CONTEMPORARY 301
Gesang der Jünglinge
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gesang
der Jünglinge (“Song of the
Youths”) was created in the
studios of West German Radio
between 1955 and 1956. Its text
comes from the biblical Book of
Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar
had the Hebrew youths Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego cast into
a fiery furnace for refusing to
worship his image. Remaining
miraculously unharmed, they sang
God’s praise from the flames.
Some regard the work as the
first masterpiece created using
the sound techniques developed
from the experiments of Schaefferand Henry. It also reflects the
strong spiritual basis that
Stockhausen’s work almost
always possessed. Using
electronically generated
tones and pulses, filtered white
noise, and the voice of 12-year-
old choirboy Josef Protschka,
Stockhausen created a fiery
whirlwind of rich and complex
textures, operating at different
speeds and dynamic levels, and
utilizing the space around the
audience via four-channel
(originally five-channel) sound.
The result is a virtuoso creation
that maintains a consistent
momentum due to its perfectly
planned overall structure.The biblical tale of Hebrew youths
surviving in a furnace, depicted here
on a Bible study card (c.1900), was a
potent inspiration for Stockhausen.and the British rock band Spooky
Tooth. His work also influenced
composers of multiple electronic
music styles, including the British
musician and producer William
Orbit, Mat Ducasse of the UK-based
band Skylab, and the UK music
producer and DJ Fatboy Slim.
Other composers who worked
briefly at the Groupe de Recherche
de Musique Concrète included
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre
Boulez, and the veteran Edgard
Varèse, who recognized the advent
of a medium that he had longed
for all his life. However, the main
contributions to the genre born
in Paris were made elsewhere.
In 1952, the German theorist
and composer Herbert Eimert
inaugurated a department for
electronic music at the radio
studios in Cologne. Stockhausen
joined him there and their focus
moved from sounds recorded in
diverse contexts (as in musique
concrète) to sounds that were
electronically produced. Between
1953 and 1954, Stockhausen
wrote two influential studies in
pure electronics before going onto combine real sounds with
electronics in his masterly Gesang
der Jünglinge (1955 –1956).New experimental spaces
Studios similar to those in Cologne
began to open across the world in
New York, Tokyo, Munich, and in
Milan, where the Italian composers
Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna
founded Europe’s third electronic
music facility. In London in 1958,the BBC launched its Radiophonic
Workshop, which began to develop
atmospheric music for radio and
television, such as the Dr Who
theme (1963), written by the
Australian composer Ron Grainer
and realized by Delia Derbyshire.
Important works by Varèse (his
Poème electronique) and the Greek
Iannis Xenakis were created in
European studios at this time.
In 1977, the Institut de Recherche
et Coordination Acoustique/
Musique (IRCAM) opened in Paris.
Boulez was its head, and such
figures as Berio and the French-
Slovenian composer and trombonist
Vinko Globokar were among its
staff. Since then, many composers
have experimented and realized
compositions at IRCAM, using
electronics and latterly computers.
The organization has remained
influential in making such
techniques part of classical
composition today. Major figures
to develop work there include
Jonathan Harvey, Harrison
Birtwistle, George Benjamin, Kaija
Saariaho, Unsuk Chin, Gérard
Grisey, and Tristan Murail. ■An opera for blind people,
a performance without
argument, a poem made
of noises, bursts of text,
spoken or musical.
Pierre Schaeffer
Describing the Symphonie in
La musique concrète (1973)US_298-301_Henry_and_Schaeffer.indd 301 26/03/18 1:01 PM