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Some insights on the practice of Stockhausen’s intuitive music in general, and For Times To Come in particular

text written summer 2016 by Tom De Cock

Stockhausen lecture on Intuitive Music

I made a personal quote selection and summed up some insights derived from a lecture given by Stockhausen on February 15th 1971 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

AUDIO MATERIAL
For the courageous, you can find the whole lecture here (about one and a half hours):
PRINTED MATERIAL
Printout of the Q&A session

Further in this section the sentences with quotation marks are literal quotations by Stockhausen himself. All other points are my personal highlights from the lecture.

Starting Point

First of all, according to Stockhausen, the text of “Es” from ‘Aus den 7 Tagen’ is important to understand the practice of intuitive music:

ES (It)
Think NOTHING
Wait until it is absolutely still within you
When you have attained this
begin to play
As soon as you start to think, stop
and try to retain
the state of NON-THINKING
Then continue playing

Karlheinz Stockhausen „Nr. 13 Es für Ensemble“ from „Aus den sieben Tagen|
15 Textkompositionen für intuitive Musik|für variable Besetzung|Nr. 26“
© Copyright 1968 by Universal Edition A.G., Wien/UE 14790
English version © Copyright 1970 by Universal Edition A.G., Wien.
www.universaledition.com