Creation : Royan Festival, 1975
Duration : 38′
Musicians : 6 percussionists and music boxes
Publisher : Stockhausen Verlag
The idea for “Musik im Bauch” – Music in the Belly – came to Stockhausen from an episode in which his little daughter Julika, then aged two, to whom he said “you have music in your belly”, began by laughing heartily and then, in an increasingly spasmodic manner, ended up crying and laughing at the same time, shouting “music in the belly, music in the belly”! Seven years later, in 1974, Stockhausen conceived the work as we know it today from melodies that each correspond to a sign of the zodiac. There are a total of twelve other melodies (one per sign), but each performance requires only three of these melodies – so there are several possible versions of this work. Everything that the performers (who appear to the audience as dolls or automatons) will play, consists exclusively of these three melodies. One of them will be played very slowly for the duration of the work by two performers on the marimba, and the three melodies on the plate bells by a third musician, also for the duration of the work. During this time, the other instruments play isolated motifs and sounds and play the melodies simultaneously in different tempi. In this way, the three melodies are communicated, explained to the audience sound by sound, motif by motif and finally played to them in their entirety. For the performances at the Théâtre de la Ville, as was the case for the premiere in Royan in 1975, ‘Aquarius’ (Aquarius), Leo and Capricorn will be heard. Each of the twelve melodies has its own character, as well as a dominant note; the first is Aquarius, its dominant is E flat; Pisces, the second with E, and so on by chromatic ascension until the sweetest, Capricorn, with D, passing through Leo at the opposite of Aquarius with A. The man who has “music in his belly” is called Miron, named after those men for whom, if we are to believe Jacob Lorber and his statement on the Enchanted World of Neptune, music is the art form that best suits their character: the Miron men are so much in love with each other that they would suffer anything rather than risk offending each other in the least.