Mittwoch am Donnerstag (mit Hubschraubern und Kamele)
Which I think means, "Wednesday on a Thursday (with Helicopters and Camels).
I've just got back from Birmingham where the Birmingham Opera Company was doing the World Premiere staging of Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht.
When I set off yesterday morning, it seemed the train was full of young women in skimpy short and tee-shirts and wellington boots, carrying rucksacks bigger than they were. I had to stand all the way from Guildford to Reading. Turns out the Reading Festival is on this weekend. Well, what I was doing wasn't that stranger.
The train from Reading to Birmingham was already on the platform when I got there, and a lot less crowded. I was in my hotel by half past one. I was staying in the Ibis, which is in the heart of Chinatown, just across from New Street station, and the site of Novacon back in the nineties. After getting into my room, checking I had my ticket and stuff, I set off to see how for away it was to where it the opera was being performed.
It wasn't being performed in a conventional opera house but in a disused industrial space called the Argyle Works. I set off on what I thought from the map was the most direct route and was there by two o'clock. It had taken my about fifteen minutes. But the opera wasn't starting till four, so I headed back into the centre of Birmingham, had a meal in the noodle bar in the basement of Selfridges, and looked around to see how much the centre of Birmingham had changed since I was last there, which is quite a bit.
Got back to the Argyle Works by half past three. On entry I was given a yellow wristband which I assumed allowed you to come and go if need be. I didn't need.
No sooner had I got through the gate than I bumped into people I knew from the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, including Richard Steinitz, retired Professor of Music at Huddersfield University, author of an admired book on the composer Gyorgy Ligeti, and founder of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
I'm not sure when I first heard the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, but it must have been around 1970. I certainly recall going to a performance of his Carre at the Proms in 1972. Despite what people say about him, his music was popular back in the seventies and eighties, concerts usually selling out. In 1985 the BBC mounted a festival lasting over a week of his music, and later that year the Royal Opera at Covent Garden did a staging of Donnerstag, the first part of his mammoth Licht cycle to be complete. The Licht cycle comprises one opera for every day of the week. I went to this staging twice in 1985.
By the time of Stockhausen's death in 2007, five of the operas had been staged. Sonntag was staged last year in Cologne, and this was the first staging of Mittwoch (and, I think, the first Stockhausen opera to be performed complete in the UK since 1985).
At the start, we were all herded into a large room with a mixing desk in the middle, surrounded by a number of camping stools, and four large screens in the corners. This was where we were to hear the Greeting, a piece of purely electronic music. The lights were switched off at the start and I must have closed my eyes, because at one point I opened them and found the lights had come back on again and there was someone standing in front of me who immediately ran away. During the course of this performance, things like this happened over and over again - people flying kites, gymnasts climbing the walls, a solitary female figure appearing at a window high in the wall.
At the end, we were asked to go out through a narrow door that had just opened, from within which came a yellow light. Near the door, someone upended a tin of yellow paint over his head - this was significant: yellow is the dominant colour of Mittwoch, apparently.
The next section was the World Parliament, the best bit, I thought. We were ushered into another large room, this one strewn with foam mats and surrounded by tall yellow chairs of the sort you see tennis umpires sitting in. One was slightly apart from the rest and had a set of tubular bells next to it.
People started appearing from all sides. They were all formally dressed, usually in suits or cocktail dresses for the women, but some in traditional "ethnic" costumes. All their faces had national flags painted on them, covering the entire face a bit like a clown's makeup. The lone chair was the President, and his face had a flag I couldn't identify. He conducted the proceedings, played the tubular bells and occasionally tapped on the lectern attached to the chair with his gavel. I've no idea what they were singing about, but it was beautiful, surprisingly reminding me of Benjamin Britten at one point. The subject must have got on to sex, because the cast started flirting with each other. And all the cast at another point smeared their makeup to an homogeneous colour. Then, a pause and a policeman appeared. "Would the owner of car registration M for Mittwoch, 2012, please move it as it is about to be towed away." The president looked shocked, got down from his chair and hurried out. The rest of the delegates decided that the coloratura soprano should take his place, which she did with an abashed What Me look.
