I don't like Stockhausen Klavierstücke because...

[mephisto]

who cares for a musical piece that doesn't touch the heart and only speaks to the mind?
you can fill a hall with 4 professors, 20 students and a pianist plays piece by stockhausen.
ok they will clap at the end maybe. it is very complex, but what's the whole point? art, unlike math, need audience, it has no existence without audience. if it doesn't make you *feel* something than it's not even worth hearing.
so it's complex and lots of math and calculation and complex harmonies. so? it means nothing to me. maybe i'm stupid? no
i hear what makes me feel something GOOD.

It makes me feel something. And I am not just saying that. For instance I don't like Boulez 2nd sonata, but I like Stockhausen.

[pies]

a

[indutrial]

I assume he forgot the word "not" in that sentence somewhere.

Yeah, that was a typo. Your assumption is correct.

[maxreger]

-danny elfboy, you are the most insecure person I have ever seen.

I would be ashamed of having a thread like this, in fact, I would be ashamed to have said anything you have said so far in this thread (didnt even get to read it all yet).

Its clear reading this thread that you feel "you dont get" modern music, and thus have decided to reject all of it, and come up with elaborate ideas about your shortcoming. We all get it, you dont like modern music, we get it, you feel there is nothing to "understand".

We also tend to get that you are totally insecure that you really probably "dont get it", and that you think you "should" get it. Thus, your violent reaction towards it... anyway, its all silly and stupid. People like you KILL the arts for me, and disgust me.

[dnephi]

Let's talk Reger instead.  Why do so few people like him?

[maxreger]

btw, I dont much care for Stockhausen's piano music... I do however, love alot of modern music, which is another point in itself: saying MODERN music is rather like saying you dont like "modern food"... it doesnt mean anything, you are talking about 100's of schools of thought and trying to equate it to "I dont like it", like you are talking about a single entity.

Anyway, Im done with this forum for good now, I tried to come back and see what was going on, its just a sad and pathetic place. Too much stupidity, and bullshit being masked as "taste, and opinion".

99.9% of this forum will equate to nothing in the arts, and reading threads like this show why. No sense of imagination even as listeners, much less as artists.

[mephisto]

btw, I dont much care for Stockhausen's piano music... I do however, love alot of modern music, which is another point in itself: saying MODERN music is rather like saying you dont like "modern food"... it doesnt mean anything, you are talking about 100's of schools of thought and trying to equate it to "I dont like it", like you are talking about a single entity.

Anyway, Im done with this forum for good now, I tried to come back and see what was going on, its just a sad and pathetic place. Too much stupidity, and bullshit being masked as "taste, and opinion".

99.9% of this forum will equate to nothing in the arts, and reading threads like this show why. No sense of imagination even as listeners, much less as artists.

Don't you see that many people do actually dissagree with Danny's opinions? Many people here love modern music -  me being one of them.

[teresa_b]

To Teresa:
Stockhausen's alleged statement about Sept. 11th was hashed together by some scumbag journalist who wanted to debase Stockhausen's character (much the way counterpoint is trying to debase his music) by taking an abstract discussion of "Lucifer's art" and somehow treating it to make it seem like Stockhausen was finding positive aesthetic merit in the terrorist attack. Read the original statements in context before you believe everything that's written in Wikipedia. Besides, even if he did say something horrible, the argument should be about his music. Wagner was an anti-semite, but that's going to make me hate Tristan und Isolde. Playwright August Strindberg despised women, but that won't cause me to use that as a reason to say that Miss Julie is a bad play.

If you notice, I did say I didn't like his compositions already, and that after his comment, I didn't like him.  I personally have never liked most of his pieces (although there are 20th century composers whose works I do like).   I looked up what he said after his infamous comment, and he did retract it somewhat, so I forgive him.  His sin re: the 9/11 comment was really not in being hateful toward Americans, but in being perhaps a bit cavalier in conjuring up metaphors of Lucifer being personified in the horrific event. 

I had the same impression a couple of years ago, when we had a local tragedy in which a young woman killed two or three kids in a hit-and-run and was afraid to come forward.  Her narrative was picked up on by a local Professor Emeritus of English, and compared to a Greek tragedy in the newspaper.  I would have been furious had I been the mother of the children who ended up as archetypal characters in some dreamed-up modern day myth.  And so I think the 9/11 victims' families might feel when some German composer says it was "Lucifer's art". 

