... 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