is composed in much the same way as some of the earlier Klavierstücke.


 I need to find the "not old-fashioned stuff." I gave this up a couple of years ago. Going back, there are thread with a lot of pages. There must be some "best of" threads here. There are a lot of composers out there but there can't be more but a few who rise above mediocre.

Honestly, if Stockhausen and Cage are poo-pooed as "old fashioned," then I feel like I wasted my time.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

milk said:


> I
> 
> Honestly, if Stockhausen and Cage are poo-pooed as "old fashioned," then I feel like I wasted my time.


You can't say this meaningfully, because Stockhausen and Cage worked with many different ideas, they were both tireless experimenters. There is no Stockhausen or Cage musical style, there are many Stockhausen and Cage musical styles.

Systematic Composition, which is what you have in the early Klavierstücke and the Cage Etudes, was a short lived musical phenomenon. Most, nearly all, of Stockhausen's and Cage's music is not like that.



milk said:


> I need to find the "not old-fashioned stuff.".


What's stopping you?



milk said:


> . There are a lot of composers out there but there can't be more but a few who rise above mediocre.
> .


I don't think it's helpful to be evaluating. Just listen, try and make sense of what you're hearing and then move on. If you're looking for some kind of canon, it's hopeless, they're made after the music has ceased to be now. You have to enjoy the absence of a route with signposts. When it comes to music now, you're in the wilderness.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> You can't say this meaningfully, because Stockhausen and Cage worked with many different ideas, they were both tireless experimenters. There is no Stockhausen or Cage musical style, there are many Stockhausen and Cage musical styles.
> 
> Systematic Composition, which is what you have in the early Klavierstücke and the Cage Etudes, was a short lived musical phenomenon. Most, nearly all, of Stockhausen and Cage's music is not like that.
> 
> ...


 Sounds like pretty good advice.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

I've also just recently become more interested in 'getting a handle on' 20th century chamber and piano music, and was thinking of making a thread like this one. I can enjoy listening to electroacoustic music, noise music, many of the more 'extreme' (to western ears) world musics - but once we get to serialism, for example, I have a much harder time, even though conceptually I'm all on board... a lot of atonal music strikes me as conveying a feeling of undifferentiated horror, a kind of scream, and kind of invested in its own 'extremeness' as signalling 'profoundness', which doesn't resonate with me - but I know this is an enormous generalization...

I haven't listened much to Stockhausen but after several weeks of immersion in early-20th-century standard-repertoire piano recordings, Cage's Etudes have really made a lot of sense to me, finally - the sheer feeling of lightness and freedom, not really from tonality so much as from the constraints of affect and narrative... they just feel really playful. I had another experience recently re-listening to Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux, and, though this should maybe be obvious, finally hearing it really through the logic of actual birdsong rather than as "random sudden dissonant sounds"...

I, too, hunger for a concrete sense of 'canon' to invest in, even if only to deviate from, but I agree that this is something to grow out of and learn to enjoy traveling without a map, as it were...


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

cheregi said:


> I've also just recently become more interested in 'getting a handle on' 20th century chamber and piano music, and was thinking of making a thread like this one. I can enjoy listening to electroacoustic music, noise music, many of the more 'extreme' (to western ears) world musics - but once we get to serialism, for example, I have a much harder time, even though conceptually I'm all on board... a lot of atonal music strikes me as conveying a feeling of undifferentiated horror, a kind of scream, and kind of invested in its own 'extremeness' as signalling 'profoundness', which doesn't resonate with me - but I know this is an enormous generalization...
> 
> I haven't listened much to Stockhausen but after several weeks of immersion in early-20th-century standard-repertoire piano recordings, Cage's Etudes have really made a lot of sense to me, finally - the sheer feeling of lightness and freedom, not really from tonality so much as from the constraints of affect and narrative... they just feel really playful. I had another experience recently re-listening to Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux, and, though this should maybe be obvious, finally hearing it really through the logic of actual birdsong rather than as "random sudden dissonant sounds"...
> 
> I, too, hunger for a concrete sense of 'canon' to invest in, even if only to deviate from, but I agree that this is something to grow out of and learn to enjoy traveling without a map, as it were...


 I'd like to find the right thread to keep up with this topic. Actually, I'm interested particularly in chamber music or solo music - in other words, excluding orchestral work and opera. Anyway, minimalism is a good palate cleaner I find. I'm just putting on Denis Johnson's November. There's still minimalism, post minimalism and then there's the Wandelweiser Group, which is "characterized by sparse, quiet, fragile soundscapes incorporating frequent silences." 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandelweiser


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

cheregi said:


> I, too, hunger for a concrete sense of 'canon' to invest in, even if only to deviate from, but I agree that this is something to grow out of and learn to enjoy traveling without a map, as it were...


Well my personal canon of piano music would include Alvin Curran's Inner Cities, Alvin Lucier's Nothing is Real, Roger Reynold's Traces, Fantasy for piano and Less than Two, James Tenney's Bridge.

Piano music is very hard. The instrument has connotations of middle class furniture, the sounds it makes are poor in overtones, you can't do microtones, you can't easily alter the tuning . . . It's as if all the things which are central to more recent music go against the piano's nature!

Michael Finnissy has written a huge amount of piano music, but it has not often been well recorded IMO -- either in terms of sound quality or in terms of interpretation. But he is clearly one of the leading composers for the instrument.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

I'm not a fan of most Wandelweiser stuff, which is basically just "romanticized Feldman."


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Portamento said:


> I'm not a fan of most Wandelweiser stuff, which is basically just "romanticized Feldman."


Irene Kurka has a beautiful voice, I love everything she has recorded, especially Antoine Beuger's _Chants de passage_ and _Un lieu pour faire sonner l'éternité_.

Recently Jurg Frey has turned out some things which have caught my attention -- for example the CD _Early to Late_ and some of _Collection Gustav Roud._ (Actually these things may be Another Timbre -- but let's not let that get in the way, Waldenwiser is a concept!)

Romanticised Feldman or not, I really really love the piano Cd of music by Tim Parkinson.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Piano music is very hard. The instrument has connotations of middle class furniture, the sounds it makes are poor in overtones, you can't do microtones, you can't easily alter the tuning . . . It's as if all the things which are central to more recent music go against the piano's nature!


I think that gets at what I love about the piano: it's so unavoidably _domestic_, it always feels like it's describing or referring to something outside itself but from a cozy vantage point... I listened to a bit of a Scelsi orchestral piece in the midst of all this piano and it was a shock to hear something so elemental, so raw - and what I was responding to was the portamenti, the diversity of timbre... I read a description of, I think, Fanny Mendelssohn's piano playing that said she used the piano to express a series of feelings and characters as in a poem, but the real grace of her playing was that she wasn't one of the characters, she was the poet. I think all piano playing kind of behaves this way.


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