All the best,
Teresa

[indutrial]

Saying that 9/11 was the work of Satan doesn't sound too different from what every dickhead preacher and orator in the entire U.S. was saying (and is still saying) to people every week. But someone like Stockhausen musing on it is all of the sudden offensive. I don't think it's cavalier to say something abstract and innocuous like that, especially when there's hundreds and thousands of conspiracy theorists and politicians (including the President and his office) prostituting that event in far more offensive ways.

And, seriously, f**k journalists like the bottom-feeding vulture who decided to take a poke at Stockhausen. For someone to deliver an unfavorable answer (on something like 9/11) there usually requires an inappropriate question. If a journalist or anyone ever asked me about some tragedy, I would say nothing, because whatever you say is going to get spun around by the bullshit centrifuge called the press and your going to be filtered in the good-vs.-evil duality that most idiots contextualize everything with.

[jakev2.0]

Stockhausen is rubbish. He`s one of the few prominent composers I truly believe have not contributed a shred to the development of music.

[retrouvailles]

Stockhausen is rubbish. He`s one of the few prominent composers I truly believe have not contributed a shred to the development of music.

Well, you don't know too much about the development of music, so you don't have any grounds for criticism.

[dnephi]

Not varied enough, stylistically.  I think they're just unimaginative.

[indutrial]

Let's talk Reger instead.  Why do so few people like him?

People don't like Reger because he's one of those composers who sadly falls into comparison central whenever idiots read or write about him, despite any good or bad qualities his music may have. He precedes the loads of great neoclassical composers from the twentieth century in his extensive use of old-fashioned compositional approaches combined with early modern harmonies. Problem is, most students these days seem to think (or in the absence of thought, just act on the notion) that cerebral music (fugues, variations, heavily contrapuntal music) is solely the territory of Bach and the classicists.

Reger is also likely less popular around a forum like this because his piano work just doesn't stand out as prominently as the work of many contemporaries of his (Bartok, Debussy, late romantic composers). For the same reason, few ever discuss the piano repertoire of other neoclassicists like Milhaud, Poulenc, and Martinu, despite the fact that the music is indeed very well-crafted. Like those composers, Reger's oeuvre is also heavily spread out across other musical settings, especially chamber settings. I'm also pretty sure that Reger would receive a lot more interest in a forum for organists, since he composed extensively for that instrument. I, of course, would love if composers like him got a little more attention, but around here no one dares appreciate a composer unless their works are promoted by Lang Lang or used in Bugs Bunny cartoons.

[mephisto]

but around here no one dares appreciate a composer unless their works are promoted by Lang Lang or used in Bugs Bunny cartoons.

NOT true at all!

[term]

Stockhausen is rubbish.

agree.

I deeply dislike him and his music.

[indutrial]

NOT true at all!

I know. I exaggerate. There are certainly a few people here who really have good heads on their shoulders. They are sorely outnumbered by people with heads up their asses though. This thread's development has been a good litmus test for gauging the sheer backwardness of this forum.

[teresa_b]

Saying that 9/11 was the work of Satan doesn't sound too different from what every dickhead preacher and orator in the entire U.S. was saying (and is still saying) to people every week. But someone like Stockhausen musing on it is all of the sudden offensive. I don't think it's cavalier to say something abstract and innocuous like that, especially when there's hundreds and thousands of conspiracy theorists and politicians (including the President and his office) prostituting that event in far more offensive ways.

And, seriously, f**k journalists like the bottom-feeding vulture who decided to take a poke at Stockhausen. For someone to deliver an unfavorable answer (on something like 9/11) there usually requires an inappropriate question. If a journalist or anyone ever asked me about some tragedy, I would say nothing, because whatever you say is going to get spun around by the bullshit centrifuge called the press and your going to be filtered in the good-vs.-evil duality that most idiots contextualize everything with.

So who ever said the pea-brained preachers were not offensive?  They were far worse than Stockhausen, who was insensitive and cavalier; they were just plain idiotic and hateful. 

And to be honest, I suspect there is a tiny, tiny minority of people who (A) know who the h*ll Stockhausen is, and (B) give a horse's patootie what he had to say anyway. 