At the end, we were asked to take our mats with us, which everyone thought was for the next bit, but they really just wanted us to stack them so they could prepare the room for the next bit. It was now the first interval. (There were camels wandering around the place during the interval. This is significant.)
The next bit is called Orchestral Finalists, and I've seen this performed a couple of times, but not fully staged. It was in the same room as before, but now with blue mattresses lined up in the centre. These were all taken but there were more of the foam mats round the edge which is where I ended up.
For this, the musicians were suspended high up near the ceiling, but could be moved up and down with a system of pulleys. Various performers appeared at ground level, including two elderly gentlemen dressed like Victorian business men (think the industrialists in the Olympic opening ceremony), but they were wearing stove pipe hats in actuality, as smoke issued from the tops making fascinating helical patterns as they walked.
A child's paddling pool was wheeled in on a trolley, over the top of the audience. A young lad in swimming trunks splashed around in it, but as it went underneath the trombone player, his platform was lowered and they changed places. He proceeded to play a solo as the trolley was moved around the audience, splashing people in the process. Also, the double bass player changed places with someone in a spacesuit. Finally someone dressed as an Egyptian mummy appeared and bashed a gong.
We were then led back to the area where the greeting had been performed for the most famous bit, the Helicopter Quartet. After musicians flying in the rafters, the only way to go is up.
Because of the nature of this piece, it needed a speaking role called the Moderator, apparently the part Stockhausen himself performed. But, as DJ Nihal, who was doing it, said, he was sure that he would have insisted when he wasn't available to have someone from Essex with Sri Lankan parents. Actually, he wasn't too bad.
The Elysian quartet were sitting at one side of the room in yellow safety jackets. Then, followed by a cameraman, they left through a side door and got in a waiting minibus to be driven down the road were four helicopters were waiting. All this was shown on the screens. Then, they got into the helicopters, which ascended. The screens switched to showing one performer per screen, and you could hear the sound of each instrument and each helicopter from the speakers associated with each screen. And their voices. At times during the piece, the performers had to shout out numbers in German: "Ein! Zwei! Drei! u.s.w."
Finally, the helicopters landed again and performers and pilots were driven back and interviewed. Apparently, the pilots had got more adventurous this time, which had surprised the performers.
(Of course, the cynic in my wants to point out that we were enclosed in this room with no windows and a sound system that would have drowned out any sounds of helicopters overhead. It could all have been videoed days ago, except that the weather looked about right for what it had been when I arrived.)
Another interval. Then, the Michaelion. Michael, Eve and Lucifer are characters that seem to appear in Licht. But don't ask me what was going on here. There were people throughout the space wearing black splashed with yellow paint, one of them listening to a short-wave radio. Several of these were singers. A trombonist arrived, leading a camel. A fake one this time, as it was required to shit planets. The programme mentions a bull fight (which I can't say I noticed) and a trio of basset horn, trumpet and trombone. Finally it was over, except an electronic farewell to match the earlier greeting. This turned into a social gathering with the cast mingling with the audience. The various cast groups lined up along the sides of the room so they could all be applauded. Then, Graham Vick, the director, and Kathinka Pasveer, the music director, appeared to take applause. (Pasveer was described in the paper recently as a long-time Stockhausen collaborator. Well, that's one way of putting it. Rumour has it she was part of an extended polyamourous family centred around Stockhausen. And, if you order Stockhausen CDs from the Stockhausen website, you get a nice e-mail from her.)
The largest applause was when they put up a picture of Stockhausen on the screens.
So, that was it. A really great enjoyable experience for me. I hope I don't have to wait another 27 years for the next one. Of course, the real goal is for all seven operas to be performed on their respective seven days of the week.
