Sirius (Stockhausen) - Form and Content

Form and Content

Sirius is Number 43 in the composer's catalog of works, and consists of three main parts: "Presentation", "The Wheel" (subdivided into four sections, corresponding to the four seasons), and "Annunciation". The words were written by Stockhausen, except for a text by Jakob Lorber used in the Annunciation. The musical material consists of the twelve zodiac melodies of Tierkreis, Nr. 41½ (1974–75), originally composed for music boxes in connection with the percussion sextet Musik im Bauch (Music in the Belly), Nr. 41 (1975). Four of these melodies are principal, each associated with one of the protagonists, and are subjected to a variety of transformations, not merely by superimposition even of metamorphosis through a system of cross-fertilization processes in which "one melody progressively assumes the features of another, as a series of mists and frosts 'borrowed' from winter will gradually transform the autumnal aspect of October from summer nostalgia into winter foreboding" (Britton 1985, 521). The remaining eight melodies serve a subsidiary role. In the Presentation, the four characters introduce themselves and their attributes. They are:

• North (bass): Earth, Man, Night, Winter, Seed
• East (trumpet): Fire, Youth, Morning, Spring, Bud
• South (soprano): Water, Woman, Midday, Summer, Blossom
• West (bass clarinet): Air, Friend/Beloved, Evening, Autumn, Fruit.

The main, central "wheel" lasts over an hour, and can be rotated, according to the season of the performance, to produce four different forms:

• Winter version, beginning with "Capricorn"
• Spring version, beginning with "Aries"
• Summer version, beginning with "Cancer"
• Autumn version, beginning with "Libra".

The total duration of Sirius is 96 minutes.

The eight-channel electronic music was realized in the Electronic Music Studio of WDR, Cologne in 1975–77, using an EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer. The electronic music can be performed by itself, without the four soloists, and there are also three excerpted versions, each for a soloist with a specially prepared version of the electronic music: Aries, for trumpet (Nr. 43½, 1980), Libra, for bass clarinet (Nr. 43⅔), and Capricorn, for bass voice (Nr. 43¾).