I still don't like his compositions. 
Teresa

[indutrial]

So who ever said the pea-brained preachers were not offensive?  They were far worse than Stockhausen, who was insensitive and cavalier; they were just plain idiotic and hateful. 

And to be honest, I suspect there is a tiny, tiny minority of people who (A) know who the h*ll Stockhausen is, and (B) give a horse's patootie what he had to say anyway. 

I still don't like his compositions. 
Teresa

I was just underscoring the meaninglessness of bringing Stockhausen's 9/11 dialogue into a post that, despite all biases and shortcomings, is supposed to be a discussion of his music. A composer's politics are not all that important unless you're so P.C. that you have to get offended by every little thing. I'm sure plenty of shallow Jewish musicians have written off Hindemith because he conducted once or twice for Nazi-sponsered events (though him and his Jewish wife left Germany when things started to escalate). An artist's personal life is never his/her art.

I'd love to hear more about why people like or dislike his compositions, rather than the curt brush-offs that have been gracing the board as of late.

[term]

I'd love to hear more about why people like or dislike his compositions, rather than the curt brush-offs that have been gracing the board as of late.

Well what i don't like is his concept of music, what he defines as music and how he makes it sound. I know that's pretty general, honestly i find it difficult to explain it because of language issues...but generally, his music reveals for me someone who's just looking for the utmost extreme just for the sake of it. He's flying so high that he get's burned and falls again, landing with his nose on the ground. I believe that one can be so ingenious that it's stupid again. He invented numerous complicated composing methods (as did others) and what's coming out is, for my ears, just arbitrary rubbish again.
I do like some modern music, but I don't agree with many modern redefinitions and concepts of music. I would call my understanding of music rather traditional, but there's nothing bad about it imo. Just talk to my father, for him scriabin is already crazy modern bullshit - and i'm not talking about his later works. oO

[pianogeek_cz]

One thought that I stumbled upon while pondering this topic...
Appreciating something doesn't necessarily mean liking it. To generalise by equating the two is, I think, over-intellectualism. Sure, there are those who base their liking on appreciation of the composition methods, and why not, but I don't think you can impose this principle on anyone. For one, I must say that however ingenious Stockhausen's compositions may be (and I bow to his lateral thinking ability), that doesn't make me like them.

*off-topic siren sound* Actually, speaking from a very personal point of view, I tend even to appreciate more composers who didn't use (have to invent, need...) a vast variety of extreme methods to effectively communicate what they wanted - their invention was great enough to do so even within the (from our contemporary stockhausenated point of view) severely limited compositional tools. Take Mozart, for instance... or, whew, Bach! Some 50 years "behind" his time - and The Art of Fugue! *off-topic siren dies down*

[indutrial]

Well what i don't like is his concept of music, what he defines as music and how he makes it sound. I know that's pretty general, honestly i find it difficult to explain it because of language issues...but generally, his music reveals for me someone who's just looking for the utmost extreme just for the sake of it. He's flying so high that he get's burned and falls again, landing with his nose on the ground. I believe that one can be so ingenious that it's stupid again. He invented numerous complicated composing methods (as did others) and what's coming out is, for my ears, just arbitrary rubbish again.
I do like some modern music, but I don't agree with many modern redefinitions and concepts of music. I would call my understanding of music rather traditional, but there's nothing bad about it imo. Just talk to my father, for him scriabin is already crazy modern bullshit - and i'm not talking about his later works. oO

I espouse some level of tradition in my study of music and I can see where you're coming from in this assessment of his approach. I, for one, thought that the idea of using helicopters for a string quartet was a little over the top and superbly pretentious (especially since it threatened the bodily safety of one of my favorite string quartets, the Ardittis).

The breaking point with me is usually music and compositions that seem way too hellbent on proving some kind of philosophical point or conveying some hyper-liberal idea. I think the worst I've encountered is a series on Youtube called "unprotected music", which includes pieces by Philip Glass,Christian Wolff, and the sickeningly dadaist "violin solo" by Nam June Paik. When I saw this, I felt like I stepped in a foot of dogshit.

