KLANG

Contemporary music producer Elizabeth Huston will present pioneering composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s KLANG: Die 24 Stunden des Tages (Sound: The 24 Hours of the Day), a daylong series of chamber music compositions, each written to represent an hour of the day. The innovative work was left unfinished at the time of the composer’s death in 2007 and has never been performed as originally intended, with its 21 completed pieces played in order. “All of Stockhausen's music is fundamentally concerned with the phenomenon of time: structuring it, making it tangible, and spanning the continuum between ‘organic time’ of living beings and the ‘astronomical time’ of the cosmos,” says Huston. “This concert will allow people to slow down and observe an artistic rendering of time.” Stockhausen expert Joe Drew, who orchestrated a previous performance of KLANG, and members of the Germany-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, who worked closely with Stockhausen, will consult with Huston’s ensemble of Philadelphia-based musicians during a performance laboratory. To convey Stockhausen’s intention for KLANG to be a visual experience, Huston will work with lighting designer Thomas Dunn, who will represent the colors the composer notated for the compositions. Stockhausen selected a color for each piece based on the harmony he heard while looking at the colors contained in a 24-color cycle developed by chemist Wilhelm Ostwald.

Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.