Two Concepts of Indeterminacy in Music
David Cline · The Musical Quarterly · 2019
In an interview recorded in 1976, Karlheinz Stockhausen looked back on his early influences and noted the profound effect that quantum mechanics had exerted upon him. “Quantum physics … was something we discussed every day,” he even suggested.1 It is not entirely clear which period he had in mind or who else he was referring to when he made this claim. Perhaps he was thinking of his time in Werner Meyer-Eppler’s classes in phonetics, communication science, and information theory at Bonn University, which he began attending in 1953–54.2 It seems likely, however, that the revolution in physics was in the air in new music circles in Europe before then. Meyer-Eppler, a scientist adept in multiple fields, was a regular presence at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt in the early 1950s,3 and it is probable that he discussed quantum mechanics in a lecture delivered at this annual gathering as early as 1950, prior to Stockhausen’s first visit the following year. Meyer-Eppler’s unpublished lecture notes for this event refer to the “Gabor Matrix,”4 a theoretical construct designed for use in characterizing the phenomenology of auditory experience in terms of aggregates of “acoustical quanta.”5