Sonntag aus Licht, The Movie
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Sonntag aus Licht
Musical direction: Maxime Pascal | Stage direction: Ted Huffmann
On the day of Michael and Eve's mystical union, Sonntag enchants the senses and brings the opera LICHT to a close.
Discover now on Philharmonie Live the complete recording of the 2023 performances, directed by David Daurier.
Scene 1 : Light-Waters
The earth and the life it shelters are born from the union of light and water. Lichter-Wasser, which is also Sunday's Salvation, opens with a synthesizer duet between Eve and Michael, soprano and tenor, who then accompany the entrance of the orchestra musicians. The musicians take their places among the audience, arranged in triangles facing the center, turning the hall into a star. Each musician has a light: blue for the seventeen instruments in the high register, corresponding to Michaël's formula, and green for the twelve instruments in the low register, corresponding to Ève's formula. Each instrument plays only one note or a brief fragment of one of these formulas. The resulting circulation of timbres creates swirls in space, on two simultaneous layers and in twelve successive waves, like the planets and moons of the solar system, whose names, characteristics, and symbolism permeate the libretto. The process is interrupted by six bridges, which merge the two formulas, and by three announcements, a kind of recitative. At the end, the musicians drink water and withdraw, the soprano and tenor singing a duet, while the lights continue to shine.
Scene 2 : Angels Processions
Seven groups of angels move around the audience, exalting the love of God, “Holy Spirit of the Cosmos,” and celebrating the mystical union of Michael and Eve. Six of these groups, the Angels of Water (Angels of Monday, light green), the Angels of Earth (Angels of Tuesday, light red), the Angels of Life (Angels of Wednesday, light yellow), the Angels of Music (Angels of Thursday, light blue), the Angels of Light (Angels of Friday, orange) and the Angels of Paradise (Angels of Saturday, dark blue), sing in six voices, respectively in Hindi, Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic
and Swahili. The seventh group, the Angels of Joy (Angels of Sunday, gold), composed of four soloists, including the soprano and tenor from the first scene, sings in German. Each of these groups produces a two-part polyphony, with the upper voice derived from Eve's formula and the lower voice from Michael's. A choral tutti, with a maximum of twenty-four voices, surrounds the audience, giving the first syllables of the days of the week and gently retaining the sounds of Sunday, but also Tuesday and Wednesday, in the superformula at the origin of the Licht cycle. Symbolizing mystical union, the polyphonies gradually come together, to the point where the singers converge, musically and scenically, toward a homophony in the middle of the hall, with irises and lilies. The scene comprises seven phases of seven waves. Through 49 sections, not without some repetition, the text, gestures, and elements derived from the formulas are constantly reorganized. In short, it is a vast procession from duality to unity.
Scène 3 : Light Pictures
Originally titled “Vénération d'Ève-Marie” (Veneration of Eve-Marie), Licht-Bilder brings together two pairs of musicians, doubling up a duo: Eve (flute and basset horn) and Michael (tenor and trumpet), a quartet reflected in the four screens and their “images of light.” It is a song of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, like a Gloria in which the elements, from the smallest to the universe and beyond, from stone to stars and God, are associated with the days of the week, which follow one another during the scene. Stockhausen divided 2 x 2 types of formulas into 53 fragments (corresponding to the sum of the first seven numbers in a Fibonacci sequence: 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 13 + 21), reordered them in retrograde form (from 53 to 1), and associated them with horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and circular gestures. The union of Michael and Eve is symbolized by the intertwining of these fragments and gestures. The basset horn and tenor parts shift and transpose the flute and trumpet, which are themselves altered by ring modulation—distensions and contractions in time and space, from closest to furthest and vice versa, creating ample breathing space. The structure is nevertheless broken up by several interludes, in duets, trios, or quartets.
Scene 4 : Scents-Signs
While the seven emblems of Licht are explained in turn by six vocal soloists, seven fragrances evoke geographical areas: "Cúchulainn, a fragrance of Celtic origin, for Monday; kyphi, a sacred fragrance whose formula was found on the walls of a temple in the Nile Valley, for Tuesday; mastic, of Greek origin, for Wednesday; the Italian perfume rosa mystica, for Thursday; tate yunanaka, an aromatic composition used in the Andes, for Friday; and for Saturday, ud, agarwood, a balm that belongs to the ancestral tradition of India. Sunday is reserved for a more familiar fragrance, since it is used in Christian rituals: incense. On seven podiums, the soloists, with their codified gestures and colors, perform three solos, three duets, and a trio on the themes of the days of the week, interspersed with ensemble sequences with a freer rhythm; they also burn the perfumes one by one and celebrate their origins and benefits. An alto voice rings out from outside the hall and introduces itself as Eve-Marie. The six soloists run, shout, and sing in excitement, before returning in procession with the alto for a harmonic song (Oberton-Gesang). Eve calls Michael, in the guise of a young boy, and sings a mystical duet with him on the central podium, before they move behind the podium into another world.
Scenes 5 and 6 : High-Times
A celebration of love, marriage, angels, and nature, in five languages (Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, English, and Swahili), drawing on Kalidasa's The Seasons, Hafez's Odes, and Sheikh Nefzaoui's erotic manual The Perfumed Meadow, Hoch-Zeiten is performed simultaneously in two separate rooms, by five choral sextets or octets in one room and five instrumental sextets in the other. Seven times, the music from one room
is broadcast to the other. During a second performance, the audience is invited to switch rooms. The structure of the orchestral version, with its complex superimpositions, is identical to that of the choral version, but includes five duets and two trios, which are reminiscent of key moments in the seven days of the Licht cycle, in the order of their composition. After an introduction, and apart from two melodic inserts, the form consists of fourteen phases, each increasingly transparent. These phases, with their unique ornamentation inspired by the languages used, deploy dense harmonies derived from the superimposition of elements of the superformula. The articulations are signaled by live or recorded percussion (crotale, 4 Japanese rins, 4 plate bells, 4 Thai gongs, 4 duralumin plates). The choir sings the same material as the orchestra, but with an eighteen-second delay, the intrusion of the former into the latter acting as an echo, that of the latter into the former as an anticipation. Each choral group initially has its own language, then the languages mix, with up to thirty exchanges in the fourteenth phase, before an arrangement of the Sonnstags-Lied [Sunday Song], taken from Lundi de Lumière.
Sonntags-Abschied | Sunday Farewell
Sunday Farewell is a version for five synthesizers of the fifth scene, High Times, which we therefore hear from a third perspective. It is less an arrangement than a translation of the original into synthetic sounds, played by five musicians or recorded on five tracks and broadcast in the theater foyer. As in High Times, the registers are arranged from low to high, from left to right. The phonetic and even linguistic aspects of the original texts, in Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, English, and Kiswahili, are also preserved, as are the fourteen phases and two inserts before Sunday's song, which concludes the day. A large mirror tilted over the synthesizers or cameras connected to a video projection system on five large screens allow the musicians' hands to be seen. The work exists in a version for solo synthesizer and tape of the other four parts, under the title Klavierstück XIX (Piano Piece XIX), but also under the title Strahlen (Rays or Radiations, 2002), for vibraphone and glockenspiel, electronically filtered and modulated.
Photo © Denis Allard