{"id":2545,"date":"2015-12-31T16:37:27","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T15:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studiozenz.nl\/master\/?p=2545"},"modified":"2016-11-23T16:13:44","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T15:13:44","slug":"stockhousen-en-the-beatles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/studiozenz.nl\/master\/stockhousen-en-the-beatles\/","title":{"rendered":"How Stockhausen seduced the Beatles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Dit artikel is heel bruikbaar voor mijn onderzoek om aan te tonen dat MKM een grote invloed kan hebben op lichte muziek en daarmee op\u00a0mainstream doelgroep. De Beatles konden\u00a0door de experimentele technieken\u00a0van Stockhausen\u00a0uitgroeien van een ‘stelletje brutale langharigen’\u00a0tot de band die de wereld veroverden met nummers als\u00a0‘Tomorrow Never Know<\/em>s’, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’<\/em>\u00a0en ‘I Am the Walrus’<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Stockhousen_2393\"<\/a>
Underground experiments \u2026 Stockhausen in 1967<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
The Beatles\u2019 Revolution 9 brought experimental music to a global audience, but their radio soundworld wouldn\u2019t have been possible without Stockhausen\u2019s \u2018music of the whole world\u2019<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\n
\n
\n
\u00a0S<\/span><\/span>hortwave radio. Strange stuff. Not much of it around these days. However, before the days of the internet, it was the window on the world. With a modest transistor radio perched on the kitchen table you could listen in to Moscow, Beijing<\/a> or Teheran; and even places such as Viborg, Skive and Kootwijk. Where are they? Who knows, but you could listen to them.<\/div>\n
\n

The German avant-garde composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen<\/a>, listened to the radio a lot when he was a boy. He was born in 1928 when radio had become available to all and, when he was an infant, he discovered that he could immediately play on the piano any music he\u2019d heard emanating from the crackling loudspeaker: an early indication of his incredible musical gift.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to the 1960s. Stockhausen had found fame in the underground counter-cultural world of experimental arts. He\u2019d made several pieces of electronic music that had been broadcast by radio stations around the globe, including the BBC. But these were not pieces played on pop music stations; they were initially known only to the followers of the avant garde: those who read cut-up novels, collected LPs of musique concr\u00e8te<\/em> and attended performances of experimental theatre, happenings, expanded cinema and psychedelic all\u2011nighters in hippy hangouts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Beatles_2226\"<\/a>
The Beatles in 1968. Photograph: Rex\/Blackbrow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At this time, many more mainstream bands were exploring the possibilities of the recording studio. In the three years between 1964 and 1967 pop music changed more radically than it had in all the years since its inception in the 1950s. The Beatles<\/a> went from being a bunch of cheeky moptops to a band working with tape loops and sound collages with tracks such as \u201cTomorrow Never Knows\u201d, \u201cStrawberry Fields Forever\u201d and \u201cI Am the Walrus\u201d. The techniques used to create these soundworlds had been developed years before by composers like Stockhausen.<\/p>\n

In 1967 he made a two-hour, four\u2011channel electronic composition called Hymnen <\/em>(Anthems). It is an expansive, sonic landscape based on national anthems and other audio material from around the world. It also utilises the sounds of shortwave radio \u2013 \u201cshortwave salad\u201d as Stockhausen called it \u2013 the bleeps and fizz of atmospherics, the nebulous worlds between the stations, the hum and crackle of planet Earth. In conversation with Stockhausen, in 2001, I asked him about his fascination with shortwave. Why did he use it so much? He turned his palms upwards, shrugged his shoulders and replied \u201cInstant electronic music.\u201d And he\u2019s correct: turning the tuning dial on an\u00a0analogue radio produces a plethora of electronic sounds from the ether.<\/p>\n

\"Stockhausen<\/a>
Stockhausen is among the figures on the Beatles album cover of Sgt Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Photograph: PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hymnen<\/em> is formed into four \u201cregions\u201d with \u201ccentres\u201d that focus on different countries. The national anthems from those countries are heard in fragments, sometimes chopped up and sometimes electronically modulated making them sound as if they are being beamed from a distant galaxy. The first region begins with shortwave scramble from which, at one point, the words \u201cUnited Nations\u201d emerge. A fizzling recording of the French anthem competes for attention, and a mysterious character, the croupier, is introduced. He addresses us: \u201cFaites v\u00f4tre jeu, Messieurs, Dames, s\u2019il\u00a0vous pla\u00eet<\/em>\u201d. Then, after a spin of the\u00a0wheel, he intones \u201cNeuf<\/em> \u2026 the nine. Neuf<\/em> \u2026 the nine\u201d several times. All compellingly strange.<\/p>\n

Great clangorous metallic chords introduce the second region and shredded anthems spin in space. There are recordings of crowds which transform into ducks that quack the Marseillaise. The British anthem floats away into morse code-like bleeps.<\/p>\n

In the third region the Russian national anthem has been synthesised with electronic tones \u2013 an incredibly slow, laborious process back in 1966\/67. It\u2019s slowed almost to a standstill so we hear a drawn-out, shimmering, spectrum that changes with the anthem\u2019s harmonies. This region has\u00a0a live orchestral part that is rarely performed, but the London Sinfonietta gave an amazing rendition of it at the Royal Festival Hall early last month and BBC Radio 3<\/a> captured it all.<\/p>\n

The fourth region is the strangest and darkest of all. The Swiss anthem glides between the four speakers as if sung by alien invaders in a flying saucer. Juddering tape feedback leads into muffled, indecipherable loops; voices call in a huge empty room; magic names are yelled into nightmare spaces: Turid, Na\u00e7ar, Iri, Maka. The croupier appears again \u2013 \u201cFaites v\u00f4tre jeu, Messieurs, Dames, s\u2019il vous plait<\/em>\u201d \u2013 and after skittering fragments of many anthems, it all ends with a recording of Stockhausen inhaling and exhaling: \u201cthe breathing of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Only a few months after Stockhausen completed Hymnen<\/em>, the Beatles were working on their White Album<\/em><\/a>. In June 1968, John Lennon<\/a> and Yoko Ono<\/a>, with a little help from George Harrison<\/a>, made what Beatles writer Ian MacDonald described as \u201cthe\u00a0world\u2019s most widely distributed avant-garde artefact\u201d: \u201cRevolution\u00a09\u201d. The band had acknowledged Stockhausen\u2019s work by including him in the gathering on the cover of Sgt Pepper\u2019s<\/em>. Lennon had telephoned him a few times and a meeting was planned. There are strong connections between Hymnen<\/em> and Revolution 9<\/em>: the intoning of the number nine, recordings of waves of noisy crowds, the calling of magic names \u2013 Lennon\u2019s and Harrison\u2019s magic names are popular ballroom dances, \u201cthe Watusi\u201d and \u201cthe Twist<\/a>\u201d, along with random snippets probably from a\u00a0newspaper: \u201ceconomically viable\u201d, \u201cindustrial output\u201d, \u201cfinancial imbalance\u201d. Both Hymnen<\/em> and Revolution 9<\/em> were recorded using a four-track tape machine, the cutting-edge audio technology of the time. This eight-minute collage presents a snapshot of the end of the 60s and its presence on a Beatles LP brought the avant garde into millions of homes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n