The Meaning Of Licht
The cycle Licht was composed over a total of twenty-five years, from 1978 to 2003, and the premiere performances of the last two operas were given posthumously, in 2011 and 2012. In the current post-modern era we have to consider composers of recent repertoire, and revise our reading of a work as monumental as Licht which, in the composer’s lifetime, was not understood and was subjected to undue ridicule.
For Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), everything in his life converged to produce this quasi-divine cycle. Original features in works such as Gesang der Jünglinge (1956), Mantra (1970), Inori (1974) and Harlekin (1975) were then brought together in a coherent whole expressing the ambitions of a creative mind that had achieved maturity in his musical and philosophical thought. While Licht had roots in an older form of music, it was clearly aspiring to the future of the art.
The purpose of expression for Stockhausen is in the combination of writing space and time. He revealed a new dramatic art played by instruments, extending the initiative of Berlioz and Strauss. The “superformula” comprising the DNA of the twenty-nine hours of music is presented by Stockhausen as a new system of music built on thought and meaning which he assigns to different rhythms, intervals, tempi and dynamics.
Ever since Le Balcon was founded, the musicians have been intensely interested in this work, so it was only logical to entertain the prospect of performing the complete cycle. The score of Licht includes elements that were impossible to produce at the time it was written, and entails a learning process presenting us with both a fascinating challenge and a duty to be artistically and technically inventive.
The complete performance as planned tells the tale of this learning process.
Maxime Pascal
Photo © Enrico Femia