DESCRIPTION:
Zeitmasse, for five woodwind instruments (1955-56)

London Sinfonietta

Zeitmaße (Time Measures) for five woodwinds (1955-56) is a chamber-music work by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Number 5 in the composer's catalog. It is the first of three wind quintets written by the composer (the others being Adieu für Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer of 1966 and the Rotary Wind Quintet of 1997), but is scored with cor anglais instead of the usual horn of the standard quintet. Its title refers to the different ways of treating musical time found in the composition.

Zeitmaße was composed more or less concurrently with three other works in contrasting media, which together formed the basis for Stockhausen's rise to fame in the 1950s. The others were Gesang der Jünglinge for electronic and concrète sounds, Gruppen for three orchestras, and Klavierstück XI for piano.

In order to begin work on a commission for the new orchestral composition which would become Gruppen, Stockhausen interrupted work on Gesang der Jünglinge in August and September 1955 and took the opportunity to retreat to an inexpensive rented room in the attic of a parsonage in Paspels, Switzerland, recommended to him by a colleague in the WDR studio, Paul Gredinger. He had scarcely arrived in Paspels when a message reached him, requesting a short composition to celebrate Heinrich Strobel's tenth anniversary of service at the Südwestrundfunk, Baden-Baden.

"I had to write something quickly, by that evening. I did not allow myself to take any time over it. And then, suddenly, I hear this whole little four-minute piece. I really chuckled to myself about it. It was for voice and wind quintet. Later I replaced the vocal part with a cor anglais, and the 'piece' is the first four minutes of Zeitmaße."

The humorous, caprice-like song—for alto voice, flute, clarinet in A, and bassoon—sets an epigrammatic text written by Strobel, in a French translation by Antoine Goléa:

On cherche pour trouver quelque chose. Mais au fond, on ne sait pas ce qu'on cherche au juste. Et cela est vrai non seulement pour l'Allemagne musicale. (We are seeking to find something. But at bottom, we do not know quite what we are looking for. And that is true not only of German musical life.)

The song (in which Stockhausen omits the last five words of the French text) was later published in a memorial volume for Strobel. Upon returning to Cologne, Stockhausen resumed work on Gesang der Jünglinge and returned also to Zeitmaße—now scored for flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon—completing a first version that was recorded for the radio in December 1955 by the Wind Quintet of the WDR Symphony Orchestra (led by their oboist, Wilhelm Meyer), and first broadcast in January 1956. Stockhausen subsequently nearly doubled the length of the work by inserting five "cadenzas", which became the defining moments of the composition. [wikipedia.org]

Art by Hermann Finsterlin