Montag aus Licht

History

Montag was given its staged premiere by the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 7 May 1988. Subsequent performances were on 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13 May. The stage direction was by Michael Bogdanov, sets by Chris Dyer, costumes by Mark Thompson. Karlheinz Stockhausen was the sound projectionist.

Synopsis

Within the Licht cycle, the opera Monday focuses on the character of Eve, on the feminine side of existence, on birth (Stockhausen and Kohl 1985, 33). Monday is the day of the moon, lunae dies in Latin, and the moon has been traditionally associated with the feminine, in contrast to the sun, which was regarded as masculine. In myths and legends, it is a symbol of fertility, and veneration of the "lesser light" of the moon is a cult of the creative and productive power of nature, of the instinctive wisdom and shadowy perceptions that rule the night. The moon is also the demonic form of the feminine principle, the blind force of eclipse, of destruction, of primal fear, as personified in the Greek goddess Hecate, though Stockhausen avoids these aspects for his Eve in favour of positive, creative, and invigorating features (Stoïanova 1999, 194–96). Montag is in three acts, with scenes and subscenes (called "situations" by the composer) as follows:

Montags-Gruß

The Monday Greeting is a tape composition played in the foyer as the audience arrives. The visual impression is of being underwater. The music is multilayered, made of stretched-out basset-horn sounds, occasionally mixed with the sounds of splashing and rushing water. Twelve photographs of the basset-horn player in different poses corresponding to the twelve pitches of the mirrored Eve formula surround the space (Stockhausen 1998a, 334).

Act 1: Evas Erstgeburt

In the first act, Eve's First Parturition, Eve is manifested in three sopranos who have many names. They sing constantly changing names for the Cosmic Mother from the cult of Inanna and from early Germanic cults, so that they are Eve in many forms (Stockhausen 1998c, 123). The act consists of six scenes.

Scene 1: In Hoffnung

The first scene, Expecting, opens on a multistory house with an inner courtyard lit by small green lamps. A terrace at the front ends at a huge Venetian blind. As night falls, the blind opens disclosing a sandy beach, with an indistinct, high tower at the left. High up in this tower, illuminated by a dim green light, stand three naked women. Groups of women with pails, cloths, sponges, baskets, and ladders approach, singing as they go. The moon rises, and the tower is seen to be a huge statue of a female figure, seated on the sand with her back to the terrace. The women begin to wash and anoint the statue, preparing Eve for a ceremony of celebration of birth. The music presents nine periodic cycles in which a musical formula gradually emerges (Stockhausen 1998a, 387–89).

Scene 2: Die Heinzelmännchen

Heinzelmännchen are dwarf-like figures from an old Cologne folk tale, though this scene adopts only the humorous aspect from the legend. In this scene, Eve gives birth to a boys’ choir (Stockhausen and Kohl 1985, 29). The three sopranos sing joyfully and very rapidly as the statue gives birth to a boy with a lion’s head, twins with swallows’ heads and wings, and so on (Stockhausen 1998a, 395–98).

Scene 3: Geburts-Arien

The three sopranos sing two Birth Arias as the Eve statue continues to produce children. During the first aria, a dark figure appears on the beach: it is Lucifer. As he approaches the newborn bodies, he hoots "Repulsive!" Everyone shrinks back, and Lucifer hurries out, As the seven newborn boys and seven newborn Heinzelmännchen (with beards and pointed hats, two of which are conjoined twins) struggle to rise from the sand, the three Eve sopranos sing a second aria (Stockhausen 1989, 389–99, 404).

Scene 4: Knaben-Geschrei

In Boys' Hullaballoo the boys are supposed to sing, but cannot. Instead, they just make strange noises and scream like babies (Stockhausen and Kohl 1985, 29).

Scene 5: Luzifers Zorn

In the fifth scene, Lucifer's Fury is directed at the deficient creatures who have been born, and he orders them all back into the womb. The whole process must be gone through again, because the first result was so ugly (Stockhausen and Kohl 1985, 29).

Scene 6: Das große Geweine

The Great Weeping is a general lament over Lucifer's decision to reject Eve's first-born, and is realised by a series of glissandos in the synthesizers and choir, which imitate sobbing and weeping (Ferrari 1988, 116).

Act 2: Evas Zweitgeburt

Eve's Second Parturition consists of three scenes.

Scene 1: Mädchenprozession

In the Girls' Procession, a choir of young girls, wearing dresses shaped like lilies, ceremonially enters bearing candles. The sea is now frozen, and women are hacking blocks of ice with axes, and melting the ice in cauldrons (Stockhausen 1998a, 555). The idea came from a ritual Stockhausen witnessed in Japan, in a valley near Kyoto, in which girls were carrying small lamps in a procession to a temple (Stockhausen 1989b, 279). This type of ceremony, with processions of torches, candles, or other forms of fire, is found as a fertility rite in many world traditions, such as the Egyptian Feast of Lamps for Osiris, the Greek and Roman rites of Hecate and Diana, respectively, and later in the Christian festival of torches on 15 August in honor of the Virgin Mary (Stoïanova 1999, 198).

Scene 2: Befruchtung mit Klavierstück—Wiedergeburt

Scene 3: Evas Lied

Eve's Song is basically a concerto for basset horn and synthesizers, against a background of the continuing boys' and girls' choirs from the preceding scenes, and trombones (Stockhausen and Kohl 1985, 30). It consists of a succession of four situations:

Act 3: Evas Zauber

Eve's Magic is also divided into three scenes.

Scene 1: Botschaft

Message has a series of four situations.

Scene 2: Der Kinderfänger

In The Pied Piper—originally titled Der Zauber (The Magic)—the musicus bewitches the children as Cœur, confused and disappointed, withdraws into the heart of the Eve statue. The adults, too, become frightened and shrink away against the walls and into the corners and watch as the Pied Piper enchants their children (Stockhausen and Kohl 1985, 31). It is a game of mimicry, in which the children try to imitate everything that the flute player demonstrates to them, accompanied by a rapid succession of sound-scenes from the real world. In the end, the Pied Piper dupes the children into removing their shoes and piling them up in a heap (Stockhausen 1998a, 695–96).

Scene 3: Entführung

In the final scene, Abduction, the Pied Piper, now playing a piccolo, leads the singing children off in ordered procession into the skies. As their voices become higher and higher in pitch, the Eve statue is transformed into a mountain (the "Evaberg"), sprouting trees, bushes, animals, and streams. The children are seen as giant white birds, circling higher and higher into the skies. Just before the end, one child come back out on stage, looks at the audience in astonishment and shouts, "Are you still here?" He then goes to the pile of shoes, finds his own and puts them on, observing, "It is very dirty outside", and darts away, as the children-bird voices continue to be heard in the distance (Stockhausen and Kohl 1985, 31; Stockhausen 1998a, 697–98).

Montags-Abschied

Monday's Farewell, like the greeting, is played back over four channels in the foyer as the audience leaves the theatre. The foyer is now wreathed in clouds, as the ever-rising voices of the children-birds circle around. Toward the end, a single voice sings: "The Eve-children have been abducted by music into higher worlds with green clouds" (Stockhausen 1998a, 759–61).

Discography