Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung, Paris Version (1969 & 1982)

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Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung, Paris Version (1969 & 1982)

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Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung, Paris Version (1969 & 1982)

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Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung, Paris Version (1969 & 1982)

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Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung, Paris Version (1969 & 1982)

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Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung, Paris Version (1969 & 1982)

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The motivation to compose Stimmung was a commission of the city of Cologne for the vocal ensemble Collegium Vocale of the Rheinische Musikschule. Stockhausen wrote the work during cold winter months of February and March of 1968, at which time he was living in a rented house on Long Island Sound in Madison, Connecticut with his wife and two children. Previously he had spent some time in Mexico where he had been influenced by his experiences at the ancient temples of the Mexican plains. In conversations with Jonathan Cott, Stockhhausen stresses the importance of this visit in the creation of Stimmung:

"What was important for the creation of Stimmung was the fact that I’d just come back from Mexico where I’d spent a month walking through the ruins, visiting Oaxaca, Merida, and Chichenitza, and becoming a Maya, a Toltec, a Zatopec, an Aztec, or a Spaniard- I became the people. The magic names of the Aztec gods are spoken in Stimmung….And then the space. I sat for hours on the same stone, watching the proportions of certain Mayan temples with their three wings, watching how they were slightly out of phase. I relived ceremonies, which were sometimes very cruel. The religious cruelty isn’t in Stimmung, only the sounds, the whole general feeling of the Mexican plains with their edifices going into the sky- the quietness, on the one side and the sudden changes, on the other".

Rory Braddell
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~braddellr/stock/index.htm

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Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung, Paris Version (1969 & 1982)

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