Licht, a cycle of seven operas
Licht, a cycle of seven operas | By Laurent Feneyrou, musicologist in charge of research in the Analyses des pratiques musicales team (STMS / Ircam / Sorbonne Université)
This week's cycle, Licht, is a total ritual in seven operas, a masterly symbolic sum beyond all religion, a seemingly ingenuous yet rigorously ordered ceremony of sounds, words, gestures, colors and objects, until illumination is reached.
In the beginning is a melody, a “formula”, composed in 1977, enriched the following year, and which governs the entire cycle, the composition of which occupied Stockhausen until 2003. Twenty-five years are thus crystallized here, the synthesis of a life ardently devoted to creation, gradually opening up in a spiral movement. From each note of the melody, fertile invention unfolds and becomes musical, but also cosmological: in the wake of ancient thought, to create is to build or rebuild the order of the universe through a mysticism of number and sound as harmony of the world, mirror of its perfect proportions.
Three immortal principles, three spiritual incarnations organize the cycle, three forces. They are respectively entrusted to trumpet, clarinet and trombone, but also to tenor, soprano and bass, and even to dancers - occasionally on stilts. Soloists or ensembles, instrumental, vocal or choreographic, everything here is an emanation of it. Michael, the archangel warrior slaying the dragon, of whom the Indo-Iranian Mithra, the Egyptian Thoth, the Greek Hermes, the Scandinavian Thor or Donar, but also Siegfried, are variations, reigns over a galaxy around a central fire. A mediator, Eva oscillates between cosmic Mother-Spirit and seductress, between Sumerian Inanna or Mary, mother of Christ, and Aphrodite, Venus or Lilith. A proud idealist, Lucifer, the fallen ruler, is the force of opposites that do not coincide, and is hostile to the human illusion of time, which he intends to abolish, since immortality would be unique to each of us. From then on, the week is divided up as follows: Monday is Eva's day; Tuesday, the day of conflict between Michael and Lucifer; Wednesday, the day of harmony; Thursday, Michael's day; Friday, the day of Lucifer's temptation of Eva; Saturday, Lucifer's day, the day of Saturn, the tomb and the dances of death, while Sunday seals the mystical union of Eva and Michael.
“I am the one who listens”, Stockhausen liked to say, who knew how to listen to the light.
