Ekmeles vocal ensemble gives their annual Valentine’s Day performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s landmark 1968 work Stimmung. The work is a touchstone of 20th century composition, a meditative concert-length work wholly based around a single tone and its acoustically tuned overtones. The spirit of the 60s is present not only in the work’s experimental striving, but also its personal eroticism, which inspired Ekmeles’s Valentine’s Day tradition and the title and motto for the event: Stimmung is for lovers.

Stimmung translates literally to “tuning”, and also can refer to “atmosphere” or “harmony”, encompassing both the theoretical focus of the work, and its meditative aspects. Composed while Stockhausen was living on Long Island Sound in Connecticut, Stimmung is a captivating balance between intellectual rigor and spiritual exploration. The pitch material of the work is derived from a single low Bb, overtones of which the singers articulate on pulsing rhythmic patterns of vowels. Treating each of the overtones of this fundamental Bb as new fundamentals on which to produce overtones, Stockhausen multiplies the timbral possibilities of the work into the hypnotic and rich textures it is known for.

Director and baritone Jeffrey Gavett will be joined by sopranos Charlotte Mundy and Amber Evans, countertenor Timothy Parsons, tenor Tomás Cruz, and bass Steven Hrycelak.