Ylem, Nr. 37

Ylem is "phoenix music", in that it represents the continual rebirth of the universe, according to the theory of the oscillating universe, which holds that the universe periodically explodes every 80,000,000,000 years. The title of the work is taken from the term ylem, a word used in medieval Latin, the accusative of the borrowed Greek term hylē (ὕλη, "matter"), and adopted in the 1940s by the physicists George Gamow and Ralph Alpher to refer to the essential material of the universe, in the context of the "Big Bang theory (Peters 1999, 98–99). The subject of the composition is, in short, "the 'breath' of the universe" (Lavery 1980, 21). The score is dedicated to the composer’s son Simon, who was five years old at the time of composition. It was composed in December 1972 for a tour with the London Sinfonietta, who gave the premiere on 9 March 1973 under the composer’s direction, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London (Stockhausen 1978, 212). The next evening, the same forces rehearsed and performed the piece on a live television broadcast from 10:50 to 11:30 pm on BBC2's Full House, hosted by John Bird, with questions from the studio audience and phoned in by viewers. Three studio recordings of this version were made on 21 March 1973 in the EMI Studios, London (Stockhausen 1992, 2 and 5).