Tuesday, 6 February 2018

Brief, note-like observations on London Voices in Stockhausen’s Stimmung at King's

Brief, note-like observations on London Voices in Stockhausen’s Stimmung at King's

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


15 October 2015


Some brief observations, in note form, on a performance by members of London Voices of Stockhausen’s Stimmung, which opened Epiphany Through Music (for Concert's at King's) in King’s College Chapel on Friday 9 October 2015 at 8.00 p.m.





These are some things, external to the work, of which one was reminded (in no particular order) :

* R. D. Laing’s lovely little book Conversations with Children

* György Kurtág’s Jelek, játékok és üzenetek [Signs, Games, and Messages]

* The parlour-game that is familiar under the name Apostles, but may go by other names :




Now seeing this piece, in live performance, felt crucial, and so it was excellent to have an almost unimpeded view of everyone in London Voices (London Voices) with the exception of Ben Parry, because it helped tease these other observations out of the ninety minutes (by which time, performers looked no more comfortable* than the audience, who could not both easily and quietly shift on the chairs of the ante-chapel…), being the work’s following elements and how they intermeshed / interwove (also in no special order) :

* Play / playfulness

* Bird-notes

* Fringe-effects

* Whistling

* Singspiel, with a link to

* Cabaret-style delivery






'Magic' words (here are some prominent ones, and phrases, that were noted in the performance) :

* Elohim

* Saturday

* Utterly silly

* Go away, Thursday

* Artemis

* Diana

* Nemesis





If a copy of Samuel Beckettt's novel Watt had come to hand to quote from, one would preface 'the following important material' in the same way that Watt and / or he does what appears in the closing pages of the book, after its four chapters :


Full Monteverdi - coming out of the audience
Keeping the flame / Apple Mac drone


1968 / not hippie

Kreis / circle

Meine Hände sind zwei Glocken binge bung auf Deinen Brüsten bringe brange bring brang…

3 x 17 / Vespers of 1610 – coherence / disconnection ?

Rounds
Theatricality
Per-form(ers)


End-notes

* As one could see, from a few grimaces, when the performers from London Voices rose to take rapturous applause.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

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