Aus den sieben Tagen

Aus den sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days) is a collection of 15 text compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in May 1968, in reaction to a personal crisis, and characterized as "Intuitive music"—music produced primarily from the intuition rather than the intellect of the performer(s).

Often regarded as meditation exercises, all but two of these texts nonetheless describe in words specific musical events: "I don't want some spiritistic sitting—I want music! I don't mean something mystical, but rather everything completely direct, from concrete experience" (Stockhausen, quoted in Ritzel 1970, 15). Despite the manner of notation, Stockhausen's approach remains essentially serial:

In his cycle FROM THE SEVEN DAYS Stockhausen attempts to find musical answers to such fundamental questions regarding the conditions of a harmonious interplay of spirit and matter, which correspond to his serial process thinking and to the maxims of the experimental production of the sound material by composing temporally ordered pulses. . . . As a composer he wants to mediate between the extremes rather than to just follow the preconception of a linear development from the fragmentary and dissonant to the whole and harmonious. (Peters 2003, 226)

The fifteen constituent pieces are:

1. Richtige Dauern (Right Durations), for ca. 4 players
2. Unbegrenzt (Unlimited), for ensemble
3. Verbindung (Connection), for ensemble
4. Treffpunkt (Meeting Point), for ensemble
5. Nachtmusik (Night Music), for ensemble
6. Abwärts (Downward), for ensemble
7. Aufwärts (Upward), for ensemble
8. Oben und Unten (Above and Below), theater piece, for a man, a woman, a child, and 4 instrumentalists
9. Intensität (Intensity), for ensemble
10. Setz die Segel zur Sonne (Set Sail for the Sun), for ensemble
11. Kommunion (Communion), for ensemble
12. Litanei (Litany), for speaker or choir
13. Es (It), for ensemble
14. Goldstaub (Gold Dust), for ensemble
15. Ankunft (Arrival), for speaker or speaking choir

The seven days of the title were 7–13 May 1968. Although this coincided with the beginning of the May 1968 protests and general strike in Paris, Stockhausen does not appear to have been aware of them at the time. These texts were written at Stockhausen's home in Kürten during the first five of those days, at night or late in the evening (Stockhausen 1978, pp. 149 and 529). During daylight hours, including the remaining two days, Stockhausen wrote “many poems,” as well as reading Satprem’s book on Sri Aurobindo, and experienced “many extraordinary things” (Stockhausen 1978, pp. 528–29). Some of the poems appear in Stockhausen 1971, pp. 368–76.

The most detailed text is the central one, Oben und Unten, which gives instructions for three actors and a group of instrumentalists. Twelve of the other pieces describe musical processes or states, in three different general types, and the remaining two, Litanei and Ankunft are more in the nature of manifestos, to be read aloud either by a single speaker or a speaking choir (Kohl 1978; Bergstrøm-Nielsen 1997). In 1997, Stockhausen made a performing version of the former text, under the title Litanei 97, for a speaking choir with occasional sung interjections.

Between 1968 and 1971, Stockhausen composed a companion set of 17 text pieces, titled Für kommende Zeiten (For Times to Come). These pieces are:

1. Übereinstimmung (Unanimity), for ensemble
2. Verlängerung (Elongation)
3. Verkürzung (Shortening)
4. Über die Grenze (Across the Boundary), for small ensemble
5. Kommunikation (Communication), for small ensemble
6. Intervall (Interval), for piano four-hands
7. Ausserhalb (Outside), for small ensemble
8. Innerhalb (Inside), for small ensemble
9. Anhalt (Halt), for small ensemble
10. Schwingung (Vibration), for ensemble
11. Spektren (Spectra), for small ensemble
12. Wellen (Waves), for ensemble
13. Zugvogel (Bird of Passage), for ensemble
14. Vorahnung (Presentiment), for 4–7 interpreters
15. Japan, for ensemble
16. Wach (Awake), for ensemble
17. Ceylon, for small ensemble

References

• Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Carl. 1997. "Festlegen, Umreißen, Andeuten, Hervorrufen: Analytisches zu den Textkompositionen von Karlheinz Stockhausen." MusikTexte: Zeitschrift für Neue Musik no. 72 (November): 13-16. [1](German) [2](English)
• Boberg, Johan. 2002. "Through the Eye of the Golden Needle: Personal Experiences of Stockhausen’s GOLDSTAUB." Translated from Nutida Musik/Tritonus 2002:4. [3](English)
• Kohl, Jerome. 1978. “Intuitive Music and Serial Determinism: An Analysis of Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen.” In Theory Only 3, no. 2 (March): 7–19.[4](English)
• Kurtz, Michael. 1988. "Aus den Sieben Tagen: Points de vue biographique et historique sur les compositions-textes de mai 1968." In Karlheinz Stockhausen (programme booklet). Paris: Contrechamps/Festival d'Automne à Paris. [5](French)
• Nakaji, Masatsune. 1994. “Karlheinz Stockhausens Intuitive Musik: c'est Le Dispositif Chaosmique de Transformation”. Genesis (The Bulletin of Kyoto University of Art and Design) vol. 1. HTML versions 1995 [6](Japanese) & (French)
• Peters, Günter. 2003. "Kosmischer Rhythmus: Formprozeß und Philosophie in Karlheinz Stockhausens Intuitiver Musik AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN " / "Cosmic Rhythm: Formal Process and Philosophy in the Intuitive Music FROM THE SEVEN DAYS of Karlheinz Stockhausen." In: Günter Peters. Heiliger Ernst im Spiel – Texte zur Musik von Karlheinz Stockhausen / Holy Seriousness in the Play – Essays on the Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (bilingual edition, German and English), 63–96/199–32. Kürten: Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik.
• Ritzel, Fred. 1970. Musik für ein Haus. Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik 12. Mainz: Schott.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1971. Texte zur Musik 3. Edited by Dieter Schnebel. Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1978. Texte zur Musik 4. Edited by Christoph von Blumröder. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag.
• Wilms, Holger. 2000. "Wie kommt der Kosmos in den Konzertsaal? Karlheinz Stockhausen im Gespräch." A Tempo 6 (June). [7](German)