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Timelessness and temporality (Kruse, 2011) are widely studied topics in the classical music of the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century, mainly concerning the perspective of musical composition and auditory perception of music. But what is the perspective of temporal layeredness in the performer’s experience? This quote offers a starting point (Noble, 2018): “music whose temporal organisation optimises human information processing and embodiment expresses human time, and music whose temporal organisation subverts or exceeds human information processing and embodiment points outside of human time, to timelessness .”
Specialized in the repertoire of Karlheinz Stockhausen, I want to investigate the role of temporality in music from the perspective of a performer. I will delve into the richness of different layers of temporal awareness in an artistic experience through experiential, embodied, and sensorial knowledge, using different temporal compositions by Stockhausen as case studies: HARMONIEN (2006) for flute solo,, Xi (1986) for flute solo and STOP (1969) for ensemble.
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Karin DE FLEYT -
Perspectives on time in the music by Stockhausen: the experience of a performer -
2026
Timelessness and temporality (Kruse, 2011) are widely studied topics in the classical music of the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century, mainly concerning the perspective of musical composition and auditory perception of music. But what is the perspective of temporal layeredness in the performer’s experience? This quote offers a starting point (Noble, 2018): “music whose temporal organisation optimises human information processing and embodiment expresses human time, and music whose temporal organisation subverts or exceeds human information processing and embodiment points outside of human time, to timelessness .”
Specialized in the repertoire of Karlheinz Stockhausen, I want to investigate the role of temporality in music from the perspective of a performer. I will delve into the richness of different layers of temporal awareness in an artistic experience through experiential, embodied, and sensorial knowledge, using different temporal compositions by Stockhausen as case studies: HARMONIEN (2006) for flute solo,, Xi (1986) for flute solo and STOP (1969) for ensemble.
Karin DE FLEYT -
Perspectives on time in the music by Stockhausen: the experience of a performer -
2026
This is a snippet from my live performance of Xi by Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Duomo di Milano (with Stockhausen attending the concert)
Xi, performed in 2004 for the Art Ache Festival in Milano
STOP (1966) is another case study in this research on temporality in the music by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Currently, I am working together with Stijn Saveniers and Maya Verlaak on the notational and instrumental aspects of Stockhausen’s open score repertoire. Previous works that were arranged and performed in new contexts are SOLO (with Juan Parra Cancino) and PROZESSION ( with Hermes Ensemble and Rolf Gelhaar).
For STOP, we start from the orchestral version of the work, as suggested by the composer, one should use this orchestral version to make once own’s rendition of this work.
At the moment, experiments with the layout and actual notating of the score are carried out.
More experiments will follow on instrumentation and notational aspects of this repertoire piece by Stockhausen.
Maya Verlaak, Karin de Fleyt and Stijn Saveniers in front of the Stockhausen archive in Kürten, Germany, for a study day on the sketches and material of STOP.
An interesting fact is that we can track down how the interpretation and therefore the instrumentation was adapted over the several performances (1965, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1992)
This is an experiment to add live electronics as one of the instrumental groups in the score. This setup and instrumentation will be tried out in a workshop in February 2026.
Maya Verlaak is building a new instrument for the live electronics part of STOP. This instrument will be tested in a workshop in february 2026
