Hymnen
Encyclopedia
Hymnen is an electronic
and concrete
work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen
, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".
", and the substance of the work consists of recordings of national anthems from around the world. There are four movements
, called "regions" by the composer, with a combined duration of two hours. The composition exists in three versions: (1) electronic
and concrete
music alone (2) electronic and concrete music with soloists, and (3) the Third Region (only) with orchestra
(composed in 1969). This version of the Third Region can be performed by itself, or together with either the first or second version of the other three regions.
The quadraphonic electronic and concrete music was realised at the Electronic Music Studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk
(WDR) in Cologne
. The world première was of the version with soloists, and took place on 30 November 1967 in a concert of the WDR concert series Musik der Zeit, at the auditorium of the Apostel Secondary School in Cologne-Lindenthal (Stockhausen 1971, 96). The soloists were Aloys Kontarsky
, piano, Johannes G. Fritsch
, viola, Harald Bojé, electronium, and Rolf Gehlhaar
and David Johnson, percussion. Sound technicians were David Johnson and Werner Scholz, sound direction by the composer.
Each region uses certain anthems as centres:
Stockhausen originally planned to compose "many more" regions. He had collected 137 anthems, of which only 40 are used in the four extant parts (Maconie 2005, 275), and had organised materials for two further regions, according to contemporary reports (Schwinger 1967, 143; Lichtenfeld 1968, 70):
, a staunch Marxist, castigated Hymnen on political grounds, claiming that its use of anthems primarily from capitalist and fascist nations presents "emblems" indicating the composer's political alignment (Boehmer 1970, 137). He calls the utopian realm of Hymunion "irrational petty-bourgeois supra-nationality" (Boehmer 1970, 140).
Robin Maconie
, on the contrary, regards any apparent political message as superficial, with less significance for younger audiences than for listeners who remember the student uprisings, Viet Nam, and other issues of mass protest from the time when Hymnen was composed, holding that the musical meaning of Stockhausen's chosen material is not what those sounds might represent, but what they are acoustically (Maconie 2005, 275).
Johannes Fritsch calls Hymnen a "masterpiece", comparable to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Mahler's Eighth Symphony, and Schönberg's Moses und Aron (Fritsch 1976, 262). Maconie concurs, while pointing out that the conventional symphony's reliance on instruments and tempos (as points of reference), and on themes and key changes (as variables) are replaced in Hymnen with the anthems and with "ways of hearing", respectively. These ways of hearing include the discovery of highly accelerated events in the midst of very slow ones, or elements of stasis in a context of extreme turbulence; sometimes the anthems are only glimpsed, or become hidden, are overlaid, or broken into fragments and recombined. The result can be interpreted as "a magisterial response from the German musical and intellectual tradition to a US cold war agenda of speech recognition and translation", that at the same time "comprehensively addresses the same underlying issues of melody synthesis by interpolation and substitution programming" (Maconie 2005, 278, 280).
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and concrete
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".
Musical form and content
The German title means "(national) anthemsNational anthem
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
", and the substance of the work consists of recordings of national anthems from around the world. There are four movements
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
, called "regions" by the composer, with a combined duration of two hours. The composition exists in three versions: (1) electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and concrete
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
music alone (2) electronic and concrete music with soloists, and (3) the Third Region (only) with orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
(composed in 1969). This version of the Third Region can be performed by itself, or together with either the first or second version of the other three regions.
The quadraphonic electronic and concrete music was realised at the Electronic Music Studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Westdeutscher Rundfunk is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the consortium of German public-broadcasting institutions, ARD...
(WDR) in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. The world première was of the version with soloists, and took place on 30 November 1967 in a concert of the WDR concert series Musik der Zeit, at the auditorium of the Apostel Secondary School in Cologne-Lindenthal (Stockhausen 1971, 96). The soloists were Aloys Kontarsky
Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky
Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky were German duo-pianist brothers who were associated with a number of important world premieres of contemporary works. They had an international reputation for performing modern music for two pianists, although they also performed the standard repertoire and they...
, piano, Johannes G. Fritsch
Johannes Fritsch
Johannes G. Fritsch was a German composer.At the age of seven, Fritsch found a violin in the attic of his uncle's house in Bensheim-Auerbach, Germany, and began lessons with a village music teacher named Knapp...
, viola, Harald Bojé, electronium, and Rolf Gehlhaar
Rolf Gehlhaar
Rolf Gehlhaar in Breslau , is an American composer.Gehlhaar is the son of a German rocket scientist, who emigrated to the United States in 1953 to work at a rocket-development research centre in New Mexico...
and David Johnson, percussion. Sound technicians were David Johnson and Werner Scholz, sound direction by the composer.
Each region uses certain anthems as centres:
- Region I (dedicated to Pierre BoulezPierre BoulezPierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
) has two: "The InternationaleThe InternationaleThe Internationale is a famous socialist, communist, social-democratic and anarchist anthem.The Internationale became the anthem of international socialism, and gained particular fame under the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1944, when it was that communist state's de facto central anthem...
" and "La MarseillaiseLa Marseillaise"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
" - Region II (dedicated to Henri PousseurHenri PousseurHenri Pousseur was a Belgian composer.-Biography:Pousseur studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to 1953. He was closely associated with Pierre Froidebise and André Souris...
) has four: (1) the German anthem, (2) a group of African anthems, (3) the opening of the Russian anthemNational Anthem of RussiaThe National Anthem of the Russian Federation is the name of the official national anthem of Russia. Its musical composition and lyrics were adopted from the anthem of the Soviet Union, composed by Alexander Alexandrov, and lyricists Sergey Mikhalkov and Gabriel El-Registan. The Soviet anthem was...
