review of Gottfried Michael Koenig's "Process and Form: Selected Writings on Music

review of

Gottfried Michael Koenig's

"Process and Form: Selected Writings on Music"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2334. "review of Gottfried Michael Koenig's "Process and Form: Selected Writings on Music""

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- complete version uploaded to my Critic website May 1, 2025

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticKoenig.html

review of

Gottfried Michael Koenig's

"Process and Form: Selected Writings on Music"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 12- April 17, May 1, 2025

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticKoenig.html

the truncated review is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7531884215

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42262926-process-and-form

When I saw this bk at my local arts bkstore I was excited b/c I had recordings of some of Koenig's electronic music & I knew he'd been an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen, usually a sign to expect substantial intellect & talent - Stockhausen having worked w/ Hugh Davies, Cornelius Cardew, & Péter Eötvös. Being an assistant to Stockhausen is akin, in my mind, to being a student of Schönberg: Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Stefan Wolpe, Hans Eisler..

SO, when I came home w/ the bk I looked for Koenig in my record collection file & found "Terminus II" (1966/67) & "Function Grün" (1967) realized at the Instituut voor Sonologie van de Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht Studio voor Elektronische Muziek (Leitung des Instituts: Gottfried Michael Koenig). This record was on the avant garde label & included a piece by Rainer Riehn called "Chants de Maldoror" after the astonishing bk by Le Comte de Lautréamont. ["Here, I should like you to hear two excerpts from two compositions produced in our studio in this traditional manner. First here is an excerpt from Chants de Maldoror by Rainer Riehn." - p 241] This record was important to me b/c it was the only recording I had by Riehn of his own music. Otherwise I have the utterly fantastic boxset called "Music before Revolution" that has Riehn directing works by 5 of my favorite composers: Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Toshi Ichiyanagi, & Christian Wolff PLUS I have another record on the avant garde label of Riehn directing the Ensemble Musica Negativa again of works by John Cage & Dieter Schnebel. These are some of my most prized recordings. But back to Koenig: I also have a recording of his called "Klangfiguren II" (1955/56) as part of another fantastic boxset:"Zeitgenössische Musik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 3: 1950-1960". SOO, when I got home w/ Koenig's bk I pulled those records & listened to the 3 Koenig pieces to refresh my memory about them. I found them very good.. but a little too 'basic' - of course, 'basic' at the time wd've been very labor intensive. Nonetheless, Stockhausen's "Gesang der Jünglinge" (1955/56) was from the same time & it soared w/ a transcendental inspiration that Koenig's work, although very good, lacked.

SOOO, I decided I needed to listen to more by Koenig in order to better appreciate & familiarize myself w/ his work. I went online looking for collections, esp ones that included his acoustic instrumental work, & didn't find much. The best I found was a 2CD set that has "Zwei Klavierstücke" (1957), "Suite >>Materialen zu einem Ballett<<" (1961), "Streichquartett" (1959), "Terminus X" (1967), "Funktion Grün" (1967), & "Funktion Gelb" (1968) on disc 1; & "60 Blätter für Streichtrio" (1992) on disc 2. SOOOO, I already had "Function Grün" on record but I was glad to get a CD copy of it b/c the record was too well worn & my record player was worse for wear so I cd hear "Function Grün" w/ greater clarity.

On both the bk cover, wch shows Koenig as an older man, & on the inside of the CD package, wch shows Koenig as a younger man, Koenig looks very poised & thoughtful. On the bk cover he's looking directly at the camera, &, hence, as if he's looking at the reader. His gaze is so 'penetrating' that I find it hard to look at for long - esp considering that my ultimate appraisal of the bk isn't very positive.

Given my deep love for avant garde classical music & that of fellow travellers (such as myself: check out my "Low Classical Usic" onesownthoughts YouTube channel playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8WCNx2gameYe194Y9a21RybIhHMSgpdJ ), there's almost no composer/performer that might fit under that umbrella that wdn't be of interest to me. Alas, very, VERY few people I know, can bear to listen to the (m)usic I like for even a few seconds, most plead having a physical/psychological condition that makes hearing anything complex (not the way they express it) w/o experiencing intense pain. As such, there're few people in my local environment who 'can' (or will) listen to audio work of mine. Now, I believe in mercy for the retarded so I haven't killed any of them (yet). [JK] [Just Kidding] Ahem.. but that's a different story. [JK] [Just Kidding]

The 2 CD set features piano music, electronic music, a string quartet, & a string trio. I was searching for a more diverse instrumentation & pieces for larger forces but this was the best I cd find (for my budget). I like all the music.. but I find it somewhat timbrally limited, 'dry' so to speak. That doesn't mean it's not exceptional music. I'm listening to disc 1, the 2 piano pieces that begin it, right now, & there's a sortof 'crispness' to it that I find appealing.

The "Editor's Note" tells the reader:

"Koenig made his entrance into Dutch musical life when he was invited in 1961 by Walter Maas (1909-1992) to lead the composers' course during the annual Gaudeamus Music Week.4

"4 Koenig's lectures during the Music Week are reproduced in full in the present volume." - p 7

The "Author's Note" gives us more backstory:

"In 1954 when I was in Cologne in order to resume my musical studies, I brought a visit to Herbert Eimert, director of the electronic studio, who introduced me to Stockhausen who on his part played some of the early pieces to me, explaining the technical equipment as he went. This opened my eyes and ears for a completely new world of musical activities. Here one discussed permutations, cut tape into pieces, listened to tape loops, assembled generators and filters on chairs, all the time sniffing a mixture of acetone and glacial acetic acid from the liquid glue used for the montage of pieces of tape." - p 10

How many people think about brain damage from glue inhalation as a danger of early electronic music? I was born in 1953, from the '50s into the '60s it was common for male children to assemble models, esp model airplanes, using what was called "dope", a fairly toxic glue, at the time. The environments in wch this assembly took place (basements, bedrooms) were rarely ventilated. I seriously doubt that these composers were using fans when they were trying to splice audio tape together.

