You can't blink.

After a summer's slumber, I've finally gotten back to my blog. I'm taking a leap forward to the present and will later comment on some earlier concerts, but today I finished my attendance at the University of Colorado's Pendulum series “Stockhausen 2010”. I missed one concert and a colloquium, but attended three events, all surprisingly fun.

Stockhausen isn't in my music collection anywhere. I've known about him and Varese and Cage and others like them, but never had an affinity for them. Alex Ross, in “The Rest is Noise” relates him to the Darmstadt's hypermodern musical scene and comments on Gruppen and Licht and generally views him as important.

I went to the first concert not really knowing what to expect. A Stockhausen piano specialist, Frank Gutschmidt, played two pieces from 2005/6, “Natürliche Dauern” 10 and 15, the first played with 4 bells on his right hand, tinkling along wonderfully on all the high fast notes. Then a John Cage piece was performed (twisted, cranked, turned) on 12 radios by 24 performers. By pure coincidence, Alex Ross just this week had an article in the New Yorker, "Searching for Silence" on John Cage and commented on “Imaginary Landscapes No. 4”, the self-same piece. Talking of Cage's development, Ross says “As randomness took over, so did noise.” He'll get no argument for me on that.

The first concert ended with a 16 minute Stockhausen piece “Komet” performed by percussionist Stuart Gerber, striking a variety of instruments and somehow summoning various tracks he had earlier sampled. Fun but perplexing, I guess.

I missed one concert when I succumbed to Beethoven and Mozart, but more on that at another time.

I set aside Sunday afternoon for in-depth Stockhausen. Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died in 2007, used Bryan Wolf for 10 years as his personal sound engineer. Wolf, in his spatialization demonstration, described the technical content of the works for the later concert, explaining the evolution of the sounds and technology and playing short bursts of samples. I was puzzled by the comments of the “taped” sounds, but after the concert asked Wolf who clarified that all the sounds were from 24-bit WAV files.

Then the concert. Since much of it, attended by 150 people, was performed by the electronic music in the dark, we all quickly learned about the unintended consequences of the law. Exit signs must be lighted at all times, even if it destroys the environment for art – I had to shut my eyes to avoid the glare. In the dark, a small moonlike projection up front should have been the only thing to focus on, as Alex Ross's New Yorker article mentions that Cage used too. Oh well.

A small ensemble played “Kreuzspiel”, an early Stockhausen piece. Christina Jennings performed “Flautina” from 1989 on flute, piccolo and alto flute, commendably of course. The final work, all 32 minutes of it, was “Cosmic Pulses” from 2007, a selection from Stockhausen's unfinished Klang cycle. As explained by Wolf at the earlier lecture it had 241 musical loops of sound circling the audience on 8 high tech speakers in the Atlas Black Box auditorium. Loud, complex and appealing with a final coda of high and low frequencies ending in silence.

So what does all of this amount to musically? I'm not sure. Generally it seemed unemotional and without consequence, just pure sound. Interesting? Yes. Would I want to hear it again? Yes, I've actually just listened to “Cosmic Pulses” again, after a few clicks on Last.fm. My wife came down, listened for a few minutes and then scurried away, so I guess it wasn't to her liking. While listening during the concert I noticed something about my reaction to this music. I'm a kinetic listener – my foot bounces, my fingers play along, my head bobs and weaves. With Stockhausen, I was frozen and still -- that has to say something.

As to this blog's title, again while sitting in the dark and absorbing all these loud and strange and changing sounds, it dawned on me that you can't blink. When the sun shines brightly in your eyes, you blink. There nothing physically equivalent when you listen. I think Stockhausen makes you blink.