STOCKHAUSEN AND THE JEITA CAVES

I find it very interesting to create music that is not rigid (fixed) in relation to tempo, that is not fixed in relation to time,
and which can change completely according to the site.
Bernard CHEVRY
presents
Each musician completely changes his way of playing because of this space.
STOCKHAUSEN AND THE JEITA CAVES
Unique dimensions which are much larger than all the concert halls that I am familiar with, produce an echo of six to seven, sometimes even eight seconds depending upon the dynamic intensity. An irregular space that no longer reminds us of a box, as does a concert hall… and distances between the loudspeakers which allow me to make the sounds travel at different speeds.
a film by
Anne Marie Deshayes
The audience in the caves is not seated in rows as is the case in concert halls, where there are straight rows one behind the other of people who have entered at a fixed time and remain seated, according to conventional rules, with the musicians always in front of the audience. Here, each person, according to where he sits, has a different impression of what we play. Audience and musicians may be separated by as many as 80 metres.
with the participation of the Lebanese National Office of Tourism.
[HYMNEN]
In this cave, the humidity of the air is about 95% and we have an average reverberation time of 7 seconds: these are not very favourable conditions.
There are people who stay there in order to hear this music, which becomes – certainly – more than music. When the lights in this cave are turned off, one is in a limitless universe. One no longer sees anything; or rather, one sees all. One no longer sees the insignificant things, the objects, the stones; one sees all one wants to see, or all that one can see. I think that the four concerts were like natural phenomena.
[The installation in the cave.]
That is too heavy! Why are you carrying it alone?
(answer in Arabic): This should be done by four men!
One is always afraid before the first performance of a piece… very afraid. If we arrive at something we are not familiar with, or if the music does not become banal – that is to say, part of the phenomena that we are already familiar with – then I am pleased. One would like to produce something, to be fertile, to be a good instrument.
And when it really does not go right, one feels useless, one no longer wishes to eat, or to live. But when everything goes very well, when it has worked – that is to say, when one has given something to others, who make eyes like this, then, I am happy. Then I say that it came over successfully. I had this feeling several times during these four days.
My music – even for me – often gives me the impression of being quite astounding, because I do not at all know why it is, how it is… why this happens to me. Strangely enough, I even feel very happy sometimes when I fail, because I am amazed by the results.
Interview with Max Ernst and Vinko Globokar
[Max Ernst is boarding a plane]
Woman’s voice: Were you already familiar with…?
Max Ernst: …with Stockhausen’s works? Yes, of course. I attended the first concert he gave in Paris. And for example, he found that… He said: "Everything you are creating, even your latest works, can already be found in the Harmonielehre." He gave me very clear explanations about what an inversion is: mirror inversion and… so on… And really it was… I was creating such things, I mean, this sort of experiences. Of course I did not Know Schönberg’s Harmonielehre, because painters never read what is written about music. Neither do musicians about art… In fact, I do not read theoretical writings neither about art, nor about music. One shuts one’s eyes on theory.
Vinko Globokar
[on a roadside]
I am related to Stockhausen’s music as an interpreter since I participated in many concerts.
[in the caves]
Recently, there were many attempts at improvising, free playing and so on.
[on a roadside]
When musicians are asked to create in a collective way, perhaps some kind of …security instructions are finally needed, because there is no standard.
[in the caves]
I mean, it would be possible if they all had at least a religion, or whatever, in common. Whereas each musician has a completely different mentality and therefore the final result is very scattered and lacks in unity.
[on a roadside]
That is why choosing the musicians is then extremely important. Extremely important. Also with Stockhausen, for example since he has his own ensemble that he created years ago. The musicians are used to perform together. He is always talking with them… They all talk together: that is they have a sort of mutual understanding.
[KURZWELLEN]
(by the sea)
That is a superficial question: if it matters that the cave is in Lebanon or not. It is a cave in Lebanon!
The people who come are, for the most part, Lebanese. They are conditioned by their way of living, specially today. There are races, religions, and those that are orthodox – from one side or the other – only show their weakness. They are incapable of creating a certain brotherhood among men, or a unity which is more than a sum of two peoples. There is enough room on this Earth for everybody: there is enough food on Earth for everybody, there is enough freedom on Earth for everybody. Even if a group of people thinks they have the right, or think they are right, the truth is: one is never right. One is only right when one has reached unity. Post facto, one can say "I was right", but one cannot say "I am right because I think I am right" – that is ridiculous. One must show through results that one is right: men must understand one another, whether they are Jewish or Arab, or whoever. It is ridiculous to say that my right is 100 years old, or 1000 years old, or 50 years.
