Monday, March 14, 2011

Tierkreis

Recently I've been working on an arrangement/interpretation of Stockhausen's Tierkreis. The Tierkreis are a series of 12 melodies each with an accompaniment. The instrumentation is open.

Originally these pieces were written for musical boxes as a part of Stockhausen's percussion sextet Musik im Bauch in which some of these music boxes are drawn from the belly of a giant bird figure named Miron. Each melody corresponds to a specific sign of the zodiac and should be repeated several times.

I came across this recording which has been interpreted for a trio. Interestingly the trumpet and piano player is Markus Stockhausen, who is Karlheinz Stockhausen's son.

These three YouTube "videos" each contain four pieces. In this recording the melodies are played through 3 times, each time with a different arrangement.

Part 1 (Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini):


Part 2 (Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra)


Part 3 (Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius)

Friday, March 4, 2011