A GEDENKSCHRIFT FOR KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION JEROME KOHL He thought that he, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while their artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. —Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund HIS GEDENKSCHRIFT (MEMORIAL COLLECTION) is a successor to and completion of the three-part 70th-birthday Festschrift for Stockhausen published in Perspectives of New Music 36/1, 36/2, and 37/1, which surveyed Stockhausen’s work from the beginnings through the earlier operas of the Licht cycle. Before he died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 79 on the morning of Wednesday, 5 December T Guest Editor’s Introduction 307 2007, he had completed that cycle of seven operas and had embarked on a new cycle of chamber compositions, collectively titled Klang: Die 24 Stunden des Tages (Sound: The 24 Hours of the Day). Now that all seven of the Licht operas have been staged, it is possible to begin serious evaluation of the cycle as a whole. Thomas Ulrich sets the stage with a survey of the Licht cycle from the perspective of the character Lucifer, and asks whether Stockhausen’s attitude to morality leaves him open to the charge of totalitarian thinking. The last opera to be composed, Sonntag, is then given detailed scrutiny in essays by Paul Miller (on the first scene, Lichter—Wasser) and Robin Hartwell (mainly focused on the last scene, Hoch-Zieten). Stockhausen’s compositional style continued to evolve through his last years, though opinions about this differ. The harmonic dimension in particular has been reported as having become milder and gentler. The musical language of Freitag aus Licht, for example, “is astonishing and weirdly beautiful—not quite tonal and yet tonally based, deceptively simple, robustly plain” (Murray 1996), and the music in Mittwoch, “while related in principle to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, often leans toward tonality” (Ross 2012, 105). To some extent this is the because parts of the Licht superformula focus on more consonant interval combinations. In other cases it is a product of compositional choice. A plain example of willful compositional choice is Stockhausen’s decision to omit the Bb from the Lucifer layer near the end of the superformula, leaving the clear G-major sonority that dominates Sonntag, especially in the opening scene, Lichter—Wasser. Robin Hartwell considers some possible dramaturgical and theological motivations for this choice—and some evidence of Stockhausen’s hesitation over it—in his article in this collection. As a counterexample of this effect as a native property of the superformula , a charming story is told by Suzanne Stephens about a captive audience of two hundred Rotarians at a banquet meeting in October 1997. Their president made a surprise announcement that, before the meal, they would be treated to the world premiere of a new composition by Stockhausen. Initial apprehension gave way to relief when they discovered, to their surprise, music “so consonant, so beautiful” that at the end, they gave a standing ovation (Stephens 1998). This was the Rotary Wind Quintet, a short work adapted from the ethereal vocal sextet, “Menschen hört” that closes Michaelion, the last scene of Mittwoch aus Licht. This work presents the Licht superformula in four progressively longer, more elaborate forms with the three melodic layers rotated 308 Perspectives of New Music vertically to conclude each time on a perfectly familiar C dominantseventh chord—first in root position, then in 4/2 and 6/5 inversions, and finally in root position again—and is scored for a conventional wind quintet, with its serenade associations. It is no wonder the Rotarians found it so easy to accept. While this apparent trend has displeased some doctrinaire modernists (such as the German critic Klaus Umbauch, who reviewed the Leipzig premiere of Freitag in 1996, and was answered by an eloquent letter to the editor (Leisten 1996), it has certainly improved Stockhausen’s standing with more conservative audiences. How is it, though, that when the identical music from the end of Michaelion is presented in the preceding scene of Mittwoch, scored for an ensemble at least as conventional as a wind quintet, it could be described as “a hideous amount...