Momente (Moments) is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969, scored for solo soprano, four mixed choirs, and thirteen instrumentalists (four trumpets, four trombones, three percussionists, and two electric keyboards). A « cantata with radiophonic and theatrical overtones » (Maconie 2005, 240), it is described by the composer as « practically an opera of Mother Earth surrounded by her chicks » (Stockhausen 1989, 147). It was Stockhausen’s first piece composed on principles of modular transposability, and his first musical form to be determined from categories of sensation or perception rather than by numerical units of musical terminology, which marks a significant change in the composer’s musical approach from the abstract forms of the 1950s (Maconie 1973, 32)
Momente seeks to employ the greatest possible number of vocal phenomena—not just conventional singing but also the communication functions of spoken and whispered language, crying, and laughter, producing an « infinitely rich mode of expression … [that] profoundly touches our emotive sensibility » (Bosseur 1967, 124). Isolated syllables and even single phonemes or linguistic segments, including vowels, continuant consonants, and tongue clicks are used « in a scale extending from unvoiced exhaling via aspiration, whispering, giggling, murmuring, speaking, shouting, screaming and laughing, to singing » in order to « permit the composition of timbral transitions and relations between spoken and instrumental sounds » (Stockhausen 1964b, 132).
Stockhausen draws on a variety of sources for the texts of Momente (Bosseur 1967, 121; Smalley 1974, 25; Stockhausen 2009, 128):
Primarily in the D moments, the Song of Songs, in the translation by Martin Luther. Many of the M Moments use shorter extracts from this source.
Extracts from a letter from Mary Bauermeister, mainly in moment I(k), where they are used with passages from the Song of Songs.
Brief quotations from The Sexual Life of Savages by Bronislaw Malinowski, an anthropological report of the Trobriand Islands in British New Guinea, found, for example, in moment M(d).
A quotation from William Blake: « He who kisses the joy as it flies/Lives in Eternity’s sunrise », found in moment M(d) and, in the 1972 and 1998 versions, as an insert from M(d) in M.
Names from fairy tales, e.g., Rapuntzel (MK); invented names, e.g., Kama, Maka, Dodi; cries and exclamations heard from audiences at performances of Stockhausen’s earlier works, e.g., « bravo », « pfui », « nein, das ist unmöglich », « da capo », « stop it! », « furchtlos weiter », « sortez », « bald? ». « so? », « schon? », « jetzt? », « ja! », « nein », « awful! », « doch! », « immer », « wann? », « warum? », « wie? », « wo? », « sure? », « wozu? ».
Invented onomatopoeic words, and phonetic texts written by Stockhausen himself.
The main compositional problem was to mediate among all these text fragments, in order to avoid the effect of mere collage (Stockhausen 2009, 128).
Contributo di
Juan Pablo Macías