Karlheinz Stockhausen · Mixtur 2003

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Karlheinz Stockhausen · Mixtur 2003

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Karlheinz Stockhausen · Mixtur 2003

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MIXTUR is the historical leap from the classic orchestra to the Electronic Klangkoerper
(literally: body of sound, the German term for all large ensembles, such as orchestras and
choirs).

The form is a MOMENT-FORM: twenty musical Moments help us learn changing
transformations in five orchestra groups, as they were called in the first version in 1964:

MIXTURE in unknown timbre glissandi – PERCUSSION with scraped metal discs –
BLOCKS with 6 micro-rhythms – DIRECTION with 5 flying plucked clouds, a Marienlied
above 2 clinking expanses –11 shimmering CHANGES which step-wise fall from whirring to
blazing solo instruments – extreme CALM in slumbering timbral strata – and so on until the
glassy HIGH C.

And then the BACKWARDS VERSION following the intermission: Only once in over 320
works have I risked – namely in the SCHLAGTRIO in 1952 – to have music played
backwards: in MIXTUR I experience it like the journey following the physical death: white
HIGH C – PIZZICATO-players transparently alternating – LAYERS of sound- skeletons in
strands of tone-hail – DIALOGUE between shouting shots and bronze beats – and so on:
backwards into the dreamy reminiscence.

Everyone is invited back to the beginning.

Whoever wants to hear well, closes his eyes.

For sure I am electronic myself – and our Spirit is ring modulated downwards as well as
upwards.

K. Stockhausen, August 28th 2006