, and (4) a "subjective centre", consisting of the recording of a moment during the studio work, "in which the present, the past and the pluperfect become simultaneous" (Stockhausen 1971, 96). - Region III (dedicated to John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
) has three: (1) the continuation of the Russian anthem (the only one made entirely from electronic sounds), (2) the American anthemThe Star-Spangled Banner"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships...
, and (3) the Spanish anthemMarcha Realis the national anthem of Spain. It is one of the few national anthems in the world to have no official lyrics ....
. - Region IV (dedicated to Luciano BerioLuciano BerioLuciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
) has just one, but it is a "double centre": the Swiss anthemSwiss PsalmThe Swiss Psalm is the national anthem of Switzerland. It was composed in 1841, by Alberich Zwyssig . Since then, it has been frequently sung at patriotic events. The Federal Council declined however on numerous occasions to accept the psalm as the official anthem. This was because the council...
, whose final chord turns into an imaginary anthem of the utopian realm of "Hymunion in Harmondie under Pluramon" (Stockhausen 1971, 97).
Stockhausen originally planned to compose "many more" regions. He had collected 137 anthems, of which only 40 are used in the four extant parts (Maconie 2005, 275), and had organised materials for two further regions, according to contemporary reports (Schwinger 1967, 143; Lichtenfeld 1968, 70):
- Region V: Communist-bloc countries.
- Region VI: The United Arab Republic.
Performance practice
In the printed score, Stockhausen wrote, "The order of the characteristic sections and the total duration are variable. Depending on the dramatic requirement, Regions may be extended, added or omitted" (Stockhausen 1968, viii). However, in a text written on 18 March 1991 Stockhausen withdrew this option (Stockhausen 1998a, 95).Reception
Notwithstanding Stockhausen's planned but unrealised fifth region, composer Konrad BoehmerKonrad Boehmer
Konrad Boehmer is a Dutch composer and writer of German birth.Boehmer was born in Berlin. His music reflects his Marxist political agenda, which is made explicit in many of his writings from the late 1960s and 1970s...
, a staunch Marxist, castigated Hymnen on political grounds, claiming that its use of anthems primarily from capitalist and fascist nations presents "emblems" indicating the composer's political alignment (Boehmer 1970, 137). He calls the utopian realm of Hymunion "irrational petty-bourgeois supra-nationality" (Boehmer 1970, 140).
Robin Maconie
Robin Maconie
Robin Maconie is a New Zealand composer, pianist, and writer.Robin Maconie studied with Frederick Page and Roger Savage at the Victoria University of Wellington, receiving a Master of Arts in the History and Literature of Music in 1964...
, on the contrary, regards any apparent political message as superficial, with less significance for younger audiences than for listeners who remember the student uprisings, Viet Nam, and other issues of mass protest from the time when Hymnen was composed, holding that the musical meaning of Stockhausen's chosen material is not what those sounds might represent, but what they are acoustically (Maconie 2005, 275).
Johannes Fritsch calls Hymnen a "masterpiece", comparable to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Mahler's Eighth Symphony, and Schönberg's Moses und Aron (Fritsch 1976, 262). Maconie concurs, while pointing out that the conventional symphony's reliance on instruments and tempos (as points of reference), and on themes and key changes (as variables) are replaced in Hymnen with the anthems and with "ways of hearing", respectively. These ways of hearing include the discovery of highly accelerated events in the midst of very slow ones, or elements of stasis in a context of extreme turbulence; sometimes the anthems are only glimpsed, or become hidden, are overlaid, or broken into fragments and recombined. The result can be interpreted as "a magisterial response from the German musical and intellectual tradition to a US cold war agenda of speech recognition and translation", that at the same time "comprehensively addresses the same underlying issues of melody synthesis by interpolation and substitution programming" (Maconie 2005, 278, 280).
Discography
- Ausstrahlungen: Andere Welten: 50 Jahre Neue Musik in NRW. Koch / Schwann 2-5037-0 (2 CDs). Includes Hymnen: Dritte Region mit Orchester Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Köln conducted by Peter Eötvös (recorded 1979).
- Hymnen Elektronische und Konkrete Musik. Deutsche Grammophon DG 2707039 (2LPs). Reissued on CD as part of Stockhausen Complete Edition 10
- Hymnen Elektronische und Konkrete Musik; Hymnen Elektronische und Konkrete Musik mit Solisten. Aloys KontarskyAloys and Alfons KontarskyAloys and Alfons Kontarsky were German duo-pianist brothers who were associated with a number of important world premieres of contemporary works. They had an international reputation for performing modern music for two pianists, although they also performed the standard repertoire and they...
(piano), Alfred Ailings and Rolf Gehlhaar (amplified tamtam), Johannes G. Fritsch (electric viola), Harald Bojé (electronium). Stockhausen Complete Edition: Compact Disc 10 A-B-C-D (4 CDs) - Hymnen Elektronische Musik mit Orchester. Gürzenich-Orchester der Stadt Köln, conducted by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen Complete Edition: Compact Disc 47.
External links
- Introduction to Hymnen by Stockhausen, Barbican Hall, London, October 2001 (audio, Accessed 30 June 2011)
- Hymnen with Orchestra Stockhausen's programme note for the world premiere, 1971 (Accessed 30 June 2011).
- Introduction: HYMNEN / ANTHEMS (Third Region) Electronic Music with Orchestra, score preface (Accessed 30 June 2011).
- Stockhausen HYMNEN (ANTHEMS), 1966/67 by Albrecht Moritz.
- Review of the Stockhausen-Verlag recording by Ingvar Loco Nordin.
- "Derribando fronteras", review by Paco Yáñez of Stockhausen Complete Edition CD10, Mundoclassico.com (Accessed 8 November 2011)