250605 Combustion 1/a

From today's playlist 228
Holger Czukay

An unreleased track by Holger Czukay, who passed away in 2017. It's a new release from Grönland Records. That alone is enough to make me happy, but the song itself is also wonderful.

It would likely be classified as so-called ambient, but it is by no means a "calm, relaxing, non-emotional atmospheric sound" (Nippon Hyakka Zensho). Rather, it is a taut, tense sound that forces the listener to stay alert. The 32-minute and 8-second runtime feels very short.

Regarding what kind of person Czukay was, Tsutomu Machida's obituary is excellent. I laughed out loud, especially at the part about his Stockhausen connection.

It is valuable just to have Stockhausen's joke recorded: "None of my students succeeded, except for one. Holger Czukay. He was the only one who didn't imitate me."

Czukay was born in 1938 and died in 2017 at the age of 79. Stockhausen was born in 1928 and also died in 2007 at the age of 79.

The lives of these two men, separated by only ten years, intersected between 1963 and 1966. Stockhausen held the Cologne Courses for New Music (Kölner Kurse für Neue Musik) for five years starting in 1963. Czukay was among those first students.

"The ear is the first instrument." I remember reading somewhere that Czukay said something to that effect as something he learned from Stockhausen.

I have been looking for that text for a long time, but I haven't found it yet. I might be confusing it with something someone else said. Even if that were the case, there is no doubt that this piece is one played with one's own "ears."