Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)

Subject: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 08 Dec 07 - 06:43 PM

Karlheinz Stockhausen died yesterday, age 79.

His music along with John Cage had a powerful influence on me as a child. With a reel to reel recorder and two tracks my brother and I explored a world where EVERYTHING had music ...it only needed to be discovered - clocks, bottles, water, gas, fire, papers, pipes - what fun!

Nice review of his influence here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aHnVNGrn2tHc&refer=home

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: Peace
Date: 08 Dec 07 - 06:49 PM

I first heard him back in the very early 1960s and was taken by what we then called "electronic music", much of which predated/led the way for some rock and roll forms that followed. The older people around us called it noise. We called it "Gee, I wonder what we should call that?" It opened areas of, as you said, Gargoyle, music. Made it the domain of all things, not an elite. He seemed to bridge areas of music where there WERE no areas. Sorry to hear of his death. Thanks for posting.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: MoorleyMan
Date: 08 Dec 07 - 07:06 PM

Like all men of true genius, he composed some truly beautiful music and some damnably impenetrable music, but all of it singularly uncompromising and highly original.

Yes, Peace - I too went through the "music not noise" argument with my contemporaries, one which still rages to this day in certain quarters, for although so many weird and wonderful kinds of musical creation are accepted today as music, a large number of Stockhausen's compositions are still "beyond the pale" for many folks. And his influence is more wide-ranging than some will admit.

RIP, Herr Stockhausen.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: Peace
Date: 08 Dec 07 - 11:43 PM

From Youtube.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: autolycus
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 05:22 AM

They played about 50 seconds of Stockhausen's Ylem at the end of the BBC's weekly arts review prog., Newsnight Review. The esteemed critics make up the prog didn't discuss him at all.

[But then, they discuss the latest novel, film, play,inreresting pop, TV prog (have you spotted the connection?), plus latest art work, however avantgarde (including the one just consisting of lights being turned on and off): they never discuss the latest classical music (except for opera). And that points up the connection - words.]

The excerpt was mesmeric. There is something gripping about it and I still don't leap towards his music.


As for the point about elitism, I've realised that vast numbers are elitist in all sorts of fields from association football to fashion, restaurants to entertainment, and so on.

It's just that other words are used instead of 'elitist'.Like         
Premiership (football, implying that anything else is beneath us power-couple
A-list
5-star
supermodel
quality
celebrity (someone who is famous for being famous)
luxury
upmarket
the .... to be seen with, wearing,etc.

and so on and so on.

Even 'the greatest'.

   RIP Mr.Stockhausen

Ivor

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 07:10 AM

My composition teacher at college was at Darmstadt the same time that Boulez & co were, and the influence on him was so profound that he destroyed all the music he had written up to then, and was - as he put it - born anew from that time onwards. I find that I prefer more conventional music, but I certainly learned a lot in that class. He used to set us atonal-composition exercises that were as tightly constrained by rules as the strictest classical harmony & counterpoint, saying that we would find freedom within discipline. I didn't produce any masterpieces, but it did stretch my mind around a whole new way of writing and listening, and bring to consciousness a previously-subterranean world.

A related memory stands out in my mind: I often visited a friend who shared a large flat with several others, and one of their frequent callers was the then-percussionist of the Boston Symphony. One day he walked in with a big carry-all shopping bag, filled with what looked like little bits of builders' rubble. Without a word he then proceeded to empty its contents onto the dining room table. It still looked like builders' rubble (and was, stuff he'd found lying around on some vacant lot somewhere). One of us asked him what all that junk was, and he replied simply, "It's music." Then he picked up the various objects and - there's no other word for it - played them. It was spellbinding, and we were all mesmerised. The man (now dead) was a true artist and he managed to unlock the music in these bits of metal, concrete and glass that others had thrown out. Small wonder that he held one of the top percussion jobs in the country. I am reminded of this by Gargoyle's statement above - "clocks, bottles, water, gas, fire, papers, pipes". He would have agreed totally (and then proceeded to demonstrate the principle, brilliantly, with whatever lay to hand).

I saw this thread when it was first put up, and at that time the link had no clickie (or maybe it was just my computer being recalcitrant). So I copied-&-pasted, and then the fun began. For some reason it totally flummoxed my browser, which kept flashing onto different pages I had just been to (no unknown websites so it wasn't a hi-jack) and it seemed to particularly like my Mudcat past visits. For ages I could NOT get it to behave itself (reminded me of the photocopy machine taking on a life of its own in the movie Nine To Five). And the merrier the dance I was led, the more determined I became to FIND the damn thing. Eventually the fiery fox managed to hunt it down. I can't help but think that KS would have been amused.

