Karlheinz Stockhausen
Luzifers Tanz

Seven reviews for the seven days of the week: today it's Saturday from Light’s turn.
(2/7)

A gigantic human face is under the spotlight in "Luzifers Tanz", the third scene of the musical theater work "Saturday from Light" (Samstag aus Licht). The ensemble includes 70 wind instrument players (flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, etc.) and a full 10 percussionists. The musicians are seated in ten groups across six vertically stacked levels: starting from the top, the right eyebrow and the left one; the right eye and the left one; the right cheek and the left one; the nose; the upper lip; and finally the chin (divided into two groups).

Each of these parts of the face gives rise to some dances, brief instrumental episodes in which only the musicians of each group play, separated by other dances where two or more groups play in opposition to each other; there are thus 10 dances (of the left eyebrow, of the right eyebrow, and so on) separated by 9 dances of the tutti: this is the structural articulation of the piece, which lasts about 51 minutes.

But it doesn't end there: the character of Luzifer is portrayed on stage by a bass voice, who intervenes from time to time throughout the piece singing a motto, and by a stilt walker, who crosses the stage and the central corridor mimicking the bass voice on his tall stilts while teaching the face how to dance.

The music: a sulfurous mass of sound, harsh in its preference for brass timbres (often muted) and metallic in its insistent use of percussion. The sound flows devilishly and almost continuously but during the piece, three musicians stand out performing as many solos: on percussion, piccolo trumpet, and piccolo (the latter played by a black cat who at one point greets the audience by shouting, in Italian, «Salve, satanelli!»).

"Luzifers Tanz" has two different endings: if performed as a concert, it ends with a concluding tutti and lasts 47 minutes; if staged in theater, the music is interrupted by an orchestra strike: the musicians stop playing and leave amidst screams and shouts. Why this curious interlude? Apparently a reminder of what happened in 1981 during the performance of the first opera in the cycle, "Donnerstag aus Licht", when a real strike by the chorus of the Teatro alla Scala prevented the last act from being performed in five out of eight scheduled performances. This was a very bitter experience for Stockhausen, who with this 3-minute episode in "Luzifers Tanz" sheds a light full of humor on the nature of his spirit, usually quite stern.

- Samstag aus Licht (1981-83) is the second opera of the cycle dedicated to the days of the week. It consists of four scenes plus a short instrumental introduction (Saturday Greeting). Saturday is the day of Luzifer, portrayed on stage by a bass voice, a trombone soloist, and a stilt walker. The opera was performed in May 1984 at the Palazzo dello Sport in Milan as a production of the Teatro alla Scala. The four-cd edition is published by Stockhausen-Verlag ("Luzifers Tanz" is the third cd in this edition).