In the "Preface: Koenig's Actuality" (written by Horacio Vaggiione, January 2018) we're informed that:

"Moreover, "[i]n Koenig's view, serialism is not just about the "series" but also about quantization and differentiation"." - p 14

&, indeed, Keonig's emphasis is heavily on Serialism & its relationship to electronic music. This emphasis on Serialism is understandable given that Serialism was providing a complex & solid basis for breaking new ground in classical composing during this time. Many great composers, such as Pierre Boulez, were cultivating it in fantastic detail. I'd say that for awhile, being a Serialist composer was somewhat de rigueur in order to be taken seriously in academia. Some very advanced works were made as a result - but, at the same time, the downside was that some very generic works were composed too. Since, IMO, as of the time that I read this bk, from 2024 to 2025, Serialism is long since 'tapped out' & I found it difficult to care about Koenig's lectures on it. Still, as an historical resource, what he has to say is important.

The Preface further informs us that:

"We saw earlier that for Koenig, "the rate at which intervals occur is more important than their order"." - p 16

That, for me, is an interesting idea, perhaps somewhat 'blasphemous' insofar as it challenges conventional melodic thinking.

The Preface continues to provide some fascinating history for those of us who're a tad obsessed w/ such things:

"Ligeti said that the technical equipment at the WDR in the 1950s didn't allow him to finish the piece, which "originally was to be called Atmosphères". Instead this failure gave fuel to Ligeti to start developing his ideas about "micropolyphony" while using instrumental means. But the story did not end there, as, when the computer entered the musical scene in the 1970s, some younger composers could develop further and further what has been called Granular Synthesis and Micro-time Processing." - p 17

Once we get into the Koenig portion of the bk proper, I was surprised to read mention of composer Frank Martin:

"The concert programmes did not usually go beyond Strauss and Pfitzner. An exception was Frank Martin's Le vin herbé, which impressed me enormously. (That was in 1942 or 1943.) In a music shop I found a piano reduction of it, which I studied diligently, resulting in my being literally "led astray" from the well-behaved tonal pieces I had written up until then." - p 20

I pride myself on being aware of a considerable number of composers & that number includes Frank Martin but, contrary to Koenig's experience, he's never made much of an impression on me. SOOOOO, I pulled out all my Frank Martin recordings, all on the Opus One record label, to revisit them on my barely functioning record player. 1st up, a whole side of Opus One number 78: works from 1912 to 1961. 1912?! How cd know so little about a composer who created works so early in the 20th century?! The liner notes for Opus One 92's "Ballad for Tenor Saxophone and Piano" (1939) tell us that "Martin had, by the time he composed this work, arrived at developing his own unique style, which was a fusion of some serial techniques with more traditional harmonic and melodic elements." Alas, my turntable is functioning so poorly that I think I'll have to wait to hear Martin's work anew until after I do something to fix it.

"But the decisive experience, in the sense of a new departure, was Herbert Eimert's lecture on electronic music. This seems not to have been preserved, and does not appear in the first volume of Darmstadt documents edited by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, which covers the period between 1948 and 1966." - p 21

I remember, perhaps incorrectly, Eimert as my prime example of a 'purist' electronic music composer who only used electronically generated sources & didn't use any acoustic sources as wd be the case in electroacoustic music aka Musique Concrete. I've always preferred the latter. It's this aspect of Eimert, & of Koenig, that leads to my finding their work too 'dry', as stated earlier.

"Familiar musical terms had been replaced by units of measurement: pitches like C and C sharp by frequencies, dynamics by decibels, rhythms by centimetres. Thus, the empire of the future seemed already to have been conquered; it had become much more difficult to maintain relationships with the musical ideas one had brought along, with no intention whatsoever of throwing them overboard." - p 22

I wonder if differences between tempo markings, e.g., that're more evocative & ones hypothetically for the same thing that're are more metronomically precise has been explored at all? Let's take, e.g., Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings". Adagio, acccording to an AI overview online is 66-76bpm (beats per minute). However, according to Symphony Nova Scotia, adagio = 55-65bpm. Then Wikipedia says that it's 46-80bpm. That's quite a difference of opinion, eh? According to the AI overview again, adagio "indicates a slow, leisurely pace, often associated with a sense of tranquility, serenity, or even melancholy. It suggests a mood of calm reflection" - or, perhaps, the slow stately pace that a heavy coffin wd be carried at. Maybe 80bpm is the speed at wch Bugs Bunny wd carry a coffin. Wd someone slap the wrist of a conductor who paced "Adagio for Strings" at 81bpm? 'Let's get this thing over with!'

"It turns out that the generation of form in electronic music is more dependent on material than is the case in instrumental music. The latter contains something like an "Urtext", which can often be expressed in the form of a piano reduction, essentially containing only pitches and rhythms alongside a few dynamic indications. Such a "reduction" is unthinkable in electronic music: the sound material and its movement cannot be defined in a symbolic notation that can be realized using another, neutral, medium such as a piano." - p 30

Do you agree w/ that? Maybe piano reductions are equally as inappropriate as reductions of orchestral pieces but have an accepted history. I can imagine Stockhausen's "Gesang der Jünglinge" reduced to piano & voice. It wd be ridiculous & wd sound 'horrible' in relation to the distinct qualities of the original - but, still, I think it wd be 'doable' in the sense of simulating some of the original piece's contours. It wd be a challenge, tho.

