I only just re-noticed something today that I had had explained to me over two years ago by Kathinka Pasveer, but had forgotten - and that is the appearance of '14' as a kind of full-stop to the LUZIFER formula in the HELIKOPTER-STREICHQUARTETT. It is the only time in the whole of LICHT when the counting reaches 14, and I am told that the reason for this is that, because the arrival at 13 had, at other times, heralded an unexpected change in the music, Stockhausen was worried that it might tempt fate to bring about a disaster with the helicopters and so he inserted the number 14, just before the descent. My apologies if this is a story that everyone already knows well, but I found it interesting and it reminds me of other pieces where composers' musical decisions have been determined by their superstitions, such as Mahler's decision to remove the third hammer blow from his Sixth Symphony, and his refusal to call Das Lied von der Erde his Ninth Symphony.

Of course, there must be many such cases - and to me they just add to the infinite fascination of how music is created, and of the sometimes unexpected things that influence the decisions composers make.

Haha, that's pretty funny, I never knew that. One thing that I always liked about Stockhausen was that he never let rules hinder wherever he wanted to go. Rules are are for guidance, not imprisonment.

This reminds me of MANTRA where the bottom staff is an inversion of the top part, but since one of the end measure notes "cadentially ended" the piece, he just shifted it up - no rules baby! He describes this so well in the English lecture on MANTRA.

"14" is the telos of the scene! Remember how they are all counting in hocket up until then? All of the sudden, they break through Lucifer's arbitrary barrier of 13 and arrive in unison at the number 14. They have finally, despite all the obstacles Stockhausen throws in their way, arrived at a consensus. It is the same as when the Parliamentarians arrive at the syllable "li" or the Finalists play their chords together. It's the whole point of Mittwoch.

I hadn't thought of it in those terms, Joe. Thank you! That makes a lot of sense and is probably more credible than the one I had heard earlier (although possibly both explanations are correct). Once again, thanks for this perspective.

I’m glad I read this after all these years! This decision to include number 14 sounds remarkably similar to Stockhausen’s explanation for the extra note in the mirror final limb of the Mantra formula
As I just noticed has already been pointed out above. (Piano I Left hand low F#)
-Without the extra note there, then the whole piece would already be over! I think Stockhausen wrote.

I tried to remember to glance knowingly at the audience when playing that special F sharp!

“We must go further”! As heard in Hymnen.

An interesting connection to draw there with MANTRA Bernard: thank you! It seems there may be many possible interpretations - from the suspicion of eliciting a disaster from fate, through to the concept of consensus of which Joe speaks. My own feeling, over the years, was that the tangled formulas of the music, playing between the four musicians across the sky, it became necessary to leap outside the formula itself in order to break that tangle. And once that had happened there was nowhere further to go, other than for the helicopters to land and the piece come to an end.