Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Credentials or "Think, Think Lucky", for voice (speaker) and 8 players (1960)
Cathy Berberian, voice
Ensemble des Sudwestfunk-Sinfonie-Orchesters, Baden-Baden
Hans Rosbaud
The text is Lucky's monologue from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, written in 1952: the most important dramatic work of our time. Beckett calls it "a comedy." Instead of Godot, Pozzo appears (from the right side of the stage); a gentleman. In his right hand he holds a whip. In his left, a rope, the other end of which is tied like a noose around the neck of Lucky, his servant.
Lucky carries two suitcases containing provisions for his master. He might be given a bone from the chicken Pozzo just ate. Pozzo is a good master, and Lucky is lucky.
Furthermore, Lucky has a comical ability that can serve his—the master's—amusement and that of others, if the master so commands: he can "think." This can be "dangerous," as Pozzo explains to Didi and Gogo, but it's still "funny." Funny enough to risk the potential danger. To be able to "think," Lucky simply needs a hat placed on his head. Firstly, he can't do without a hat, and secondly, if things should get dangerous, the hat can be quickly removed. The danger will then be over. It's that simple. "Think, think Lucky!"
Although words, like old banknotes, can be used for a thousand different things, those who wish to unravel the semantics of language are confronted with difficulties at several levels of this semantics. There is the semantics of the individual word – then that of the sentence, of the context, of the structure, and of grammatical rules, and finally the semantics of the entire narrative, the "story," the "message."
In Finnegans Wake, James Joyce destroys the semantics of words through new word combinations and inventions: the newly assembled genes become new language molecules. The no-longer-functioning unambiguity is elevated to a consciously controlled ambiguity, to a new art of language.
Beckett shatters the semantics of the sentence by abolishing punctuation. In doing so, he destroys the semantics of context and structure: his "never-ending" sentence thus becomes the entire "story," which—in turn reduced to a single sentence—is stripped of its own semantics.
Who says there's no semantics in music? There's the "semantics of pre-existing material." There's the "semantics of known context" and that of "learned form."
Since all of this is anchored in the “stability” and “unambiguous” nature of the process, it can only be destroyed by the fundamentally new relationship between the material and the microstructures and by the variability of the newly invented forms.
The text, that is, the desemanticized “one-sentence story” of the monologue, is composed as a “stable” continuity through the application of all possible nuances of spoken word – from singing to speech, to shouting and to percussive effects.
The voice is accompanied by eight instrumental "mobiles." One could also describe the overall form of Credentials as a "stabile" accompanied by an eight-part mobile. The musical form of the mobile arises when two or more "cycles" of unequal length—that is, closed, circularly recurring structures—are simultaneously in "circulation." A cycle can be understood and notated as a line or a plane.
In Credentials, all instrumental mobiles are notated as surfaces: The rectangular surfaces are divided into squares like a chessboard. Within these squares, individual structures or parts of longer structures are notated.
The fields can be read horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, from top to bottom, bottom to top, and vice versa, from left to right. This results in 16 readings, or 16 different versions, interpretations of the mobiles notated as a surface. If several or even all versions are played simultaneously, my idea of the "dynamically closed form" is fulfilled, which, based on the principle of "always the same, always different," finds its crystallization in the form of the "mobile."
Lucky's monologue is an absurd, ambiguous "aria" about the "origin of the world" and human existence. It breaks off at the word "Unfinished"; Lucky becomes agitated, his "thinking" dangerous. So, "Hats off!", "Unfinished".
Similar to a musical mobile, this “aria” can be started again in order to tell – with a changed interpretation – “a different story with the same words” about our existence. --Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
Art by Caspar David Friedrich
Credentials or "Think, Think Lucky", for voice (speaker) and 8 players (1960)
Cathy Berberian, voice
Ensemble des Sudwestfunk-Sinfonie-Orchesters, Baden-Baden
Hans Rosbaud
The text is Lucky's monologue from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, written in 1952: the most important dramatic work of our time. Beckett calls it "a comedy." Instead of Godot, Pozzo appears (from the right side of the stage); a gentleman. In his right hand he holds a whip. In his left, a rope, the other end of which is tied like a noose around the neck of Lucky, his servant.
Lucky carries two suitcases containing provisions for his master. He might be given a bone from the chicken Pozzo just ate. Pozzo is a good master, and Lucky is lucky.
Furthermore, Lucky has a comical ability that can serve his—the master's—amusement and that of others, if the master so commands: he can "think." This can be "dangerous," as Pozzo explains to Didi and Gogo, but it's still "funny." Funny enough to risk the potential danger. To be able to "think," Lucky simply needs a hat placed on his head. Firstly, he can't do without a hat, and secondly, if things should get dangerous, the hat can be quickly removed. The danger will then be over. It's that simple. "Think, think Lucky!"
Although words, like old banknotes, can be used for a thousand different things, those who wish to unravel the semantics of language are confronted with difficulties at several levels of this semantics. There is the semantics of the individual word – then that of the sentence, of the context, of the structure, and of grammatical rules, and finally the semantics of the entire narrative, the "story," the "message."
In Finnegans Wake, James Joyce destroys the semantics of words through new word combinations and inventions: the newly assembled genes become new language molecules. The no-longer-functioning unambiguity is elevated to a consciously controlled ambiguity, to a new art of language.
Beckett shatters the semantics of the sentence by abolishing punctuation. In doing so, he destroys the semantics of context and structure: his "never-ending" sentence thus becomes the entire "story," which—in turn reduced to a single sentence—is stripped of its own semantics.
Who says there's no semantics in music? There's the "semantics of pre-existing material." There's the "semantics of known context" and that of "learned form."
Since all of this is anchored in the “stability” and “unambiguous” nature of the process, it can only be destroyed by the fundamentally new relationship between the material and the microstructures and by the variability of the newly invented forms.
The text, that is, the desemanticized “one-sentence story” of the monologue, is composed as a “stable” continuity through the application of all possible nuances of spoken word – from singing to speech, to shouting and to percussive effects.
The voice is accompanied by eight instrumental "mobiles." One could also describe the overall form of Credentials as a "stabile" accompanied by an eight-part mobile. The musical form of the mobile arises when two or more "cycles" of unequal length—that is, closed, circularly recurring structures—are simultaneously in "circulation." A cycle can be understood and notated as a line or a plane.
In Credentials, all instrumental mobiles are notated as surfaces: The rectangular surfaces are divided into squares like a chessboard. Within these squares, individual structures or parts of longer structures are notated.
The fields can be read horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, from top to bottom, bottom to top, and vice versa, from left to right. This results in 16 readings, or 16 different versions, interpretations of the mobiles notated as a surface. If several or even all versions are played simultaneously, my idea of the "dynamically closed form" is fulfilled, which, based on the principle of "always the same, always different," finds its crystallization in the form of the "mobile."
Lucky's monologue is an absurd, ambiguous "aria" about the "origin of the world" and human existence. It breaks off at the word "Unfinished"; Lucky becomes agitated, his "thinking" dangerous. So, "Hats off!", "Unfinished".
Similar to a musical mobile, this “aria” can be started again in order to tell – with a changed interpretation – “a different story with the same words” about our existence. --Roman Haubenstock-Ramati
Art by Caspar David Friedrich
