Response to Stockhausen

In Stockhausen's piece "Gegung der Junglinge", created in 1956, he creates feelings in the listener by warping noise and sound from everyday life. In the piece he combined the sound of women's voices singing, a boy's voice, and many windy/ bubbly sounds. He used each sound differently. The would speed up the singing of the women in one section, and slow it down in another. He interrupted the singing with the sound of wind blowing. Towards the end of the piece, a boy was singing alone, with the windy/ bubbly sounds interrupting him. At the beginning, I felt a sense of community and happiness, because of everyone singing together. As the windy breaks became more and more frequent, a feeling of desertion, death, isolation, and loneliness began to set in. As the boy sang alone, I was convinced that he was alone, left by the community. I can only imagine the feelings that Stockhausen was trying to relay using this piece, but I got the same feeling of death in Stockhausen's "Hymnen Region". As it closes, "Hymnen Region" has the sound of heavy bass with high pitched noise, which gave me a feeling of emergency. A man breathing alone, was how Stockhausen finished his piece. Once again, the feeling of death emerges from his work.