KLANG
ARTISTS: Ensemble Musikfabrik Peter Veale, Heidi Mockert, Marco Blaauw, Christine Chapman, Melvyn Poore, Axel Porath Additional Musicians Stuart Gerber, Christopher Oldfather, Joe Drew, Dolph Kamper, Taka Kigawa, Lilac 94, Emma Resmini, Evan Ocheret, Geoff Deemer, Aaron Stewart, Sharon Harms, Rachel Segal, Joe Dvorak, Jeff Gavett, Robert Osborne, Mirjam Ingolfsson, Mallory Tittle, Eric Coyne, Veronica, Dominic Panunto, Sean Bailey, Audrey Miller Talks by Members of Musikfabrik, Thomas Patteson, Paul Miller, Joe Drew, Esther Morgan-Ellis Lighting by Thomas Dunn Sound Projection by Joe Drew, Dolph Kamper, Paul Jeukendrup Audience Experience orchestrated by Adrienne Mackey Print Design by Alda Leung & Jura Pintar
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s final epic, KLANG: The 24 Hours of the Day, will be presented in full by Analog Arts and Elizabeth Huston. Intended to include 24 pieces but left incomplete at the time of Stockhausen’s death, this 21-part work gives space to meditate on time, spirituality, and reality, allowing the audience to reflect on the meaning of mortality. KLANG is the final, epic statement of one of the 20th century’s most important composers. It charts the journey of the soul from the body into the afterlife, and is a fitting capstone to Stockhausen’s massive career. The music ranges from intimate chamber pieces to virtuosic displays and electronic extravaganzas. This production features performances by Cologne’s MusikFabrik, light paintings by Thomas Dunn, and sound projection by Dolph Kamper.
This piece takes place in three sections. Section one deals with the spiritual world and features performances reflecting the ascension of Christ, harps in heaven expressing the joy of Pentecost, and the door to heaven opening into the pieces of section two, which contains the music that is heard in heaven. The seven pieces of the second section, all instrumental trios, are based on the same underlying music, rearranged and re-imagined to create seven beautifully different yet increasingly familiar-sounding works. The final section takes an immediate and surprising turn towards the imagined universe of Urantia. This section begins with the only fully electronic piece, Cosmic Pulses, and then dives into pieces based on the Urantia book, a mysterious text which appeared in the early 20th century with no known author. This book describes unknown universes, each planet of which is represented by an electro-acoustic performance in the second section.
KLANG in its entirety has a 14-hour time span. It is recommended that audience members stay for the full day to experience the piece. Scholars will be present to answer questions and foster conversation, musicians and researchers will give lectures, and visitors will be invited to visit stations for further reading and listening. If full-day attendance is impossible, this performance has four curated collections of pieces featuring parts of each of the three sections. In this way, a sampling of the full work can be experienced in a handful of hours.