Talk:Helikopter-Streichquartett

Title

This title should probably be moved to its English version. Badagnani (talk) 07:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Concur. Genre titles such as "sonata", "symphony", and "string quartet" are normally given in English, no matter what the original publication may have on the cover, or what the composer's native language may have been. Despite the word "helicopter", this is a genre title. Unless someone comes up with a cogent reason to keep the German form, I say go ahead and change it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Serial

Could we get a mention of the piece's serialism (category recently added) in the article? Hyacinth (talk) 00:37, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. Finding a source attaching the word "serial" to this piece directly may be a bit of a challenge, but since it is a segment of a larger serial construction (the Licht superformula), and has been written much about, it should scarcely be impossible. I'll get on to it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:50, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

There is more to add about the way in which the piece is composed, but I found one quite direct statement of the serial basis. It wasn't as difficult as I had anticipated.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful to have these serialism citations wherever the category has been applied, as well. For instance, I think many people might be surprised to see a piece like Tierkreis in that category, but if they consult the article to see why, they would be flummoxed by the lack of any information that corroborates that correct categorization. Trumpetrep (talk) 00:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, probably, though it may get tiresome copy-pasting the ref from Imke Misch into each and every Stockhausen article, and finding similar citations for Babbitt, Berio, Boulez, Goeyvaerts, Wuorinen, etc. I think it would also be good to have all of the articles on tonal compositions similarly include citations confirming those pieces are in fact tonal. This would certainly flummox a lot of people when they discover that "tonal" is flung around with even less care than "serial" is.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:21, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me specifically at the Tierkreis (Stockhausen) article. I was shocked to see there was absolutely nothing in it explaining anything about the way the melodies were made, even though this information has been published now for nearly thirty years, in a source cited in that Wikipedia article, most of which I wrote myself—the Wikipedia article, that is, the source on the other hand is entirely my work. I have now rectified the situation, and even added a short analytical illustration from that source (permission granted from the copyright holder, of course).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:56, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Hey, I'm here to help!! :) I look forward to, at some point, picking your brain about the vagaries of the "tonal" label, because I continue to see these melodies as essentially tonal, regardless of their clear serial heritage.Trumpetrep (talk) 04:00, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Depending, of course, on your definition of "tonality", there is no necessary opposition between serialism and tonality. The problematic bit is that definition. Stimmung is a good example, where we have a quotation from a reliable source declaring the work to be both serial and tonal, but I defy you to create a Schenkerian graph of Stimmung, or even to find a single occurrence of a dominant-tonic cadence. In a famous article, Hans Keller demonstrated the use of twelve-tone serialism in the late symphonies of Mozart, and his contemporaries. On the other hand, Stockhausen's late trio, Schönheit, ends with an absolutely plain D♭ authentic cadence, and yet as a whole is, equally plainly, a serial composition. If you require less than a full-scale dominant-tonic polarity, then there are few if any serial or twelve-tone compositions that cannot be regarded as "tonal" in the sense of possessing local pitch centers. Walter Piston observed this with reference to Schoenberg's last two String Quartets, and a familiar illustration of this principle can be found at the beginning of Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, with twin leading-tone resolutions in immediate succession, but on different pitches.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:34, 28 July 2012 (UTC)