Karlheinz Stockhausen

Two works of live electronics and intuition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written three years apart, in 1967 and 1970. Prozession (Procession) is one of his process compositions of the 1960s. Ceylon belongs to Für kommende Zeiten (For Times to Come), a cycle of seventeen text pieces of intuitive music written between 1968 and 1970. Both leave much of the music to choices the players make in performance.

Prozession was begun on a train journey to Basel in May 1967 and first played on 21 May 1967 in Helsinki by the ensemble it was written for. There is no score in the usual sense. The players take material from earlier Stockhausen pieces, among them Mikrophonie I, Telemusik, Kontakte and Momente, and change it with plus, minus and equals signs that alter duration, subdivision, dynamics or register. The recording was made by the WDR on 27 June 1971. Aloys Kontarsky plays piano, Harald Bojé electronium, Peter Eötvös the electrochord, and Christoph Caskel and Joachim Krist tam-tam, while Stockhausen runs filters and potentiometers. Ceylon was recorded by the WDR on 4 April 1975 for a small ensemble. Eötvös plays Persian camel bells, triangles and synthesizer, Stockhausen the Kandy drum, Kontarsky a modulated piano and Bojé the electronium, with Tim Souster in charge of sound projection.

Published by Stockhausen-Verlag as Stockhausen Edition no. 11, on one CD (℗ 1994) with a 36-page booklet.