R.I.P.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: Stu
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 08:10 AM

As has been said, he paved the way for many avant-garde musical experiments over a vast range of styles. This influence is seeping into the mainstream and even folk music - some of the glitchy nu-folk of groups like Tunng might not have existed without the pioneering work of Stockhausen.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: autolycus
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 12:32 PM

And, fwiw, Pail McCartney is a fan.

Really interesting, Bonnie. "we were all mesmerised". Says it all.

Ivor

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: Micca
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 05:00 PM

Didnt he parody his own and other avantguardists work for the Late Gerard Hoffnungs concerts at the South Bank here in London UK? (under a pseudonim of course)IF I recall this consisted og an extremely atonal exchange between a pair of male singers with an "accompaniment" of noises in German, the text was given and translated in the program and the English version was as follows
Verse 1
Voice 1" who was that Lady I am after seeing you with last evening"
Voice 2 " That was no lady that was my wife
Verse 2
Voice 1" Who was that woman I am after seeing you with with last evening"
Voice 2 " That was no woman that was my brother, he walks in this fashion"

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 06:37 PM

I can appreciate bringing music to people through "found" objects...street kids musicians have been doing it for years, but theirs is full of variety, sometimes tonal, sometimes full, sometimes minimal; always listenable. As in the provided link, I still find his stuff boring and pretentious and un-listenable. I know I am partially prejudice because of the following:

The professors at Denver University and Southern Illinois were so enamoured of him they told students who wrote anything tonal that their stuff was no good, would never be heard, etc., etc. and would throw it out. It took years for some of the students, including my brother, to get their professors' voices out of their heads, believe they had a valid voice and could write tonal, beautiful music, even blend some dissonance into it without losing the integrity of what they heard/felt within as they composed.

I don't wish him any ill will and it is sad that he has passed on, but I can't say I'll miss his music.

kat

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: GUEST,282RA
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 09:34 PM

I'm having a hard time finding Stockhausen in digital format. I had a number of vinyl recordings of his stuff when I was a teen. One 3-CD set I have that I am quite fond of is "OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music: 1948-1980" It has some important pieces as Pierre Schaeffer's 1948 piece "Etude aux Chemins de Fer" which is a tape splice piece of a needle riding in record grooves that sounds very much like a train station. John Cage's tape collage "Williams Mix" from 1952. Todd Dockstader's "Apocalypse--Part 2" from 1961 is also on it. I've always liked Dockstader. It has Milton Babbit, Terry Riley, David Tudor, Joji Yuasa, Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Edgard Varese, Morton Subotnick, La Monte Young, Clara Rockmore, Raymond Scott & his electronium, Pauline Oliveros and others. Liner notes by Brian Eno. It also has Stockhausen's "Kontakte" from 1960.

Ironically, we have the Nazis to thank for Stockhausen who despised the regime and its strict military rhythms and sought to rebel against it. He and Cage convinced me to use tape recorders as musical instruments in and of themselves. I created minute-long pieces that contained 200 splices. I became an expert splicer. I ran loops through 2, sometimes 3, playback heads successively. I played tin cans, brake drums, pans with water in them, car engines starting backwards in slow speed. I even played my mother's Hammond organ through fuzz boxes, phasers and wah-wah pedals. We even had a cheap Commodore computer that enabled you to specify a note by number and I would spend hours typing in numbers to come up with little melodies or would do it randomly and then loop it together. I would play the loop through the TV and warp the shit out of the Hammond simultaneously and record it on a reel-to-reel in my mother's living room. This would be a composition in itself but then I could also copy that tape onto another reel and cut it up as splices and create entirely new pieces. I created stereo pieces that put two entirely different sounds in each ear and listen back through headphones in an effort to force the brain to split.

In the 70s, I messed around with Moogs and Arps but couldn't afford one. I'd go to music stores that had them and would spend all day playing them--learning everything I could about them--until the storeowners threw me out. I learned how a control voltage was generated, amplified and filtered and how filters changed the sound characteristics of the signal and how patch cords routed it through various FX and triggers.

Today I record with synths, a sampler and digital sequencing software although nobody hears them but me and what few people I can trap long enough to listen to a piece or two.

It was both fun and very informative and likely had a lot to do with why I went to recording engineer school later in life after leaving the service. Even in the service, I and a shipmate, made used to make avant-garde pieces with his little Fostex cassette multitracker. Plenty of stuff on a Navy ship to record.

