Ensemble

AGP is re-releasing an old vinyl record containing the results of an experiment conducted during the 1967 edition of Stockhausen's summer courses in Darmstadt (the record was subsequently released in 1971).

Twelve composers were invited to write pieces for solo instrument and tape or shortwave transmitter (1 performer only), so that they could be performed simultaneously. To meet this requirement, the pieces were not to be finished products, but rather a collection of sonic interventions susceptible to temporal expansion and/or shifts.
The list of instruments, composers, and performers is:

Instrument	Composer	Musician
Flute	Tomas Marco	Ladislav Soka
Oboe	Avo Somer	Milan Jezo
Clarinet	Nicolaus A.Huber	Juraj Bures
Basoon	Robert Wittinger	Jan Martanovic
French horn	John McGuire	Jozef Svenk
Trumpet	Peter R.Farmer	Vladimir Jurca
Trombone	Gregory Biss	Frantisek Hudecek
Violin	Jurgen Beurle	Viliam Farkas
Violoncello	Mesias Maiguashca	Frantisek Tannenberger
Double Bass	Jorge Peixinho	Karol Illek
Percussion	Rolf Gelhaar	Frantisek Rek
Hammond Organ	Johannes G.Fritsch	Aloys Kontarsky

The performers were then divided into groups of two-thirds, whose outputs were sent to one of four mixers, each connected to two speakers. The Hammond organ was connected to a single speaker. The resulting sound space consisted of nine speakers, in which all the pieces were simultaneously played, according to the following scheme:

The performance was conducted by Stockhausen himself. The album, now out of print, contains a reduction by Stockhausen of a performance lasting approximately four hours.

You can download everything in FLAC from AGP98.

ENSEMBLE is an experiment in adding a new concept to the traditional “concert”. We are used to comparing different pieces played sequentially. In ENSEMBLE “pieces” of 12 composers are played simultaneously.

These “pieces” are musical objects (“works”) not fully worked out. They are sound objects (produced on tape or with a short wave transmitter), with individual control, action and reaction models, and notated “events”, which are introduced by the composers to the ENSEMBLE play in the process of the actual performance.

Each composer has composed for one musician and tape or short wave transmitter. The total plan and the introduction of the parts for its synchronisation with the ENSEMBLE were established by Stockhausen. The twelve systems and their coordination were formulated during daily meetings. The resulting four hour process is more than the addition of the “pieces”: it is a composition of compositions, fluctuating between the complete isolation of the different events and the total dependence of each layer, and between extreme determinism and full improvisation.

On top of the 12 composers and musicians, who play together as “duos” – distributed throughout the room – four other musicians are responsible for using mixers to amplify and spacialize definite details and moments of the process via microphones and eight loudspeakers. Also, the position of the listener is not fixed. He can move in the room and thus establish his acoustical perspective.

The simultaneity of the compositions requires also that certain “pieces” should be heard together and related through superimposition.

This “verticalisation” of the perception of events and the relativisation of a definitive form (“piece” signed by an individual) happens not only in the field of music. — Notes by Karlheinz Stockhausen

Darmstadt International Music Institute
22nd International Seminar for New Music 1967, director Ernst Thomas

The LP version of “Ensemble” was realized in the WDR Electronic Music Studio between August 26 and September 22, 1971. The available material was:

– Recording of the rehearsal on August 28, 1967 from 19:00-23:00 (6 stereo tapes, about 4 hours duration)
– Recording of the concert on August 29, 1967 from 19:00-23:00 (6 stereo tapes, about 4 hours duration)

The challenge for me was to reduce a four-hour performance to 50-60 minutes, and therefore I proceeded as follows.

I wanted as much as possible to keep the formal pattern that we had developed during the Seminar
I wanted to keep a balance between the deterministic, less deterministic and non-deterministic material.

My working method was as follows:

I listened to all tapes of both recordings. The material that seemed to me adequate, I copied.
This selected material was listened to again, cutting out some sections, so that a series of musical events remained, which I deemed relevant.
In the third process – the most difficult one – this material was cut, faded in and out and mixed occasionally according to my vision (retaining the time plan in its basic structure)

Notes by Mesias Maiguashca

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