Or in other works I have also projected the sound in a cube of loudspeakers. The sound can move vertically and diagonally at all speeds around the public.
Meaning of the quote
Karlheinz Stockhausen, a German composer, describes how he creates music that can move in different directions and at different speeds around the audience. He does this by placing loudspeakers in a cube shape and using the speakers to make the sound move up, down, and diagonally, surrounding the people listening.
About Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a pioneering German composer who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He was a leading figure in the Darmstadt School and made groundbreaking contributions to electronic music, introducing controlled chance techniques and musical spatialization into his compositions.
More quotes from Karlheinz Stockhausen
And I’ll never forget the first time I took the possibility to project sound every day for six or seven hours with special devices which were built for me.
German composer
I no longer limit myself.
German composer
And harmony means that the relationship between all the elements used in a composition is balanced, is good.
German composer
Schaeffer gave me permission to work in the studio with a technician, but I’ve never worked with him.
German composer
Or the other process that is important is that I compress longer sections of composed music, either found or made by myself, to such an extent that the rhythm becomes a timbre, and formal subdivisions become rhythm.
German composer
Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing.
German composer
In particular what is most important to me is the transformation of a sound by slowing it down, sometimes extremely, so that the inner of sound becomes a conceivable rhythm.
German composer
But since the middle of the century in particular, the music has become very irregular in rhythm.
German composer
Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo.
German composer
I have composed several pieces which are performed outdoors, not only in the auditoria.
German composer
It is true that the eyes dominate the ears in our time.
German composer
And when they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music.
German composer
And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition.
German composer
But being quiet and meditating on sound is something completely different and will be discovered very soon by a lot of people who feel that the visual world doesn’t reach their soul anymore.
German composer
I spent most of the year in the studio for electronic music at a radio station in Cologne or in other studios where I produced new works with all kinds of electronic apparatus.
German composer
And I’m always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.
German composer
No, what is important is neither linearity or non-linearity, but the change, the degree of change from something that doesn’t move to other events with different tempos in particular.
German composer
One experiments and has to choose always the best results.
German composer
Whenever I felt happy about having discovered something, the first encounter, not only with the public, with other musicians, with specialists, etc, was that they rejected it.
German composer
I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language.
German composer
So there is a personal sense of style for a given work – I don’t like a general style, but every work has its own style, and I want to create a style for every work.
German composer
Or in other works I have also projected the sound in a cube of loudspeakers. The sound can move vertically and diagonally at all speeds around the public.
German composer
But I’m an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery.
German composer