... the waltz (valse) corresponds to the movement of the human body as the
vivifying Platonic 'light' corresponds to the passive _hupokeimenon_ of the
material realm.  That is to say, the sensual and sensuous movements of a
waltz enliven the form that is already immersed in the music as a piece of
cold, dry earth is bathed in material light.  But what the waltz gives
birth to, or engenders, is a bodily reaction, an outmoded, un-intellectual
response to an external sonic 'stance'.  The physical response to this
'stance' is like that of a plant to(ward) the light -- it stretches,
extends itself, seeks shelter and sustenance ...  For Stockhausen, the
proper response to music is in the form of a _reply_.  This leads him to
elevate the performer (interpreter) to the status of a veritable
co-composer, or co-producer.  Such a move rests upon the conviction that
the internal and intellectual musical idea is only communicable in the form
of an historically realizable set of instructions -- or, more precisely,
_suggestions_ -- that will lead the performer to spontaneously reply to the
score in such a way as to render the intellectual 'idea' or _logos
spermatikos_ in the most unmediated manner possible.  This response is not
to an external, physical stimulus -- that is, not to a musical gesture or
utterance already articulated in space or time ...  No!  it is a response
to an internal, intellectual 'notion' (only half-realized, as it were) ...
and this response is a _reply_ to an intuited musical idea, not a
presupposed or rigidly formulated musical rule.  Symbols, as in notes, are,
for Stockhausen, essentially fecund vehicles by which the intellectual idea
of a non-sonic 'musical' expression is carried into the sensible realm (in
as unsullied or uninterrupted a form as possible) and given life or
augmentation by the performer.  The element of chance inherent in this
'evolution' is really the result of the composer's relinquishing of
autonomy -- that is to say, the composer's realization that the
intellectual 'musical' idea(l) is untranslatable, in its purity, into a
sensuous or sensible form.

Chance criteria, allied to the notated symbols (the choice of different
symbols is based on the players psychic reactions) are guided, and achieve
a structural significance in clarifying the musical context:  indeterminacy
factors as formative qualities!  [K.  Stockhausen, ABOUT THE PIANO PIECES
(1957) http://www.stockhausen.org/intro_piano_pieces.html]

The most that can be hoped for, on the composer's part, is an historical
enunciation that will serve as the reference-point (in whatever state) for
the performer's production, in the sonic realm, of that which is always
ever suggested by the pseudo-sensual gestures of the composer.  It is this
'enunciation' that is embodied in the score, and which carries on (as) the
composer's legacy.  But it is only half the story.

The waltz begs to be danced, it calls us to move ... The piano piece by
Stockhausen that utilizes only the single 'motif' of _silence_ as its grand
formal point calls only for a creative hearing, a reception that will serve
as the marker for the idea's passage into history --:  this idea that lacks
a proper language for its iterable and therefore _meaningful_ reproduction
or "realisation in terms of sound" (ibid.).  The waltz is danceable by any
physically-attuned individual.  The sensible idea is reproducible only by
one who has relinquished the bodily restraint in favor of the freedom of an
imaginative 'viewing' (_theorizein_) of 'music'.

It is in and by the tension inherent and sensibly reproduced in the
receptive life of the dialectical or historically conscious musician
(meaning either and both the 'composer' and the 'performer' -- the pure
and simple _listener_ is always, somehow, in limbo) and through the
resultant _drama_ of such a 'stance' that "one surpasses oneself and ...
leaves behind a piece of the cumbersome sack which one has inherited from
the mammals of this planet" [K.  Stockhausen, COMES AWAKENING, COMES TIME
(1986) http://www.stockhausen.org/comes_awakening.html].

Why not say that Stockhausen's piano pieces are the waltz of the soul?

Edward