Hi Robin. I would say that changing airports and managing different flying conditions is roughly equivalent to switching around the order of moments. Even a few seconds of human music-making is a very complex sound environment. I suppose what you are saying is that a synthetic (and therefore greatly simplified) version could be made operable, and perhaps that is true. Perhaps it might also be of some use in working out a performing version. I don't think it would be a very satisfying listening experience, however, and I was assuming that a DVD would include the visual as well as aural elements of a performance. This might be a walk in the park for the whizz-kids of computer technology, but I have a hunch that this park might turn out to be a little bit Jurassic.

Jerry: If you are right,why did KS compose MOMENTE the way he did? Just for fun? The format says otherwise. The format says the moments are combinable in different orders to throw the material into different perspectives. Each moment by definition is a cross-section of time. The only issue is seams, overlaps, and text improvisations. Not insuperable. I have no idea what you mean by Jurassic Park, unless you are saying the work is already fossilized.

Robin, I would have thought that the difference between a stroll in Saint James's Park and Jurassic Park was self-evident. I suppose I shall have to have recourse to emoticons to signal when I am making a joke. I don't think we have any disagreement at all about why Stockhausen chose to compose MOMENTE in the way he did. Our only dispute is about the practicality or advisability of trying to reduce a complex musical work with a strong human-performance dimension to a mechanical system for playback. I think if Stockhausen had intended this, he would have composed it very differently indeed. As for working out the possible variations for a performance, what is wrong with the published score?

Same as for Zyklus: as with Refrain, the original concept of Momente with inserts involved transparencies, an idea from Cage, rejected by UE. The present score is manifestly unsuitable for "designing" a performance. Clearly a digital representation that can handle score and also parts would be ideal. At the very least one ought to study the score in order to distinguish those features that can be reordered with a minimum of fuss, from those later additions that require substantial recomposition from version to version. Don't forget Meyer-Eppler's role in all of this. Had Meyer-Eppler survived, Momente might have turned out rather differently. Either way we need to be clear (as with KLANG) where the original scheme ends and the doubts, improvisations, and contradictory additions begin. And while we are on the subject, I seem to remember Hymnen was originally styled a "mobile" work, and Mikrophonie I.

Getting back to James's post about the "upgraded" version of the Complete Edition CD release, I notice from the timings of the tracks that they have not corrected the DG editing error in the repetition of DK(k), which is still only 11 seconds long, instead of the 1:23 of the first time through.

Robin, yes, I agree that the scores of all of these works are problematic, and there is a frustrating amount of "orale Tradition" involved in their realisation. It seems to me that this only complicates the problem of making a "machine" to produce all the available possibilities. I remember reading somewhere that "Momente is also Stockhausen's first musical form to be determined on affective rather than numerical criteria. The elements K, M and D on which its permutational structure is based refer to categories of sensation or perception (of resolving, evolving, and sustaining tendencies respectively) rather than to units of musical terminology, and their use signals an indeed 'momentous' change in the composer's priorities, from the abstract form which was his major concern in the previous decade, to the emphasis on natural sound-identity which characterizes his musical approach during the I960's." I'm sure the author would today withdraw the grocer's' apostrophe at the end, but it seems an admirable characterization in every other respect. How does one reduce "categories of sensation or perception" to a computer programme?

It's already serially organized. In just the same way as words are reduced to syllables, or melodies to phrases and motifs. This is how MOMENTE is frankly organized, so I don't know what else to say, other than music is to listen to, it is not just notes on paper. Other than refer you to 18th c. Affektenlehre as a concept of reducing categories of sensation and perception to particular combinations of tessitura, dynamic, tempo, irregularity etc. Momente is KS's first attempt to deal with moods as degrees of a serial continuum, unlike Gesang where phonemes are shuffled without reference to their emotional content. What could be more suitable for computer progr

{Sorry for the typo] It's already serially organized. In just the same way as words are reduced to syllables, or melodies to phrases and motifs. This is how MOMENTE is frankly organized, so I don't know what else to say, other than music is to listen to, it is not just notes on paper. Other than refer you to 18th c. Affektenlehre as a concept of reducing categories of sensation and perception to particular combinations of tessitura, dynamic, tempo, irregularity etc. Momente is KS's first attempt to deal with moods as degrees of a serial continuum, unlike Gesang where phonemes are shuffled without reference to their emotional content. What could be more suitable for computer programming?

Apologies for the typo accepted. I presume you are referring to your last sentence, which should have read "What could be more unsuitable for computer programming?" It seems to me that Stockhausen's thinking had evolved considerably by the time he turned to the more subjectively determined criteria used in MOMENTE. Admittedly, this is probably closer to the 18th-century Affektenlehre to which you refer, and Stockhausen's sketches so often set up "scales" that resemble Le Brun's tables of facial expressions more closely than they do numerical matrices in physics textbooks or articles on acoustics. The human side of things has come very much to the fore in MOMENTE, which is scarcely surprising after his lengthy theorising about "variable form" in articles like "… wie die Zeit vergeht …", and his exploration of this approach in the second set of KLAVIERSTÜCKE, REFRAIN, and other works of the later 1950s.

The official website also offers "6 individual editions of sections of the Europe Version 1972 of MOMENTE. They may be performed individually:" http://www.karlheinzstockhausen.org/comp...rks_english.htm