From an "Interview with Ursula Stürzbecher":

"But the term "electronic studio" immediately lodged itself within me. The idea of working with equipment by means of which a sound could be made as long, as loud and as high as specified in the score tallied exactly with my musical ideas. I had become exasperated by performance practice, by the limitations that arose from working with orchestras and conductors, not to speak of the excuses made by those in command of concert programmes when presented with a score. The instrumental composer only hears his piece in a concert hall with people for whom this place is no more than an occasion to express their unwanted opinion about music, and as amateurs to stand judgement over experts." - p 36

Ha ha! I imagine those "unwanted opinion[s] about music" are at least wanted by those uttering them. Still, yes, I get it: electronic/tape music gave the composer the opportunity to bypass unwanted social production problems.

"In the programme booklet for your Function Gelb I read that the beginning and the ending of the composition are arbitrary. The problem of aleatoric thinking appears in many of your compositions. What role does this kind of thinking play in your composition technique?

"The word "aleatoric" immediately reminds one of John Cage. Cage wants to remove music from the realm of the esoteric, to let it be penetrated by chance, to destroy the illusion that everything in music is law and order." - p 42

I have a website about Pierre Boulez. In the 3rd section of that I review Joan Peyser's biography of Boulez. Here's an excerpt from that review in wch Peyser states that Boulez emphasized the word "aleatoric" & that Cage preferred "chance":

"I use the term "aleatoric" in relation to my own projects in the sense of 'game-based' rather than 'chance'. According to Peyser, this usage in relation to music originated w/ Boulez:

""Boulez wrote an essay he entitled "Alea" for the Nouvelle Revue Française. It appeared in November 1957. In the first two paragraphs he attacked free-floating chance in his most violent, polemical way."

"[..]

""Cage was enraged. He says, "After having repeatedly claimed that one could not do what I set out to do, Boulez discovered the Mallarmé Livre. It was a chance operation down to the last detail. With me the principle had to be rejected outright; with Mallarmé it suddenly became acceptable to him. Now Boulez was promoting chance, only it had to be his kind of chance."

""Cage still feels a sense of rage today. For, from the time of Boulez's famous essay, chance music has been widely known as "aleatory music." Cage still rejects this title. The most intolerable insult of all was that it was Boulez's erudite word with its esoteric roots (alea are dice) that gave Cage's fresh invention its quasi-official new name." - p 129

"Ha ha! I love Cage's music much more than Boulez's but I still prefer the term "aleatoric". Boulez seems to be always trying to define himself as 'cutting edge' when he's really lagging behind & he does it at the expense of the real innovators. That doesn't make his music uninteresting to me. Maybe it just makes me glad I never met him personally b/c I might've found him insufferable & that might've spoiled the listening.""

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100CBoulez3.html

Starting on p 46 there's an "Interview with Heinz-Klaus Metzger" (1971), an intellectual & music critic who appears on one the aforementioned "Music before Revolution" records talking about the music on the records & its general milieu.

"Have you composed works that you wouldn't have been able to write without the help of a computer? And I don't now mean for reasons of time, in that it might perhaps have taken centuries to work out the data relevant to such a composition but in a qualitative sense.

"No, not yet. The pieces that I have written with the help of a computer program could also have been written without the computer; I could have followed the given rules just like the computer does. That would have taken somewhat longer, but would still have remained in the range of the usual kind of workload.

"Are there any compositions today which could not have been created without the help of a computer?

"Hardly, I think; it's difficult to say. I am not acquainted with all of the programs, or all of the pieces composed with them; but as far as I have been able to trace these developments until now, I would say that all of the pieces could also have been produced without the computer." - p 50

Metzger's fantasy:

"human beings are certainly a highly unsuitable cybernetic system for absorbing music. They hear only in a very limited frequency range, the music also needs not to be so loud as to cause the pain threshold to be exceeded, let alone so loud as to cause the eardrum to be destroyed, annihilating the reception apparatus. The composer is thus bound to all of these limitations, and the most important issue is perhaps this: I have observed that it is barely possible to remember complex music. One hears extended pieces, in which a great deal happens, with more or less enjoyment or understanding, and, when the performance is over, very little of it is retained, very little can be preserved in the memory.

"You imagine that music is perceived to a greater extent by machines than by human subjects.

"One might consider such a possibility, in a speculative frame of mind." - p 52

Ok, but perceiving music as measurable data only isn't exactly my idea of 'listening to music'. What makes the music interesting or inspiring or moving for the listener involves a whole gestalt of unquantifiable factors.

"But it is not just a matter of cicumstances: much could be said in favor of Adorno's proposition that society in its totality is manifest in musical material, so that the composer's confrontation with that material is a confrontation with society.

"Yes. I would prefer to agree with this than with the various attempts currently being carried out to build political incitements directly into music, such as an incitement towards correct social behaviour or some such thing." - p 54

Metzger's paraphrasing of Adorno that "the composer's confrontation with that material is a confrontation with society." interests me & I think it cd be extended beyond just the composer to any creative person or, perhaps, to any person who stretches accomplishment boundaries: athletes, e.g.. But, of course, society is somewhat amorphous, regardless of how much in place there might be restrictions. Can we even accurately speak of 'society' as if it's a measurable thing? It might be more accurate to speak of 'conventions of society' rather than 'society' itself. For people like myself who're looking for friendly signs of inspiration in others, many creative acts that might be interpreted by people who're afraid of change as threatening wd be experienced joyfully (depending on specifics, of course).

