Joy : Freude

Joy : Freude is a staged reinterpretation of Freude for two singing harpists from KLANG by Karlheinz Stockhausen, performed by Cara Dawson and Gabriella Jones. The project retains the original musical score while transforming the perceptual and performative conditions through which the work is experienced. Through staging, costume, and spatial design, Freude is reframed as a contemporary performance situated between concert, ritual, and performance art.

Written in 2005, Freude is part of Stockhausen’s late cycle KLANG, a series exploring the hours of the day through a ritualised musical language. Scored for two singing harpists, the work combines instrumental performance with spoken and sung text from the Pentecost hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, creating a structure centred on breath, resonance, and shared sound. The performers remain fundamentally instrumentalists, with the voice functioning as an extension of harp practice rather than as a separate role. The work unfolds as a continuous, ritual-like structure in which the two performers operate as a single, expanded instrument.  In his programme notes, Stockhausen describes imagining “two Dutch harpist-girls,” “both 21 years old,” who “live and perform together,” dressed in white. This reflects a highly specific image of youth, purity, and unity. 

Joy : Freude engages directly with this framing, retaining the intensity and precision of the work while critically re-examining how female performers are represented. The project approaches the score with a dual commitment: fidelity to Stockhausen’s musical and conceptual vision, and a contemporary interpretative perspective that foregrounds embodiment, authorship, and agency.

Visually, Cara and Gabriella engage with this legacy not as muses, but as authors. The focus shifts toward the tension between innocence, sensuality, and autonomy. The harp’s long-standing association with angelic and feminised imagery becomes a point of departure rather than a fixed identity. Drawing on the work’s spiritual context, Veni Creator Spiritus, and figures such as the harping angel Don Luigi, the performers are positioned as active agents within the space rather than symbolic figures within it.

The staging, developed in collaboration with stage director and scenographer Raphael R. Jacobs, is minimal, precise, and conceived as a sequence of tableaux vivants. The performers inhabit sculptural, time-based visual states that evolve gradually over the course of the work. Cara and Gabriella were inspired by the photographic language of Horst P. Horst, particularly his images of Lisa Fonssagrives with harp, the visual concept combines neoclassical composition with a heightened awareness of sensuality, form, and light. Sculptural poses, shadow, and mirroring establish a strong connection between body and instrument, reflecting the internal duality of Freude, in which two harps function as one expanded instrument.  Stockhausen’s broader compositional thinking, particularly his structuring of time in KLANG and its relationship to light forms an important conceptual reference for the staging process. The association of Freude with a specific hour of the day informs the temporal and visual dramaturgy, shaping the pacing, light, and perceptual atmosphere of the performance.  While Horst’s work often presents the female figure as an idealised subject, this project repositions that imagery through an expanded performative framework. Costuming in layered white textiles references ceremonial contexts; bridal, christening, sacred, while lace and sheer materials exist between concealment and exposure, holding purity and sensuality in tension. Ribbons connect the harpists to each other and to their instruments, functioning both as visual lines and as markers of constraint and interdependence. A circular veil defines the performance space at the outset and is later removed, marking a transition from enclosure to exposure. A mirrored floor reflects and doubles both performers and instruments, introducing questions of perception, identity, and the gaze.

The innovation of Joy : Freude lies in its expansion of Stockhausen’s original conception into a fully realised interdisciplinary performance format. The integration of tableaux vivant staging, embodied performance practice, and visual dramaturgy creates a hybrid form between concert, installation, and performance art. In this way, the project not only decontextualises a rarely performed work, but also contributes to broader discussions on interpretation, authorship, and the role of the performer within contemporary music.