IN THE SELF / OUTSIDE THE SELF (1991)


'Simon Stockhausen Simon Stockhausen

In my composition "In the Self / Outside the Self", I take up ideas from chaos research and try to transform the findings of chaos researchers, especially in the field of fractal analysis, into a musical form. The self-analogy of things which can be observed everywhere in nature, i.e. the formal and the structural harmony of the smallest of components of an object or a procedure with the structure and form of the object or procedure itself, served as the original material for my composition which I composed especially for the duo "Metal Brass", with the soloists Mike Svoboda (trombone) and Andreas Böttger (drums). Every single one of my billion upon billion of body cells has the same genetic information which constitutes me as a human being and consequently, the large scale of the whole thing consisting of tone pitch, tone duration, dynamics, tone timbre, etc. will always be found in my piece of music, even in the very smallest of components, namely in the individual tones. The individual note as a fraction of the whole thing!

In order to incorporate tone location in the scene, I have prepared a 4-channel tape which serves as a basis for the soloists for their contrapunctual parts. The incorporation of live electronics is an integral part of the work, as by using samplers, pitch-to-midi equipment, etc., the realization of the musical fractal analysis was simplified considerably.