Alphabet für Liège

[1] There are thirteen scenes, or musical images, each illustrating the physical effects of sound, ranging from making acoustic vibrations visible to a demonstration of Asian mantra techniques.

These ideas were developed in conversations with the British biophysicist and lecturer on mystical aspects of sound vibration Jill Purce, who also called Stockhausen's attention to the work of Hans Jenny.

[2][3] In a radio interview three months before the premiere, Stockhausen explained his purpose was to show "how sound waves always change the molecules, even the atoms of a being who listens to music, making them vibrate.

[4] Alphabet was created as a commission from the City of Liège on the initiative of Philippe Boesmans, for the Nuits de Septembre festival, and was premiered during a "Journée Karlheinz Stockhausen" on 23 September 1972.

The venue chosen for the premiere consisted of fourteen still-empty areas, all leading off of a central corridor, in the basement level of the half-completed radio and television building in the Palais des congrès de Liège [fr], before the wall coverings, doors, and office partitions had been installed.

[5][6] Performers included members of the British instrumental group Gentle Fire (Hugh Davies, Michael Robinson, Richard Bernas, Stuart Jones), five of the six members of the vocal ensemble Collegium Vocale Köln (Wolfgang Fromme, Dagmar von Biel, Hans-Alderich Billig, Karl O. Barkey, and Helga Hamm), Rosalind Davies, Dr. Johannes Kneutgen (an ethologist working at the Max Planck Institute who studied, amongst other things, bird song,[7] mammals, and fish,[8] and later worked in music therapy,[9]) violist Joachim Krist, recorder players and singers Michael Vetter and Atsuko Iwami, pianist Herbert Henck [de], and vocalist Jill Purce, with Péter Eötvös as "musical leader".

There are thirty "letters" in all: the familiar twenty-six of the English alphabet, plus SCHnell (rapid), SPringen (leap), STören (disturb), and Übergang zu (transition to).

[5] Events are coordinated by acoustic signals given by a "musical leader": Japanese chimes (kane and rin) mark each minute; sustained tones mark the sequence of moments (the ends of which are "erased" by the sound of shaken bundles of Indian pellet bells); twice in every hour the coordinator runs through the space shaking strings of camel bells, which causes all activity to cease.

[18]Another writer has recalled an "infamous" French series of experiments with a "super-whistle" in the 1960s that demonstrated that very powerful low-frequency sounds (in the 5–8 Hz range) could interfere with the biorhythms of living creatures, to the extent of killing cattle, and warns that Alphabet's situation 9 ("harmonize the seven centres of the body") could prove similarly hazardous if done "scientifically ... with physical vibrations coordinated to biological and brain rhythms".

After the 1972 world premiere in Belgium, the first French performance took place in the context of a cycle of eleven Stockhausen works at the La Rochelle Festival during the two weeks before Easter 1973.

This performance was in a particularly beautiful natural setting: At the foot of the great cliff of Sainte-Baume, high above a Provence cut up by highways, magic took precedence over futuristic technology.