Metzger criticizes Stockhausen's text scores:

"we know for sure that some composers today use methods which save a great deal of labour even without a computer, for example Stockhausen writes a few lines in a kind of bad poetry, upon which an ensemble is supposed to improvise; that is also a way of saving labour when composing, and the outcomes are extraordinarily dubious." - p 55

Ha ha! They're "bad poetry" b/c Metzger doesn't like them, I don't think they were written as poetry, they were written as elegant texts meant to inspire profound thinking, more akin to math. Regardless, I have recordings of many of those pieces being performed & I like the recordings very much. That doesn't mean that they're not problematic from the perspective of how much credit the musicians shd get - after all, it's their inspiration in response to the texts that makes or breaks the work. To me, it's ridiculous to criticize Stockhausen for these - he has a huge body of work that's very labor-intensive in its notation - to begrudge his using a different approach is more insulting than it is fair.

"But then if one is familiar with Stockhausen's performance practice one never has the impression of any freedom being given to the musicians." - p 56

"There is something else to add, the use of computers is under present circumstances not possible for everyone.

"No.

"A computer is a costly device, which a private person would find it difficult to afford for his personal work, he must therefore be in a position to make use of those institutions in which a computer is available and by no means everyone has this possibility.

"No, although a time when everyone might be able to use a computer can at least be foreseen, primarily because computers are becoming cheaper the computer is one of the few technological items which shows a tendency to decline in price." - p 58

That was 1971. I studied computers in 1973. At that time, that didn't involve any access to an actual computer, it just meant creating flowcharts. An example is here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/W1973.Flowchart.html . That was only 52 yrs ago. The times have changed incredibly since then. The 1st Mac didn't come until 11 yrs later. That was when I 1st had access to a computer, just to look at. I didn't use one until 1989. I didn't have one myself until 1994. I cdn't afford to buy one until 2004. Now, they're, obviously, extremely widespread - at least in North America where I live. So-called 'smart phones' wd've seemed very science-fiction in 1971. Being born in 1974, when many of my friends were born, must be a very strange thing from my POV. It wdn't've been long before computers became too common to even be remarkable, growing up w/o them, as I did wd practically be 'prehistoric'. Being born in 1984 or later wd be even more extreme in that respect. How long will it be before some other technology will be so common as to be taken for granted? Jet-packs? Time travel? Portable med-packs that can treat any wound instantly & automatically? Weapons that enable toddlers to wipe out whole cities w/o having the slightest idea of what they're doing?

Next up, "From Conversations on Webern" with Hansjörg Pauli, 1973:

"When did you first hear about Webern?

"I can't say exactly. I had certainly already heard of him when I came to the Cologne studio in 1954 and had a long conversation, about music, naturally, with Stockhausen. During my previous studies, Webern's name might have come up without this making a signficant impression on me. In my student days in Detmold between 1947 and 1950, Schoenberg was known only by name; his scores were not studied at all, although experiments in the twelve-tone system were accepted. Webern, on the other hand, was not even mentioned, I think." - p 60

It seems to me that in my early exposure to Schoenberg & his students (1973 or 1974 at the latest) that Berg & Webern were always emphasized as his most important students & that Webern, in particular, was emphasized as the composer who took 12 tone music the furthest. As such, composers such as Boulez emphasized Webern over all others as the major precursor to Serialism. I like Webern's music very much but am a little put off by how much of it is religious music - something that I don't recall anyone else seeming to notice or care about. Otherwise, I love Schoenberg's music more than Webern's &, of Schoenberg's pupils, Stefan Wolpe's music more than Webern's.

"In this connection, Webern, at least in the form in which he was then presented by Stpckhausen, made a significant contribution. But, as I said, less as a phenomenon in the history of music or thought, and much more in terms of a form of musical language whose contours would be clearly readable from the written notation. It wasn't about the sound. That was of no interest at all." - p 61

That's an astounding statement to me, refreshingly honest, perhaps, but downside academic insofar as the 'literature' is prized above the actual music.

"And let's not forget what diverse directions were represented by the composition team in Cologne. If one thinks of a few names like Stockhausen, Pousseur, Kagel, Brün, Evangelisti, Hambraeus this was a higly heterogeneous group, which at the moment it bade farewell to Cologne disintegrated once more into its component parts." - p 68

It's hard for me to even imagine anything more 'Right Place, Right Time' than such a convocation of musical genius.

The following seems straight out of my own life. Acquiring gear that no-one else wants - but this is in the early days of electronic music!

"an old, obsolete generator from the metering services of a broadcaster could be had much more cheaply, since it would otherwise have been thrown away, and if a couple of composers wanted to play with it, then OK, they'd be allowed to do so in this hobby corner." - p 70

Then there's an interview w/ Patrick Fleury, 1988. I'm not familiar w/ him.

"Koenig's music is certainly one of the driest and most rigorous experiences a listener can have." - p 74

I agree.. but I'm not sure if that description will communicate well. The music's very precise.. & I like it for that.. but something's missing (for me). It's like a blue sky that never has a cloud..