Stockhausen's never quite rubbed me that badly, because his work heavily concerns itself with sonic capabilities, despite any level of intellectualizing. Pieces like Mantra and even crazier things like Kontacte and the piano works are at least sonic explorations that can move listeners one way or the other. I'm not so convinced that something like Cage's 4'33 is worth the heavy attention it's received. To me, that's the same as a mathematician trying to impress people by overdramatizing the idea that zero plus a number equals the number. Wow! Whoopdee-doo...such grand ideas...now could I please be stimulated?!? Stockhausen also puts a lot of work into his scoring and presentations, which shows a bit more dedication than Philip Glass writing a piece that basically tells the performer to "play random sets of sixteenths and eighths on a table-top for as long as you want" or whatever bullshit makes up the score of that horrendous piece of sh*t "1 + 1" I still can't believe they sell scores for that and 4'33. Especially when tons of carefully typeset music out there is virtually unavailable.

[ahinton]

Stockhausen has touched me little, apart from Gruppen (up to a point - at least a seminal piece in Western music history) and Mantra (one of his best works of all, to my mind), but at least I have the feeling that he didn't take anything for granted in his early days and therefore worked in accordance with that feeling. I think that the impact of his early thoughts has dissipated quite badly in more recent times and he has come to be something of a self-inflicted victim of his own youthful aspirations.

This is only a very personal opinion and is most specifically not intended to be understood as any kind of accusation.

Best,

Alistair

[danny elfboy]

-danny elfboy, you are the most insecure person I have ever seen.

I would be ashamed of having a thread like this, in fact, I would be ashamed to have said anything you have said so far in this thread (didnt even get to read it all yet).

Its clear reading this thread that you feel "you dont get" modern music, and thus have decided to reject all of it, and come up with elaborate ideas about your shortcoming. We all get it, you dont like modern music, we get it, you feel there is nothing to "understand".

We also tend to get that you are totally insecure that you really probably "dont get it", and that you think you "should" get it. Thus, your violent reaction towards it... anyway, its all silly and stupid. People like you KILL the arts for me, and disgust me.

I don't think you've read my post.
Insulting and acting like an hostile psychotic won't help you either in stating your point.

First of all I've never talked about modern music, but modernist music.
Modern is an adjective which refer to what is actual.
If someone in 2007 writes a fugue for organ that sounds like a baroque piece, it is modern music. The soundtracks of the movies we see at the cinema at modern music. The r'n'b we listen at the radio is modern music. On the other hand a Xenakis piece is NOT modern.
Just like the Beatles are not modern.

So that's the meaning of "modern" and as you say once can't say "I don't like modern music" because it doesn't mean anything since everything, every style and every genre could be "modern" as long as it is recent creation.

But I was talking about modernism. Modernism is a self-referential label, just because it calls itself modernism it doesn't mean it has anything to do with "being modern". It is as self-referential as a nazi party calling itself "the party of freedom". It doesn't mean that from then on "freedom" should be equated with that party and its products.

Modernism is a philosophy and it is born as a philosophy. Only later it used the arts to communicate and build its artistic propaganda. Since there are millions of philosophies in this world and each of them attract certain people and detract others, no biased philosophy can be considered "the standard". To state that the philosophy of modernism and its artistic products must be considered the quintessences of modernity, novelty and innovation and must be considere the "standard" for music is the most asinine and ignorant idea someone could have.

I just stated that "personally" I don't like this philosophy either and clearly I don't like its products. That's like saying that someone who don't like the philosophy of Ayn Rand won't like the products of this philosophy whether they're music, books, sculptures, poetry or what not.

That being said I would give my life for the freedom of modernists to keep making the music, books, poems they want and to keep promoting and philosophy they believe in. Likewise though I expect whatever other human creation to have get the same respect and freedom to exist.

As long as modernism accepts to be nothing but one among hundreds of philosophies and one among hundreds of different art forms, no one complains. It's when modernism and its followers starts to claim that modernism is the new standard for accademic music and that not accepting modernism as the standard is like being nostalgic and tied to outdated music, that people get pissed off at such hallucinated bullshit.

Modernism and modernist music (not to confuse with "modern music") is nothing but a tiny part of the whole, of the musical spectrum. It has no special role as any kind of modern stardard or as the quintessence of novelty and innovation.

There are many reasons to "personally" dislike this kind of music.
It may just be not a music that speaks to you and that strikes your chords.
You may not agree with the ideological and philosophical premises behind this music.
You may fight against the attempt to call this style of music "the standard for modern music"

None of these reasons has anything to do with understanding this music.
As a matter of fact if I dislike a philosophy and art form and what it stands for it not because I don't understand it but because I do understand it and I don't like it.

