Intuitive music is a form of
musical improvisation based on instant creation in which fixed principles or rules may or may not have been given. It is a type of
process music
Process music is music that arises from a process. It may make that process audible to the listener, or the process may be concealed.
Primarily begun in the 1960s, diverse composers have employed divergent methods and styles of process. "A 'musi ...
where instead of a traditional music score, verbal or graphic instructions and ideas are provided to the performers. The concept was introduced in 1968 by the German composer
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th and early 21st-century ...
, with specific reference to the collections of text-notated compositions ''
Aus den sieben Tagen'' (1968) and ''
Für kommende Zeiten
''Für kommende Zeiten'' (For Times to Come) is a collection of seventeen text compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed between August 1968 and July 1970. It is a successor to the similar collection titled '' Aus den sieben Tagen'', written ...
'' (1968–70). The first public performance of intuitive-music text compositions, however, was in the collective work ''
Musik für ein Haus'', developed in Stockhausen's 1968 Darmstadt lectures and performed on 1 September 1968, several months before the first realisations of any of the pieces from ''Aus den sieben Tagen''.
Intuitive music may appear to be synonymous with
free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its ...
or with improvised playing within open composition forms, but the collectively intuitive aspect, the emancipation from known music genres and the meditative dimension are especially emphasized by Stockhausen: "I try to avoid the word improvisation because it always means there are certain rules: of style, of rhythm, of harmony, of melody, of the order of sections, and so on". Nevertheless, one critic finds that intuitive music is not in essence irrational, but that for Stockhausen intuition must become a controllable ability, and therefore is an instrument of the project of modernity: "the investigation and instrumentalization of the world by controlled procedures".
At the 1968 Darmstadt composition seminar where the intuitive-music concept was central for the group composition ''Musik für ein Haus'', Stockhausen himself emphasised that it has nothing to do with
indeterminacy: "I do not want a spiritualistic seance—I want music! I do not mean anything mystical, but everything absolutely direct, from concrete experience. What I have in mind is not indeterminacy, but intuitive determinacy!."
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See also
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Meditation music
Meditation music is music performed to aid in the practice of meditation. It can have a specific religious content, but also more recently has been associated with modern composers who use meditation techniques in their process of composition, or w ...
References
Cited sources
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Further reading
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Bailey, Derek. 1992. ''Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music'', revised edition.
K The British Library National Sound Archive. US edition, supplemented with photographs between pages 58 and 59, New York: Da Capo Press, 1993. .
* Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Carl. 2008. "Das Bekannte ausschließen: Stockhausens "Intuitive Musik" und ihre Aufführungspraxis". ''MusikTexte'', no. 117:63–66.
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Brinkmann, Reinhold. 1974. "Hören und Denken. Thesen zur Intuitiven Musik". ''
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
'Die'' (; en, " heNew Journal of Music") is a music magazine, co-founded in Leipzig by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke. Its first issue appeared on 3 April 1834.
His ...
'' 135:555–557.
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Davies, Hugh. 1975
"Stockhausen's Intuitive Music" ''
Musics'' (April–May): 10–11. Via International Improvised Music Archive (IIMA).
* De Cock, Tom. 2016.
Some Insights on the Practice of Stockhausen's Intuitive Music in General, and ''For Times To Come'' in Particular. Stockhausen instructions compiled by Martin Zingsheim from rehearsals with Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar 1991 and 2005. 1991 text translated by Jayne Obst. (Retrieved 24 September 2018).
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Kohl, Jerome. 1978. "Intuitive Music and Serial Determinism: An Analysis of Stockhausen's ''Aus den sieben Tagen''." ''
In Theory Only
''In Theory Only'' () was a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It began publication in 1975, under the auspices of graduate students in music theory at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & ...
'' 3, no. 2 (March): 7–19
PDF version(archive from 5 February 2012)
* Kurtz, Michael. 1988
In ''Karlheinz Stockhausen'' (programme booklet). Paris: Contrechamps/. (In French)
* Nakaji, Masatsune. 1994
Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen
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ttps://neonegypt.com/intuitive-music "What is Intuitive Music?" Steven Miller (drums), Harrison Goldberg (saxophone)
{{Karlheinz Stockhausen , state=autocollapse
Musical techniques
Musical improvisation