Stockhausen's Cocktail Bar Menu, 26 cocktail recipes re-arranged using the musical graphic score “Studie II” by Karlheinz Stockhausen (Vilnius' Contemporary Art Center publication, edition of 1000)

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In the 1950s German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928) produced a number of seminal electronic music pieces. Among them - “Studie II” - the first electronic piece with a score. This graphic score consists of very precise indications of such acoustic parameters as duration, frequency, volume and superimposition. In “Stockhausen’s Cocktail Bar Menu” all these parameters are replaced to the ones of alcoholic beverages.

Duration (cm/sec.) corresponds to the amount (ml) of beverage. Frequency (Hz) corresponds to the amount of alcohol (ABV %) contained in the beverage. Volume (dB) corresponds to the temperature (°C) of the beverage, though this parameter is not included in “Stockhausen’s Cocktail Bar Menu”. Superimposition of sounds corresponds to such actions as mixing, shaking and blending of the beverages.

There are 26 pages in the “Studie II” score. There were selected 26 more or less famous cocktail recipes, listed in an alphabetical order and processed through the musical score, this way re-arranging cocktails’ ingredient proportions after the score’s order.

After the processing, original proportions of cocktails’ ingredients got replaced by the proportions that are within the Stockhausen’s score. Nevertheless Stockhausen’s versions of the cocktails are still consumable, only instead of the original glasses in which the cocktails should be prepared and served, larger vessels should be used.

K.Stockhausen “Studie II”, page 22 (fragment), © Stockhausen-Verlag, 1954