What is Plura-Monism?

WHAT IS PLURA-MONISM, or, who is Pluramon? An answer by Stockhausen follows:

I've called this [the end of the Fourth Region of Hymnen] the hymn of PLURAMON, who is a symbiotic being combining aspects of both a pluralist and a monist. And I say he lives in the Harmondie ...a region, let's say like Texas, ruled by Pluramon.... Pluramon combines the being of a pluralist, who really wants to keep the multiple and not destroy it, and the monist, who is always looking for the "one," for unification and integration. (Cott 1974, 144)

Stockhausen tries to bring the one and the multiple, the single and the whole to a special unity. This universal unity, however, causes contention and confusion. Faced with the double negation (neither resolution into a kind of utopian, undifferentiated totality, nor into a separately multicultural collage) and between "the multiple" and "the one," we remain in obscurity.

Now, it is surely not difficult to encounter this curious coupling of singular and plural, particularity and totality by Stockhausen. Examples follow:

This goal of bringing the particular and the whole into unity stands above all work, despite the detailed questions of a just newly introduced extensive process of systemization, and ought not to be forgotten. (Stockhausen 1963, 59)

Concentration is essential: multiplicity within unity. (Stockhausen 1963, 26)

In the character of the latest music one can recognize that a reorientation from wishful listening into a meditative listening will take place, involved in the general mental transformation from the extremely individual to the personally collective (Personlich-Kollektiven) (Stockhausen 1963, 17)