I was really stiff when I got up this morning.
I've just got back from Birmingham where the Birmingham Opera Company was doing the World Premiere staging of Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht.
When I set off yesterday morning, it seemed the train was full of young women in skimpy short and tee-shirts and wellington boots, carrying rucksacks bigger than they were. I had to stand all the way from Guildford to Reading. Turns out the Reading Festival is on this weekend. Well, what I was doing wasn't that stranger.
The train from Reading to Birmingham was already on the platform when I got there, and a lot less crowded. I was in my hotel by half past one. I was staying in the Ibis, which is in the heart of Chinatown, just across from New Street station, and the site of Novacon back in the nineties. After getting into my room, checking I had my ticket and stuff, I set off to see how for away it was to where it the opera was being performed.
It wasn't being performed in a conventional opera house but in a disused industrial space called the Argyle Works. I set off on what I thought from the map was the most direct route and was there by two o'clock. It had taken my about fifteen minutes. But the opera wasn't starting till four, so I headed back into the centre of Birmingham, had a meal in the noodle bar in the basement of Selfridges, and looked around to see how much the centre of Birmingham had changed since I was last there, which is quite a bit.
Got back to the Argyle Works by half past three. On entry I was given a yellow wristband which I assumed allowed you to come and go if need be. I didn't need.
No sooner had I got through the gate than I bumped into people I knew from the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, including Richard Steinitz, retired Professor of Music at Huddersfield University, author of an admired book on the composer Gyorgy Ligeti, and founder of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
I'm not sure when I first heard the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, but it must have been around 1970. I certainly recall going to a performance of his Carre at the Proms in 1972. Despite what people say about him, his music was popular back in the seventies and eighties, concerts usually selling out. In 1985 the BBC mounted a festival lasting over a week of his music, and later that year the Royal Opera at Covent Garden did a staging of Donnerstag, the first part of his mammoth Licht cycle to be complete. The Licht cycle comprises one opera for every day of the week. I went to this staging twice in 1985.
By the time of Stockhausen's death in 2007, five of the operas had been staged. Sonntag was staged last year in Cologne, and this was the first staging of Mittwoch (and, I think, the first Stockhausen opera to be performed complete in the UK since 1985).
At the start, we were all herded into a large room with a mixing desk in the middle, surrounded by a number of camping stools, and four large screens in the corners. This was where we were to hear the Greeting, a piece of purely electronic music. The lights were switched off at the start and I must have closed my eyes, because at one point I opened them and found the lights had come back on again and there was someone standing in front of me who immediately ran away. During the course of this performance, things like this happened over and over again - people flying kites, gymnasts climbing the walls, a solitary female figure appearing at a window high in the wall.
At the end, we were asked to go out through a narrow door that had just opened, from within which came a yellow light. Near the door, someone upended a tin of yellow paint over his head - this was significant: yellow is the dominant colour of Mittwoch, apparently.
The next section was the World Parliament, the best bit, I thought. We were ushered into another large room, this one strewn with foam mats and surrounded by tall yellow chairs of the sort you see tennis umpires sitting in. One was slightly apart from the rest and had a set of tubular bells next to it.
People started appearing from all sides. They were all formally dressed, usually in suits or cocktail dresses for the women, but some in traditional "ethnic" costumes. All their faces had national flags painted on them, covering the entire face a bit like a clown's makeup. The lone chair was the President, and his face had a flag I couldn't identify. He conducted the proceedings, played the tubular bells and occasionally tapped on the lectern attached to the chair with his gavel. I've no idea what they were singing about, but it was beautiful, surprisingly reminding me of Benjamin Britten at one point. The subject must have got on to sex, because the cast started flirting with each other. And all the cast at another point smeared their makeup to an homogeneous colour. Then, a pause and a policeman appeared. "Would the owner of car registration M for Mittwoch, 2012, please move it as it is about to be towed away." The president looked shocked, got down from his chair and hurried out. The rest of the delegates decided that the coloratura soprano should take his place, which she did with an abashed What Me look.
