Karlheinz Stockhausen: Mantra
Classical | EAC (APE & CUE) | New Albion (1990) | 2 parts / 179 MB
"I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language." ―Karlheinz Stockhausen
More than twenty years after its premiere,
Mantra occurs as Stockhausen's first "Formelkomposition," and therefore as a keywork to almost all of his following pieces, such as "Inori," "Tierkreis," and "Sirius," as well as his music-theater cycle, "Licht." The basis of the piece is a twelve-tone motive, where every note has a specific duration, rhythmic value and intensity. In conncetion with this, Stockhausen mentions that he has quite free images or sounds, just as in "Aus den Sieben Tagen," a meditation piece based on verbal notation which was created in California in 1968, and also in the piece "Fur kommende Zeiten" that was written at the same time as
Mantra. And although in interviews Stockhausen talks about how he uses rigid and free forms in mixed ways, all the works following
Mantra are nevertheless "Formula" compositions, or even―as in "Licht"―"Superformula" compositions.