"Composers required a special permit if they wanted to work alone in the studio. Usually they had an assistant. I was both composer and technician which was an ideal situation for the composers I worked with, including Stockhausen, whom I assisted with the realization of Gesang der Jünglinge and above all Kontake. I didn't only help with technical problems; in the course of working he frequently asked for my musical judgement. We valued each other and had numerous discussions about electronic music." - p 75

Since Gesang der Jünglinge and Kontake are 2 of my most revered pieces of music Koenig earns major points in my mind for his having assisted w/ them. In the long run, tho, I don't find any of Koenig's own electronic music that I've heard to come even close to those 2 Stockhausens in inspiration.

"In my first serial period there was no place for chance. When John Cage introduced it to Europe I disagreed with his views because I could not believe in randomness, although this did not prevent me from appreciating his work greatly. Then György Ligeti came to the Cologne studio in 1958 to realize his <i>Artikulation</i>, a work based on chance operations. He was the first among us to apply this technique to a work which seemed to be serially pre-structured." - p 76

"Another example, which really belongs in the next chapter (FIELD COMPOSITION), is Artikulation by György Ligeti. The material (pitches, durations, pauses, timbres, density) was produced according to tables (which were based on serial considerations). The individual pieces of tape were thoroughly mixed in a cardboard box and stuck together in an arbitrary order. This resulted in sound fields with a previously defined "content", although the time structure of this content was left to chance." - p 299

Did you know that Ligeti, another favorite composer for me, did such a thing?!

Next, "Music and Number (1958, translated by Cornelius Cardew)":

"the notion of composed colour appeared; that meant that the overtones of the sounds were to be placed in the same relationships as their fundamentals. Tempered sound-spectra therefore came to the fore noises. In this way the transition from sound to noise, seen from the theoretical angle, became composable" - p 98

Of course, Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto "The Art of Noise" (1913) wd be the important precursor here - but John Cage's contribution is not to be overlooked

"Complex Sounds" (1965):

"When we speak of a particular parameter, we call the pattern belonging to it a field, or more precisely, a parameter field. A parameter field is defined by its limits (limit values) and by the characteristic distribution (scattering) of individual parameter values inside the limit values. For the scattering we require a particular "number" of parameter values to be scattered: scattering can ensue under restricting conditions. The "restricting conditions" are that neighbouring values must be at a given shortest distance apart, or that together they should form an arithmetic or geometric series (given lattice). Scattering within a parameter field is called "selection"; the selection indicates which parameter values are available within the pattern." - pp 107-108

My mind usually 'blanks out' when attempting to read tech manuals & the above language has a similar effect. That's funny considering that I supported myself for at least 20 yrs as a museum technician & that I compose electronic (m)usic & have, therefore, spent considerable time programming synthesizers. Still, even tho the words above are familiar & meaningful they become meaningless to me when I read Koenig's use of them. In a way, it's as if the language is as 'dry' & 'timbre-limited' as Koenig's music is. I don't really dislike it, I just have trouble engaging w/ it.. I feel alienated by it. It's like talking w/ a person whose voice is affectless, w/o any attempt to entertain w/ inflection. Koenig has been dead since 2021 so I feel like I can write such things w/o having his feelings be hurt by his reading them.

"Permeable structures are more important for the form than for the production of material. It is not important to the listener whether a structure is produced as a whole or put together by two permeable structures, unless subsequent superposition of two individual structures, or subsequent separation of a permeably constructed structure, fulfil a function in the form. This impression can easily be brought about if the permeable structures enter in succession and then stop in the same order. At the places where the structures penetrate each other they exchange, as it were, their characteristics; it can then be seen that each structure is put together from individual characteristics (parameters), and that this combination is variable." - p 120

Whew! Do you see what I mean? Imagine a classrm of students listening to a lecture by Koenig. What percentage of them wd be nodding off? I suspect I wd've been sound asleep w/in minutes. That wdn't've been b/c of a lack of interest in the subject but b/c the language used to talk about it wd've remained opaque to me. Of course, to be fair(er), I'm taking all of these quotes out of context.

"Serial and Aleatoric Methods in Electronic Music (Lecture at Ghent University during an international colloquium, 1965)":

"The aesthetic morality of composers does not permit an order established according to concrete criteria, having its exposition criteria, exposed in the form of a series, to be destroyed arbitrarily." - p 128

What interests me the most about the above is the expression "aesthetic morality". I wonder what the original German was. It's possible that the German is untranslatable & that it wd make more sense to me if I understood the German expression. I think of aesthetics as being a 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' type thing in wch some people's opinions are valued more highly than others - not b/c they have exceptional knowledge or some such but more b/c, to quote one of my rubber stamps, "Some arrogant rich people mistake their privilege for superiority". W/ that aside, it seems that what he's saying is that serial music is based on systems that lead to a specific ending that composers won't violate b/c that wd be too sloppy.

