Karlheinz Stockhausen RIP

[ahinton]

...today...

[Kassaa]

Yeah I heard it. Weirdly enough my harmony teacher told my this afternoon how Stockhausen's work was funded by by the CIA because they thought it would kill german culture (after WWII because they wanted Germany to never have any culture or intelligence that could help them in starting another war (like Wagner's music could for example)). I came home and my little brother immediately told me that some composer died, it was Stockhausen.

RIP

[indutrial]

that's too bad...My sentiments (for what they're worth) go out to his son Marcus and the rest of his family and friends. Though heavily controversial, he will definitely be missed by loads of players and composers in the music world.

     

[mcgillcomposer]

...be careful what you wish for...

The other day, I made a snide remark on the forum wishing that Stockhausen would stop composing music...

[dnephi]

)

[indutrial]

...be careful what you wish for...

The other day, I made a snide remark on the forum wishing that Stockhausen would stop composing music...

This might have been a good thought to keep to one's self. I'm hoping that some of the folks on this forum will at least wait until after the funeral to start pissing all over him again.

[mcgillcomposer]

This might have been a good thought to keep to one's self. I'm hoping that some of the folks on this forum will at least wait until after the funeral to start pissing all over him again.

The tone of my message was not clear at all. I am actually feeling bad having made that remark...that is what I was trying to get across.

[indutrial]

The tone of my message was not clear at all. I am actually feeling bad having made that remark...that is what I was trying to get across.

Understood. I assumed because your signature was still that anti-Stockhausen line.

[jlh]

PRESS RELEASE
 
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 byUniversal Editionin Vienna, and all works since then are published by theStockhausen-Verlag. Numerous texts by Stockhausen and about his works have been published by theStockhausen 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 todisseminate his work throughout the world, as prescribed in the statutes of theStockhausen 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 tobring 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 HEAVENS 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 Heavens Father-Mother, GOD creator of Cosmic Music.
May Saint Michael, together with Heavens 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 theSlztalhallein Kuerten. Programme, time and date will be specially announced.

[pies]

Shitty news.  I just started listening to Henck's recording of his klavierstucke a few days ago. 

[maxreger]

RIP... 

[soliloquy]

I think Stockhausen has been dead for a while now.

[indutrial]

I think Stockhausen has been dead for awhile now.

yeah, and the only evidence of you breathing life are the smug comments you can't seem to resist uttering. I'd put money on Stockhausen's life still retaining more significance than yours by the time you croak 70-80 years from now.

[maxreger]

Feel free to put 8 figures on that bet and you will win... soliloguy is a big wikipidia talker with not much real substance outside of using big names in his posts and reading some uni thesis from others online. 

yeah, and the only evidence of you breathing life are the smug comments you can't seem to resist uttering. I'd put money on Stockhausen's life still retaining more significance than yours by the time you croak 70-80 years from now.

[indutrial]

It's not quite my intention to make this thread about Soliloquy (since he's already been granted that in the past). If anybody else here had made that post, I would have felt the same sentiments towards that individual, though Soliloquy is definitely known for grade-A snarkiness. What would have really thrown me is if Alastair had made that comment. 

[soliloquy]

Oh right, I guess I should have more tact, seeing as how he's dead.


But any comment like that previous to his demise would have been completely fine, considering the much-worse and entirely-consistent things said about him all over this forum.  You are a poseur-intellectualite if you let some ridiculous, fantastical emotion like empathy, when in fact such is entirely meaningless and futile in this situation, override your logic.  Who exactly am I offending?  All of Stockhausen's immeadiate friends and family that litter this forum like so many of the poeple here who have much less respect for him than I do?  I have immense respect for the work Stockhausen did in the 50's, 60's and 70's.  Licht Opera and all of the works consumed under the umbrella of "Licht Opera Pieces" are a gratuitous, self-indulgent pile of abstractica for the sole purpose of being weird.   Stockhausen's demential dellusions about being some space-creature and being born in space and all that shite crippled his judgement as to what he should do with his gifts.  Even the most staunchly pro-Stockhausen critics struggle to find any reason to appreciate the insanity that is Licht Cycle.


And I would also bet that Stockhausen's life will have a greater effect on the world than mine; I do not suspect his last 30 years will though, at least not in the field of composition, as you would be hard-pressed to find any.

[indutrial]

Oh right, I guess I should have more tact, seeing as how he's dead.

But any comment like that previous to his demise would have been completely fine,

I could understand a joke like that being aimed directly at somebody who had a wholly useless leffect on the world's progress or the arts, but I wouldn't brand Stockhausen with something like that. We've all heard that jibe thrown around at people like Ronald Reagan ("he's been dead for years, but nobody told him so") but it's a different scenario entirely. It's not like Stockhausen was a blight on the classical music world or anything. The works of his you consider so lacking are pretty obscure and completely insular in terms of market share (didn't Stockhausen take total control over his recorded output in the later years).

I'm not trying to pose as some kind of empathy-laden sap. How can you bust on me about being a psuedo-intellectual when you're just acting like a smug firebrand and goading people with sharp comments only to run back to your wide musical knowledge as a justification for the goad. He died. Let him be dead for a little while before you pull out the surgeon's tools.

[ahinton]

Phew! A little lightening seems to be in order here.

We all know the Beecham barb, but few probably know that of Sorabji who, having read a UK newspaper article in the 1970s entitled Stockhausen's Cosmic Trips , took his red pen and, by the mere transposition of a single "s", turned it into Stockhausen's Comic Strips. And then there's the later and far more famous remark made about him by John McEnroe on the one occasion that he met him; you remember the one - "you cain't be Sirius?!". Long before either, the ageing Medtner, living as he was in north London at the time, commented upon Stockhausen's inappropriate yet characteristic arrogance in the title Stimmung; thinking of his own Op. 1 many years earlier, he remarked "you just can't get b(u)ilders when you want them, can you?!)...

OK, I made that last one up.

Ah, well - back to the topic.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

We've all heard that jibe thrown around at people like Ronald Reagan ("he's been dead for years, but nobody told him so")

It's a Dorothy Parker-ism that originated with her being told of the demise of Calvin Coolidge and replying "how can they tell?"...

Best,

Alistair

[webern78]

Yeah I heard it. Weirdly enough my harmony teacher told my this afternoon how Stockhausen's work was funded by by the CIA because they thought it would kill german culture (after WWII because they wanted Germany to never have any culture or intelligence that could help them in starting another war (like Wagner's music could for example)). I came home and my little brother immediately told me that some composer died, it was Stockhausen.

RIP

Where did he get that piece of information?

Apparently, he was also Satan's little helper:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E2D8123AF933A0575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

[dnephi]

I could see Ornstein saying those things...

"Death on an airplane"??

[Kassaa]

Where did he get that piece of information?

Apparently, he was also Satan's little helper:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E2D8123AF933A0575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

He studied with Stockhausen in The Hague, that's probably where he got it from.