I. Composing Culture

There is a consensus in art history that a certain tradition of modernism ended in the 1960s. The music of the 1960s similarly brought its own tradition of modernity to its conclusion. This took the form of a radical paring down of the musical artwork to its barest minimum, a reduction next to which the movement popularly known as minimalism appears harmless and decorative. Stockhausen's Aus den sieben Tagen (1968) marked the end point of this tendency, abandoning all conventional musical notation in favor of short verbal instructions to the players, occasionally resembling prose poems (although the resemblance is misleading, as will be evident). These instructions, moreover, sometimes address the state of mind performers must attain as much as the type of music to be produced. The most extreme case is Es (It), the text for which runs as follows:

The difficulty of listening to the musical results might be compared to that experienced by a first encounter with the Rothko Chapel (1964–70):