"Bilthoven Course 1961/62 (Lecture Materials, 1961)":

"Something that would be worth reflecting on is the question of whether musical time, in terms of the duration of a piece of music (inclusive of all temporal fluctuations which cause time to pass more quickly or slowly), is now really the object of compositional endeavors. The other alternative, that time is simply a result, is not very satisfactory. The idea that something is left over as a residue or comes into being of its own accord is contradictory to our notion of music as art. On the other hand it cannot be disputed that listeners certainly perceive pieces to be long or short, even too long or too short. But, to tell the truth, I believe that composers do not really care much about the duration of a work. If they take it into account at all, it is only in relation to the established habits of our concert practice." - p 150

Recently, I've gone back to reading underground anarchist publications. I hadn't done that, except for reading my own & those of a few friends, for decades. I'm finding a high percentage of DOGMA, something that I don't relate to. I find DOGMA to dominate the above as well. Saying "that time is simply a result, is not very satisfactory" leads me to ask: TO WHO? To Koenig, yes, but maybe not to many other composers. As he goes on to say, "I believe that composers do not really care much about the duration of a work." Then again, I have to agree that duration is usually "in relation to the established habits of our concert practice" or to some other limitation such as recording length. I often thought about that when I made tapes - the pieces made esp for them might be 45 minutes long per section, w/ there being 2 sections per piece b/c there're 2 sides. 78rpm records had to be short so the pieces were short. LPs liberated musicians from those restrictions, CDs liberated things further. But there've always been composers who made work lengths special for the challenges that they pose. I have a work called "Titin" that's 7:35:41. It's deliberately that long b/c it's based around slow-motion skydiving footage. It's intentionally preposterous. Then there's "Prequel", 10:04:31. It's a movie of me building a decorative hurdy-gurdy from a kit, mostly in real-time. The sound is me playing the hurdy-gurdy, eventually using it as a trigger for samples. The duration is important, it's overkill.

"Here we arrive at chance for the second time, and indeed it seems as though chance will always come to the fore when consequences are drawn from a serial technique which is implicitly oriented against chance, so that now it would seem appropriate to speak directly of chance." - p 158

"Thus, chance only becomes effective if, under the same initial conditions, very many decisions are made whose detailed outcomes remain uncertain. Random events of this kind are almost never met with in music; and if one did want to operate with them the result would be musically nonsensical." - p 160

Another idea that interests me: "musically nonsensical". In order for something to be musically nonsensical there must be something that's musically sensical that it's opposed to (?). I think what he means is that music <i>intrinsically</i> has a way of being that when deviated from destroys this intrinsicality & renders its being as nonsense. That's the reasoning of a very systems-oriented person, a Serialist. There might be a logic to a particular piece of music that, when not followed, might have content that wd make no sense in relation to the logic. That, I suppose, wd make a certain type of 'non-sense'. Take, e.g., a piece whose whole structure is tonal in a way that gradually leads to a resolution on the tonic. Then imagine an ending w/o the resolution but w/ an elephant roar instead - in a piece where no samples had previously occurred. That might be 'nonsense' but it wd probably also be a refreshing change from expectations.

"If when beginning a composition, one wishes to investigate graphical possibilities in a general way, to assess their usefulness or even necessity for their intended purposes, one would first have to draw up a list of all planned contexts and interpretive behaviours. The interconnection between music and graphics would be a parameter of the work. Possibly this parameter could be serially regulated, or of course aleatorically. All symbols would be described, and for the new ones, new graphic elements would be invented. Hereby the newness of the music can easily be overestimated. For example the fact that the interpreter makes certain decisions during performance, as a result of latitudes given by the composer, in itself says nothing, and in itself makes the music neither good nor modern." - p 168

Interesting. That makes me imagine a piece of, say, Baroque music composed entirely in graphic notation - w/ no accompanying text explaining that it's intended to sound like Baroque music. If that cd be pulled off I think it wd be quite an accomplishment. I think that's highly unlikely to happen. As such, it may be that the "latitudes given by the composer" are likely to produce something "modern" but, of course, open to criticism as not "good".

Koenig was certainly topical in his subjects. Not only was their Serialism, electronic music, & chance but he also got into spatial music.

"However, one could attempt to incorporate space or, better, spatial direction into music as a new parameter. In that case, spatiality would not serve to clarify processes which are already formulated, albeit indistinctly, but would itself be a process. This attempt has of course little chance of success." - p 172

Little chance of success? Tell that to Stockhausen, Cage, John Chowning, & Henry Brant!

"4. Concerts in concert halls with electronic music, in which the listeners were surrounded by loudspeakers, initially brought about a surprising result: the listeners felt the loudspeakers to be surrounding them like machine guns. It would be mean-spirited to dismiss the fact of there having recently been a war which people still felt within themselves. Music does not stand outside historical occurrences. The listener feels his freedom to be threatened, he wishes to concentrate on what he wishes to hear and not be helplessly subject to events, as he already is in his social situation." - p 174

Wch brings us to Iannis Xenakis' "La Légende d'Eer" (1977-1978), "Electronic Music in Surround Sound" as the DVD cover on the mode release informs us. The back cover describes it as an "electroacoustic work for 7-channel tape":

"A powerful "multi-media" piece created for the opening of the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris, La Légende d'Eer played for three months and was seen by thousands. Xenakis composed the electroacoustic tape for playback in "Le Diatope", a curvaceous architectural construcion of his own design with a visual component including 1680 lights, 4 lasers and 400 mirrors."

[..]

"This spectacle of light and sound-fragments of instrumental sounds, bodies of sounds, cataclysmic noises, undulating electronic flashes, pure laser lights-create a rich and unsettling environment, an unforgettable journey and experience."

The way I remember it is that Xenakis was in the Greek resistance during WWII & he was inspired by laying on his back & looking up at the sky when there were air attacks. The lights shown into the air to try to pinpoint the attacking airplanes later became inspiration for the lights in "La Légende D'Eer". As such, Koenig's observation that "the listeners felt the loudspeakers to be surrounding them like machine guns. It would be mean-spirited to dismiss the fact of there having recently been a war which people still felt within themselves. Music does not stand outside historical occurrences." is prescient.

