Karlheinz Stockhausen – (Aus) Licht
I went to (Aus) Licht – the pièce de résistance of this year’s Holland Festival – with great anticipation. A three-day production with a compilation of Stockhausen’s opera/music theatre Licht.
Expectation based on the many rave reviews. Expectation based on previous Stockhausen projects from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague during my student days. As a receptive listener, I was deeply impressed. And let’s not forget expectation based on playing Stockhausen’s piano works myself.
But I walked away. Out of disappointment and frustration. Does no one see through this drama in seven acts? I constantly felt like I was in prison. The prison of Stockhausen’s overstimulated brain. As if I was confronted with an almost endless psychosis contained in sound and image. So long-winded that there was no healthy musical tension at all to be found.
That lack of tension doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Stockhausen’s idiom – I have no problem with that. But after an hour I get the hang of his tricks with quarter tones, swelling tones, increasingly faster repeating tones, organ points, tritones, glissandi and the like. Unfortunately, they are repeated endlessly. ‘In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister’ is not for Stockhausen apparently.
I persevered on day one, on day two another hour in the evening, and then I freed myself. That’s how it really felt. Freed from the brain of a derailed megalomaniac, who apparently needed to empty his subconscious in silly and chewed-up symbolism, drenched in a heavy Roman Catholic sauce. Ugh.
I didn’t even go on day three. Because it promised even more megalomania – and a helicopter. No thank you, not for me. I’ll gladly give my three-hundred-and-something euros to the cultural sector in the Netherlands, no doubt about it. Not to forget my deep felt respect for my colleagues – especially all those children and young people – who had to study, rehearse and fine-tune endless, endless hours. What an achievement!
All the greater my disappointment.
June 19
Marijke van Duin, Amsterdam