Flautina, Nr. ex. 56 (1/2)

The Licht opera project, originally titled Hikari (光 , Japanese for "light"), originated with a piece for dancers and Gagaku orchestra commissioned by the National Theatre in Tokyo. Titled Jahreslauf (Course of the Years), this piece became the first act of Dienstag. Another important Japanese influence is from Noh theater, which the composer cites in connection with his conception of stage action (Stockhausen, Conen, and Hennlich 1989, 282). The cycle also draws on elements from the Judeo-Christian and Vedic traditions (Bruno 1999, 134). The title of Licht owes something to Sri Aurobindo's theory of "Agni" (the Hindu and Vedic fire deity), developed from two basic premises of nuclear physics, and Stockhausen's conception of the Licht superformula also owes a great deal to Sri Aurobindo's category of the "supramental" (Peters 2003, 227). It is centered on three main characters, Michael, Eve, and Lucifer.