"Genesis of Form in Technically Conditioned Environments (1986, translated by Ruth Koenig)":

"I shall begin by recalling my first years in the electronic music studio in Cologne. I had met Stockhausen and become acquainted with the technique of electronic sound production. I was assisting Stockhausen in his work. He showed me a built-in cupboard with dozens of little compartments, evidently custom-made for the studio. Inside were small plastic bags containing pieces of tape with single sounds on them: the tapes were spliced into loops and rolled up, making it easy to play them in a tape recorder. Stockhausen remarked that each sound had its own unique place in an electronic composition, and could never be used in any other place in any other piece. The reason, he said, was that composing sound was directly linked to composing form; a sound could only perform its function in the place it was conceived for. In order to avoid misuse, he thought sounds ought to be destroyed after a production was ended."

[..]

"I mention all this because the 1950s had a crucial influence in my development as a composer. I referred to Stockhausen because he was a member of the musical avant garde, and convincing as a composer. Other composers were in Cologne in the fifties though, composers such as Kagel or Ligeti, Evangelisti or Cardew, theorists such as Metzger, literary figures such as Helms, as well as painters and architects." - p 196

Now, almost 70 yrs later, I have an 88 key sampler that can have a different sample assigned to each key & they can be looped. Everything for me is modular, the idea "that each sound had its own unique place in an electronic composition, and could never be used in any other place in any other piece" is not valid for me - in fact it's very contrary to the way I work. Stockhausen's statement seems rooted in the Serialism of the time. A glimpse into my much more technically fortunate era is here:

734. "Electronics"

- 4K 30p Stereo

- 44:14

- edit finished February 8, 2024

- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/tcBKM3C2GJ0

- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/electronics-final

I say "fortunate" b/c the technical conditions under wch I work are so much more advanced than what those great composers in Cologne had available to them in their early days. Even so, in the history presented in the "Electronics" piece linked to above, one can see how utterly primitive my conditions in 1976 started out as too - such as in the use of a Function Generator that I made from a kit.

"With a sequencer developed during this same period [1967?] (and known at the Institute as a variable function generator), voltage levels could be set and scanned at different speeds or by random control. This took me a step closer to my goal of restricting tape manipulation to a minimum. And instead, the sound material for the Functionen was generated fully automatically by a single present curve on the function generator; all other derivations were obtained by using control signals produced from the same curve and tapes." - p 201

My very primitive use of a Function Generator started a mere 9 yrs after the era described above although Koenig's use was at a whole different level. Nonetheless, it makes me feel like not quite so much of a 'Johhny-come-lately' - esp considering that I was 22 at the time & not in academia.

"We have therefore developed a variable function generator in the studio at Utrecht University. Using fifty potentiometers the composer can set a staircase-formed curve and check it on the oscilloscope. Two built-in filters make it possible to flatten the flanks of this curve." - p 242

Koenig writes about differences in composing for acoustic instruments vs electronic music:

"In electronic music, though, this is only limitedly feasible. Its sonic world was not intended to fit into any traditional categories of musical context such as melodic writing, harmonic progressions, phrasing tailored to the breath or the length of a bow, etc." - p 198

Imagine a piece for, say, violin in wch the violin is held in place far away from the player & the bow is, say, 20 ft long. What cd you, as a composer, do w/ that?! There cd be a performer at either end of the bow.

"Chance Decisions in Musical Composition (Notes, 1968)":

"If, during the performance of a musical work, the musicians are obviously making use of interpretive freedom, or the explanation in the programme indicates that its musical shape was determined by chance factors, one often asks oneself whether randomness and art are compatible. One expects some kind of order to manifest itself in a musical work, and inclines to equate chance with chaos." - p 219

To me, the ultimate question is more: 'Do I like what I hear?' Then there's also: 'Is the means for getting there interesting?' I think "chance" is much slipperier than it often seems to be taken to be. John Cage may've had the intention of bypassing personal taste thru chance but he was still conceiving & initiating the process. I'm not saying that as a criticism of Cage, I love his music - but, chance or no chance, I still hear it as HIS music, meaning as something that wdn't exist w/o him. Nazis marching in lockstep weren't random so do I prefer chaos over goosestepping? Of course. There's always some order somewhere in even the most chaotic of works. If "the musicians are obviously making use of interpretive freedom" that doesn't mean that they aren't making decisions based on or influenced by whatever's happening around them. The order, therefore, might be the commonality of the whole. I don't perceive "randomness" as totally random & I don't really care about people's ideas of what shd constitute "art".

"My Experiences with Programmed Music (1975, translated by Ruth Koenig)":

"The idea can be inspired by a genre (opera, song, chamber music, a work for large orchestra) or by a form (musical miniature, improvisation, reactions of musicians to one another or an audience, a "closed" work with a normal duration) or by an ensemble (instrumental group, electronic sounds, a combination of the two) or by the composition process (the linking together of individual ideas in terms of a psychogram, strict formal development, a computer program or electronic apparatus as the source of inspiration or of the sounds) and so forth." - p 223

"My own experience with programmed music goes back to my childhood when, after recorder and piano lessons, I wrote my first composition. It was a canon for two recorders, a classic example of programmed music. First I composed a few bars for the upper part, and then copied them for the second part, inventing a continuation of the upper part, and whilst it did not fix the upper part, it did restrict it to a great extent." - p 225

"Problems of Electronic Composition (The written part of a lecture at the Musikhochschule Detmold, 1962)":

"Ten years ago [1952], Herbert Eimert and Robert Beyer, at the Westdeuthscher Rundfunk (at that time the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk), initiated experiments that nobody would have believed would expand the scope of music to the extent we can see today; back then, there was not even such a term as "electronic music". Rather, these two innovators took up an idea that had already been around for a while: the idea of a music that belonged in a broadcast context." - p 234

Now, contrast that to the claim that Dalia Derbyshire, by virtue of making an electronic version of the Doctor Who theme for the BBC in 1963, who was then sd to've 'invented electronic music as we know it' in a documentary glorifying her in the 21st century.

