Please do the following:

a) Press down a triad starting on middle C on the piano silently with the right hand

b) Stab a high treble note C or an octave C and listen to the sounds after the note has been struck.

You will notice that the struck note seems to reverberate longer than if you had merely struck the note and not held down the note with the other hand.

What in fact is happening is that the three strings (the three notes you are holding down are sympathetically vibrating with the struck note but at the same time providing resonance tones for the struck note(s)

c) Now strike notes in different places on the keyboard and get your ear close to the piano and listen to the results

d) hold down a triad and then play fast notes on different notes in the upper register. what happens?

e) Try all of the above but experiment also with varying amounts of sustain pedal applied.

Karlheinz Stockhausen has always been fascinated with this "inner music" of the piano, and this is an area which the listener must enter to appreciate the composer's music.

I now recommend that you go to The Stockhausen Homepage and click on the piano articles particularly 'Stockhausen talks about the piano'.

Stockhausen talks about the 'end of the piano as we know it', and foresees a Synthesizer-playing generation to replace it.The enduring popularity of the piano would seem to refute his assertions, and this may be an interesting subject for the Seminars.

The composer's comments on Klavierstuck VII are also worth reading. In particular the notion of serialism which as he defines it extends to a systematic use of colouration.

From the very first note; a C#, and each time we hear this, it is coloured with a different resonance ,created by held notes as described above or through the use of the middle pedal.

The middle pedal (or sostenuto pedal) when properly used will keep the dampers which have been raised, up until the sostenuto pedal has been released. Soundwise, what you get is one note or a bunch of notes that will be sustained for as long as the sostenuto pedal is engaged. What makes it so cool is that you can use the right pedal (damper pedal) as well as the left pedal (the una corde pedal) while you are also using the sostenuto pedal. The only trick is to not let the sostenuto pedal up until you really and truly want to release the sounds you have been sustaining.

(The pedal information was found on the excellent 'piano Education page', click here to go to this excellent site which answers many technical and other questions.

Obviously, the closer you are to the piano soundboard the more easily you will hear the overtones It is for this reason that microphones will be placed near the strings,and there won't be such a rush on the front seats!

There is no melody or motives in the music, and no detectable pulse (Stockhausen organises his note durations serially).You are aware of layers of sound which emerge from behind other layers and here clearly is the incorporation of ideas which were also part of his electronic studio compositions of the same time.(Layering of sound is also very much part of the Sonata for solo 'cello by Zimmermann

Like John Cage and his 'prepared' piano, Stockhausen wanted to write for a new instrument. He describes his expansion of tone composition as discovering new 'touch forms' and compares this with using a series of envelopes to compose new sounds in the studio.

The composer has written 15 klavierstucke,the original plan being a cycle of 21.

In his excellent book "The works of Stockhausen" Robin Maconie gives us further insight into the piece.

(click here for his web site on Stockhausen which contains a hilarious discussion with the composer, and is also very informative)

Talking about the 'resonances' he says:

"The resonant character of the piece evolves organically and with the same deliberateness as the more positive (struck)notes.."

This two level concept may be likened to;

"..the changes of resonances one hears when walking through a succession of rooms of different sizes and acoustic characters.."

Stockhausen uses a scale of pauses, differentiated by the duration of rests (demisemi-dotted quaver,over which they occur.

Maconie goes on:

"By far the most intriguing section of the piece is the fourth episode, MM=71 where a fast articulate beginning progrssively disperses into shifting bass resonances"

He goes on to point out that at a time when the music seems almost to stand still (like a tape-recorder slowing down) we hear very rapid grace notes in the highest register, as if descending from an ultra-sonic region. (i.e. we can now hear these frequencies because the music has slowed down.