So, thank you, Herr Stockhausen. I'd be a far less imaginative musician today were it not for you. Thank you.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: M.Ted
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 11:47 PM

I think that Stockhausen wanted us to hear what music really was, not simply what it had become. You must learn to listen to Stockhausen, which really means simply that you must learn to listen. Stockhausen's sensibilities were very close to sensibilities of the monkey chanters, the throat singers, the gamelan players, and the many other "primitives" whose music is really experiential.

It is difficult to overestimate the impact of his work--he redefined the palate, he reinvented the tools, and he gave composers and listeners a new way of looking at themselves.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 12:38 AM

I don't want to be disrespectful to those of you who have posted. So, I will just say I would in no way compare throat singers, etc. with Stockhausen. I am a big fan of throat singers and other "primitives" as you say.

katbowingoutnow

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 12:56 AM

Now that I have read these 'confessions', I understand some of you better!

:-)

I can tolerate his music from time to time, but I still say that S{ike Jones could do it better!

:-P

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Dec 07 - 12:42 PM

Here's the press release...

Subject: Stockhausen Farewell / IMPORTANT PRESS RELEASE
From: Stockhausen-Verlag
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 17:04:59 +0100

"The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th 2007 at
his home in Kuerten-Kettenberg and will be buried in the Waldfriedhof
(forest cemetery) in Kuerten. He composed 362 individually performable
works. The works which were composed until 1969 are published by
Universal Edition in Vienna, and all works since then are published by
the Stockhausen-Verlag. Numerous texts by Stockhausen and about his
works have been published by the Stockhausen Foundation for Music.

Suzanne Stephens and Kathinka Pasveer, who have performed many of his
works and, together with him, have taken care of the scores, compact
discs, books, films, flowers, shrubs, and trees will continue to
disseminate his work throughout the world, as prescribed in the statutes
of the Stockhausen Foundation for Music, of which they are executive
board members.

Stockhausen always said that GOD gave birth to him and calls him
home…for love is stronger than death.

IN FRIENDSHIP and gratitude for everything that he has given to us
personally and to humanity through his love and his music, we bid
FAREWELL to Karlheinz Stockhausen, who lived to bring celestial music to
humans, and human music to the celestial beings, so that Man may listen
to GOD and GOD may hear His children. On December 5th he ascended with
JOY through HEAVEN'S DOOR, in order to continue to compose in PARADISE
with COSMIC PULSES in eternal HARMONY, as he had always hoped to do:
You, who summon me to Heaven, Eva, Mikael and Maria, let me eternally
compose music for Heaven's Father-Mother, GOD creator of Cosmic Music.
May Saint Michael, together with Heaven's musicians in ANGEL PROCESSIONS
and INVISIBLE CHOIRS welcome him with a fitting musical GREETING.

On behalf of him and following his example, we will endeavor to continue
to protect the music. Suzanne Stephens and Kathinka Pasveer, in the name
of the world-wide family of musicians who love him, together with
everyone who loves his music.

On Thursday, December 13th 2007, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. it will be
possible to personally say farewell to Karlheinz Stockhausen in the
chapel of the Waldfriedhof in Kuerten (Kastanienstrasse). A
commemorative concert will take place soon at the Sülztalhalle in
Kuerten. Programme, time and date will be specially announced."

Kathinka Pasveer
for the Stockhausen Foundation for Music
Kettenberg 15
51515 Kuerten, Germany
http://www.stockhausen.org
Also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,2224071,00.html

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: GUEST,Flageolettist
Date: 27 Dec 07 - 04:27 PM

Readers may be interested in this summary of the great man's compositional techniques:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZYzbkk5X4M

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: GUEST,Curtis T
Date: 28 Dec 07 - 10:31 PM

God bless him - a shining example to us all. Who needs talent when people are so gullible?

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 29 Dec 07 - 04:23 AM

Yeah, guests, whatever...

How about letting him rest in peace?

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: GUEST,Curtis T
Date: 29 Dec 07 - 01:13 PM

I expect that is exactly what he's doing.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: autolycus
Date: 29 Dec 07 - 01:21 PM

U recommend you to Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective for any number of attacks on the great and the good.

If I remember, Tchaikovsky thought Brahms was mostly a con.


Ivor

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: GUEST,Curtis T
Date: 29 Dec 07 - 01:47 PM

Thanks Ivor, I'll enjoy that. Meanwhile, I'm off back to Sirius; you earthlings have got no taste.

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: autolycus
Date: 29 Dec 07 - 03:22 PM

Think that's known in the trade as a sweeping generalisation

Ivor

Subject: RE: Obit: Karlheinz Stockhausen (7 Dec 2007)
From: GUEST,Curtis T
Date: 29 Dec 07 - 03:50 PM

It was meant to be ;-)