"Often and this brings me to a second point the experimental character of electronic music is highlighted. It should seem worthy of some thought that only music critics and a portion of the public regard this music to be at an exploratory stage, while the composers, who for the sake of their own professionalism make a sharp distinction between preparatory work and the completed composition, in that the latter is published and the former not, are quite unaware of this supposed experimental character. Praise is also generously given to the manifold possibilities that electronic music should have in films, in radio drama, in theatre, since experimentation in such a position of servitutde is tolerated or even promoted, while the realm of art is presided over only by geniuses" - p 236

Once again, interesting. For me, "experimental" as an adjective describing any creative activity is a positive thing that generally denotes 'not following tradition'. As for films, I often find it interesting that I find horror movie soundtracks more inspired than the movies themselves - is that an aspect of 'subservience'? Perhaps, in the sense that it's program (as differed from programmed) &/or mood/atmospheric music &, therefore, has that limitation imposed from the beginning.

"In the development section of the first movement of the Waldstein Sonata, after the extended passage in triplets, a rolling figure in the lowest register of the piano begins in bar 142, which opens a little later into the first subject. In a parametric representation, it would be described as follows:

"frequency: very low position, the upper half of the second octave of the keyboard;

"tempo: allegro con brio, sixteenth notes, in other words very fast;

"dynamic: pianissimo

"Everyone knows that under these conditions these the attacks will blur into a mush." - p 239

Koenig goes on to list various options for the pianist in order to avoid the mush. These options all entail not following part of the score. Given that Beethoven wasn't deaf when he composed the Waldstein Sonata it wd seem that he wanted this mush & that, conventionally, his score shd then be respected & not deviated from.

"Condition Instruction Execution (Lecture, Florence 1968, translated by Ruth Koenig)":

""I am working on a series of pieces with the collective title Functionen to show experimentally the breadth of variation of a fixed basic scheme. A curve was set on the function generator and was used not only as sound material but also to control filtering, reverberation component, and volume, it was also used for ring modulation. Rhythm was produced with the use of a noise source as a random generator; the overall form was worked out by the composer. Let me play you an excerpt from Koenig, Function Grün." - p 243

"Some Observations on the Impact of Technology on Music (1982, translated by Ruth Koenig)":

"Being a member of the staff at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht means that my position in the world of music and technology is only a modest one. The Institute is preoccupied with how to gain insight into the properties of musical structures and musical creativity by resorting to models and techniques of description. The Institute does not belong to a music department and is consequently not in constant contact with composers and musicians; it does not participate in the musical scene by organizing concerts or other musical manifestations apart from occasional presentations of electronic pieces produced in the Institute and other studios. The Institute has no facilities for studying market mechanisms or for embarking on investigations of music sociology." - p 246

The revealing honesty of the above statement is very appealing to me. Koenig is being humble - &, yet, at the same time "the Institute of Sonology" is a distinct enuf context to merit acknowledgement for uniqueness.

"Of course, electronic music was preceded by pioneers of electric music, such as Cahill, Theremin, Trautwein and Martenot having designed new instruments to build a kind of bridge between instrument and generator." - p 247

& it's revealing that Koenig is knowledgable enuf to list Thaddeus Cahill 1st. All 4 of these inventors are deserving of enormous credit as precursors of electronic music but I'm not sure that calling their music "electric" really does them justice.

"Between Music and Technology: A Field of Tension (Lecture at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, as part of the festival "Ex Machina 90", 1990)":

"However those composers had been preceded by the pioneers of electric music such as Cahill, Theremin, Trautwein and Martenot, who had built with their new instruments a kind of bridge between traditional instruments and electronic generators." - p 256

"Remarks on Compositional Theory (1968, translated by Ruth Koenig)":

""Location". There are hardly any correspondences to this parameter in instrumental music, although here the instruments can be spatially distributed. In electronic music, the possibility of altering the location of the would at will is new. The technique of four track recording is only a beginning. For the future of this development, it seems to be less important to use the mere direction of the sound as a parameter than to evaluate the actual movement of the sound compositionally (the listener is surrounded by sound, this sound-space is variable)." - p 294

"the location of the would at will": I assume that "would" was intended to be "sound". Still, this presumed error is interesting on its own.

""Sound generation". By arbitrary settings of the generator, arbitrary sequences of pitches or impulses are produced. By arbitrary settings of the filter, noise-bands of arbitrary width and frequency are produced. (For arbitrary sound generation, microphone recordings of arbitrary sounds or the use of damaged apparatus could be considered.)" - p 299

"the use of damaged apparatus could be considered"!! Ha ha! This is where Koenig gets into a very familiar territory for me. Being generally impoverished, I often used borrowed or broken equipment that had 'special' qualities that cd produce what I called 'special effects'. I have a Hammond monophonic synthesizer. Some keys of it don't work so they play whatever note had last been produced by those keys that DO work. That creates a 'special' melodic sensibility.

All in all, I got considerably less out of this bk than I expected to. I'm not going to use that to dismiss Koenig as a composer but I have my doubts about him as an educator.

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