At the end, we were asked to take our mats with us, which everyone thought was for the next bit, but they really just wanted us to stack them so they could prepare the room for the next bit. It was now the first interval. (There were camels wandering around the place during the interval. This is significant.)
The next bit is called Orchestral Finalists, and I've seen this performed a couple of times, but not fully staged. It was in the same room as before, but now with blue mattresses lined up in the centre. These were all taken but there were more of the foam mats round the edge which is where I ended up.
For this, the musicians were suspended high up near the ceiling, but could be moved up and down with a system of pulleys. Various performers appeared at ground level, including two elderly gentlemen dressed like Victorian business men (think the industrialists in the Olympic opening ceremony), but they were wearing stove pipe hats in actuality, as smoke issued from the tops making fascinating helical patterns as they walked.
A child's paddling pool was wheeled in on a trolley, over the top of the audience. A young lad in swimming trunks splashed around in it, but as it went underneath the trombone player, his platform was lowered and they changed places. He proceeded to play a solo as the trolley was moved around the audience, splashing people in the process. Also, the double bass player changed places with someone in a spacesuit. Finally someone dressed as an Egyptian mummy appeared and bashed a gong.
We were then led back to the area where the greeting had been performed for the most famous bit, the Helicopter Quartet. After musicians flying in the rafters, the only way to go is up.
Because of the nature of this piece, it needed a speaking role called the Moderator, apparently the part Stockhausen himself performed. But, as DJ Nihal, who was doing it, said, he was sure that he would have insisted when he wasn't available to have someone from Essex with Sri Lankan parents. Actually, he wasn't too bad.
The Elysian quartet were sitting at one side of the room in yellow safety jackets. Then, followed by a cameraman, they left through a side door and got in a waiting minibus to be driven down the road were four helicopters were waiting. All this was shown on the screens. Then, they got into the helicopters, which ascended. The screens switched to showing one performer per screen, and you could hear the sound of each instrument and each helicopter from the speakers associated with each screen. And their voices. At times during the piece, the performers had to shout out numbers in German: "Ein! Zwei! Drei! u.s.w."
Finally, the helicopters landed again and performers and pilots were driven back and interviewed. Apparently, the pilots had got more adventurous this time, which had surprised the performers.
(Of course, the cynic in my wants to point out that we were enclosed in this room with no windows and a sound system that would have drowned out any sounds of helicopters overhead. It could all have been videoed days ago, except that the weather looked about right for what it had been when I arrived.)
Another interval. Then, the Michaelion. Michael, Eve and Lucifer are characters that seem to appear in Licht. But don't ask me what was going on here. There were people throughout the space wearing black splashed with yellow paint, one of them listening to a short-wave radio. Several of these were singers. A trombonist arrived, leading a camel. A fake one this time, as it was required to shit planets. The programme mentions a bull fight (which I can't say I noticed) and a trio of basset horn, trumpet and trombone. Finally it was over, except an electronic farewell to match the earlier greeting. This turned into a social gathering with the cast mingling with the audience. The various cast groups lined up along the sides of the room so they could all be applauded. Then, Graham Vick, the director, and Kathinka Pasveer, the music director, appeared to take applause. (Pasveer was described in the paper recently as a long-time Stockhausen collaborator. Well, that's one way of putting it. Rumour has it she was part of an extended polyamourous family centred around Stockhausen. And, if you order Stockhausen CDs from the Stockhausen website, you get a nice e-mail from her.)
The largest applause was when they put up a picture of Stockhausen on the screens.
So, that was it. A really great enjoyable experience for me. I hope I don't have to wait another 27 years for the next one. Of course, the real goal is for all seven operas to be performed on their respective seven days of the week.
I was really stiff when I got up this morning.