page_title: Klang (Stockhausen)
section_title: Fifteenth Hour: Orvonton
hierarchical_section_title: Klang (Stockhausen) / Fifteenth Hour: Orvonton
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Komed, SK Stiftung Kultur, Mediapark 7, Köln
context_page_description: Klang —Die 24 Stunden des Tages is a cycle of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, on which he worked from 2004 until his death in 2007. It was intended to consist of 24 chamber-music compositions, each representing one hour of the day, with a different colour systematically assigned to every hour. The cycle was unfinished when the composer died, so that the last three "hours" are lacking. The 21 completed pieces include solos, duos, trios, a septet, and Stockhausen's last entirely electronic composition, Cosmic Pulses. The fourth composition is a theatre piece for a solo percussionist, and there are also two auxiliary compositions which are not part of the main cycle. The completed works bear the work numbers 81–101.
context_section_description: Orvonton, for baritone and electronic music (layers 21, 20, 19 from Cosmic Pulses) 2007 (24 mins.). Work number 95. The specified colour is HKS 6 (yellow-orange) (Stockhausen 2010f, cover, I, and III).
  Orvonton was premiered on 8 May 2010 at the KOMED-Saal in Mediapark 7 in Cologne by Jonathan de la Paz Zaens, with sound direction by  Hannah Weirich, as part of the MusikTriennale Köln (Gimpel 2010).
  According to the Urantia Book, "outside Havona there are just seven inhabited universes, the seven superuniverses", and the Earth's (Urantia) "local universe of Nebadon belongs to Orvonton, the seventh superuniverse" (Urantia Foundation 1955, 164–65).
  In September 2007, when composition of Hours 14 to 21 was substantially completed, Stockhausen explained in an interview: "in the new works which I am now composing in Klang, I very often describe, in the sung text, how the piece that you are hearing is composed—and in fact right down to the details: how the rhythm goes, how the melody goes, how the harmony goes. So I very much love the fact that the music explains itself" (Stockhausen and Ermen 2007). Stockhausen composed Orvonton with de la Paz Zaens' voice in mind, and the composer assigned to him its extraordinarily long text (56 lines) because of the clarity of his German diction (Tariman 2011). The text provides "an analysis of the material and structure of the piece itself, and is also meant humorously" (Nonnenmann 2010): "Orvonton: I am a baritone, … / Layer nineteen has twenty-three tones as sound loop. / In the basic tempo 3.75 each note lasts 2 seconds, / and therefore the loop lasts 23 x 2 = 46 seconds", and so on (Nonnenmann 2010). Later on, this text includes an artistic credo: Each sound is a universe. / But one cannot tell if it is beautiful by the numbers: / that depends on who is counting. / Four hundred and forty Hertz is neither beautiful nor ugly. / Beauty lives. / … / Art music is not honky-tonk [i.e., low music-hall entertainment], / its number games need moments every now and then for the soul, / that touch, astonish: / time stands still".
caption: The Mediapark 7 building, Cologne. The Eleventh and Fifteenth Hours were premiered here on 8 May 2010, in the KOMED-Saal.
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