Whether someone was born 50 years ago, or 300 years ago, or 5 years ago, or 80 years ago… he is born as a human being, and within this period of time, he must feel whether or not, he is an acceptable member of humanity, or whether he is a bad seed. One must allow each man to live… there is enough room.
ENTERING THE CONCERT
[SPIRAL]
…Max Ernst
Max
You are here tonight… Max…
André
Masson…
Are you here?…
…These four nights are for you…
Max Ernst, André Masson
You have fought
You created surrealism
You aroused the people more than all the politicians
Much more
Much more than all the wise men
You created surrealism…
Personally, I am looking for a spiritual life that reaches far beyond the political aspect. Politics is one of humanity’s sciences to organise different opinions. It is a science based on misunderstanding and misery. It is a science in transition. In a conscious humanity, politics will disappear.
My function as a musician, in the history of mankind, is to announce the next spiritual stage. I think of humanity today as a transitory phenomenon – somewhere between the apes and the saints. And humanity will develop very quickly; not everyone, but those who have caught on to the significance of the universe.In all my works starting with SONG OF THE YOUTHS, through KONTAKTE – the title already speaks for itself – through MOMENTE, then MIXTURE, then TELEMUSIC and HYMNEN, you can see that I have sought a mediation between the new and the old phenomena, between the ancient and the unexpected, between what is known and what is unknown, and secondly, I searched to find a unity that goes way beyond the collage. Already in SONG OF THE YOUTHS one finds a scale of degrees of intelligibility of language to show that the comprehensible language is only one aspect. On the other hand, one finds pure music – that is to say, a music with no semantic significance (meaning), from a language viewpoint.
[STIMMUNG]
At the beginning of the century, for the first time artists were obsessed by the idea of collage. They announced the society of the second part of the century. Now we are searching to announce projects to project a future that reaches far beyond this collage stage, and that is once again the duty of the artist. Because if he is a true artist, he is a visionary. His results cannot be the products of logical thought, but he dares communicate his visions, without fear of losing face or losing the good opinion of others, of both his life and his work.
But how can we reach this unity? Here lies the problem; one must find new methods.
Interview: Inside the cave
When I first arrived here, I was asked a question: if I was interested in whether or not more and more people listened to my music and if they continued to make this music themselves at home.
I answered that I feel less and less a desire to know what the reaction to my music is. You have understood during these days, that I feel like an electrical conductor. There is a current that passes through me when I have an intuition. If not, I feel very bad. When I hear the results, I am like the people that were there the nights we played. I ask myself, I ask them what happened: were you in it or not? If they were, they can continue to sing at home. There are simple things, such as in STIMMUNG…
It was very interesting to hear the reaction of an African ambassador who was there last night. He said that this music was too primitive. I saw him last night at the Casino (we were all invited to the Casino… you know, the cultural nightmare). He was very happy. For him, it was great music.
[I find this interesting because he comes from a primitive culture. While in contact with another culture, suddenly he hears extremely complicated or refined things. Then he falls into a baroque period of his life and culture, and everything interests him: everything that is luxurious, and very refined, where he finds much virtuosity. Then, for example, as is the case with STIMMUNG, when we arrive once again – after all the
history of demanding, and complicated means of art – to a new simplicity, and a new truth that does not want to accept anything that is superficial and yet incorporates all that is based on the simple gifts of technology. Of course, this creates, all of a sudden, misunderstandings.]1
The African finds that primitive. After an era during which Europeans found African music primitive, an African tells me that my music is primitive. That is very interesting.
Peoples’ reaction to STIMMUNG can be spiritually positive if they are capable of unifying themselves with the harmony spectrum which is pure and if they understand the process: there are singers who are continually trying to meet, spiritually as well as physically. Tuning their frequencies to find the purest possible of relationships, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, of the harmonics based on the same fundamental, they are continually correcting themselves while they sing, using a single tape recorded sound of this pure spectrum.
The same is true of the rhythms: periodic, which become more or less irregular, which sometimes change, upset by a new model that enters into the context. The singers are always forced to find this rhythmic clarity, to synchronise themselves as exactly as possible. This is a technical representation of my spiritual vision, this union between different individuals who are completely free, with no conductor but always a leader who leads a model which he freely introduces into the context and which the others approach and unite with.
It is a perpetual process of unification: to lose oneself ever again due to new elements, and to join each other once more. That, to be sure, is a project of the future, a project for all humanity. Each piece that I compose is a project for the future societies, for the spirits of the future, and this is a proposal, of how one can reach it.