In fact when in Spain people don't understand the meaning of the lyrics of an english song they usually are quick at liking it. It's when they translate the lyrics and understand what they actually mean, that they can really think hard about it in a conscious way and choose that they just either like what the song states and they don't or absolutely hate it.

I made the example of that group of teachers, students, composers, musicologists, theorists and so on because they're educated in this kind of genre and style of music, they do understand it and just don't like it or agree with anything it has to say.

THE ONLY REASON why they created such a group is not because they feel the need to bash this music (I don't feel the need to bash what just doesn't suits me and my personality and tastes) but because of the bad habit of trying to force people to accept this tiny, small and little style and genre as the new "standard" for accademic music.

I don't think someone can disagree with me because what I'm saying is very democratic: live and lets live, period. I'm neither bashing modernism nor I'm claiming that it should disappear from the face of the heart and that composers should not be allowed to compose in that style.

It's like the difference between accepting a religion and the freedom of its followers versus accepting the fanatic and militant dogmatic or those that would like that religion to be the standard for everyone, the standard for morality and punishment for the whole universe while being hostile and violent with those following other religions.

Just because I would indeed fight against the latter, it doesn't mean I'm bashing the religion itself and its freedom to exist.

[thalbergmad]

.

[indutrial]

.

Um...seconded?

[barnardo]

I don't think he has recorded any of them commercially. Or am I wrong? I have Pollini playing No. 5 from a live-recording at the Concertgebouw.

I have heard Maurizio Pollini has recorded several of the cycle I-XI over the years, but I have no knowledge of a possible release of these. He certainly believes the music is important and approaches it with full commitment. I have heard him play several of the shorter pieces in London, and his touch and detailed phrasing were very impressive. Audiences were very appreciative of this music within a mixed programme. I read that Pollini gave a celebrated recital with J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations followed by Stockhausen's Klavierstück X in the 1970s. As fans of Pollini would expect he performed entirely from memory.
Stockhausen's piano pieces don't all sound alike. He tried many new ideas in form and texture and referred to the various Klavierstücke as " my sketches" formulating novel ideas that were developed in his large scale works. In fact I mostly enjoy the more theatrical side of this composer, but I quite understand why Pollini would class Stockhausen's piano pieces with the great piano innovators like Beethoven and Liszt. Some of the pieces such as number 1-4, 6 and 10 are of considerable difficulty, but 5,7,8 and the most performed 9 can be recommended for any pianist at conservertoire level. The later pieces beyond number 12 are re-workings of opera scenes, full of the melodic polyphony that the composer adopted in his latter years and finally adopting electronic keyboard instruments rather than the piano as most of us know it.

[fftransform]

A lot of them are fairly uninteresting, in my opinion, particularly 5, 9, 11, 12 and 14 onward.  13 is a good piece, but due to his style at that point, it didn't contribute anything to the "history" of music, like the collective of its predecessors did.  7 and 8 are both very good pieces of music from that era, but again, are not "important" in the sense we typically think of when it comes to music.  Nos. 6 and 10 are absolute monsters of the 20th century piano repertoire, though, and anybody who tries to say otherwise is delusional.  Nobody is required to like these pieces; there is nothing that even compels one to like these pieces.  But to say that they are "not important," or "not music," or "worthless" are just dumb, factually inaccurate statements.  I don't mind if somebody simply expresses their personal, aesthetic preferences, but one needs to do so very carefully to avoid being a self-important twat.

Honestly, I think that 1-5 are the most "difficult" anyway, from a listener's standpoint.  People complain about No. 10 quite a bit, saying that it is incoherent, but there is nothing incoherent about that piece.  The structure of texture and timbre of that work is meticulously crafted and very recognizable.  One would not hear a different piece and think, "that is from Klavierstuck X."  The piece is only "incoherent" in the sense that it does not have a rhythmic center, harmonies etc., i.e. things from the past.  It doesn't purport to.  There's no point in listening to a piece of music like that if you're not willing to try to relate to the music in ways that aren't necessarily the same as you would relate to Chopin.  Nor would there be grounds for dismissing it on such non-merits; only the laziness of the listener.