Auf den Sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days) consists of 15 compositions for unspecified ensemble. Each piece may last for an unspecified duration (from four to 60 minutes per piece). Stockhausen called this music "intuitive music," meaning that it is not "improvisation," but rather music that is played intuitively -- employing "a process of mutual feedback" -- by a group of musicians concentrating on a specific written text. The 15 texts for the work were written over the course of five days that Stockhausen spent shut away without food: a self-imposed exile, a kind of musical-spirtual retreat. The texts reflect Stockhausen's increasing sense of artistic isolation and his interest in the internal world and the processes of the mind. They are deeply spiritual explorations, drawing on the composer's personal emotions and his philosophical predilection towards transcendentalism. His texts contain vague, poetic instructions to performers, who are entreated to "play with out thinking," or to "play in the rhythm of the universe." The text "Verbindung" (Connection), for example, contains the following evocative instructions: "play a vibration in the rhythm of your intuition / play a vibration in the rhythm of your enlightenment ... / mix these vibrations freely / leave enough silence between them."
Musicologists have noted that Aus den Sieben Tagen represents a shift in Stockhausen's compositional esthetic, a move away from experimentation with timbre and the physical limitations of composition towards a purely mental approach, emphasizing the limitlessness of the human imagination. While Stockhausen insists that "improvisation" is an inadequate term to apply to Auf den Sieben Tagen, it is the ne plus ultra of improvised music, demanding from performers open-minded and imaginative musical and spiritual agreement in the creation of meaningful musical events. ~ All Music Guide
