[musicmind]

DrBenway, although I'm sure the be-bop style didnt sit well with folks who prefered swing era jazz, most people would agree that Charlie Parker enjoyed widespread admiration during his own lifetime and was far from reviled.

As for Stockhausen's music, which of his works do you folks enjoy and recommend?

mbhaub doesnt seem to be the only one to not like his music. This is from The Economist's obituary :

"Sir Thomas Beecham, asked if he had conducted any Stockhausen, said no, but he thought he might once have trodden in some."

 

[zumaro]

If I wanted a narrow view of the arts, then I can imagine sitting down and only listening to music with tunes (is that a major distinguishing factor between acceptable classical music and that which isn't?). However Stockhausen doesn't give me tunes too often; instead I get electronic noises, helicopters and scores defined just as often in terms of process as in written notes. This to the narrow view that only wants "tuneful" music is of course worthless - not music, not worth a first listen let alone a second etc etc.

The few without the narrow view will however go along for the ride, and thoroughly enjoy the trip for the interaction they get with one of the more inventive (if increasingly off the wall) minds of the twentieth century. Quite frankly I can even enjoy the increasing megalomania and sheer audacity of it all - if nothing else it gives people something to decry and to raise their eyebrows at. Ultimately it may be musical charlatanism and of little lasting value, but we aren't going to be the ones who decide what ends up representing us and our age.

 

[FalconP]

Mere "tunelessness" or strange ideas is unlikely to bar a musician from becoming well known and well admired: after all, people as "tuneless" as Cage, Xenakis and Nono have nevertheless quite a big recording legacy. And, as Cage has sagaciously observed, everything eventually becomes melodic.

What will bar Stockhausen from the recording repertoire is the sheer impracticability of his music. I can envisage it being "performed" by a host of computer-generated "virtual" musicians -- if anyone makes a blu-ray disc of such a performance, it could become definitive.

 

[Sordel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by musicmind /img/forum/go_quote.gif "Sir Thomas Beecham, asked if he had conducted any Stockhausen, said no, but he thought he might once have trodden in some."

It's worth noting that Beecham died in 1961, so he was commenting at best only on less than a fifth of a very long career.

 

[d.phens]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mbhaub /img/forum/go_quote.gif The only thing that KS ever wrote that had any meaning to me was the introduction to de la Grange's monumental 4-volume biography of Mahler. He said something like, if an alien from another world were to come here and wanted to know and understand what human's were all about, he could do no better than listen to the music of Mahler. Good thing. If the alien had listened to any of Stockhausen's music he'd think we're all a bunch of violent, insane, barbaric wackos. Stockhausen and his musically worthless "school" will soon be forgotten, along with most of the academic composers from his era.

You're talking *** here.
If you want to express your distaste for modern academic music, do it elswhere.
Not in his R.I.P. thread. And remember, you won't be remembered by far so many people as K. S. is being now.
As talking about violentce in his music you should rather check goregrind or black metal. Give up your prejudice. Take a listen to Iannis Xennakis.
You made me make a post after a long, long time again and I'm not glad doing it now...

 

[d.phens]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mbhaub /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't doubt for a minute that Stockhausen had an influence on many composers, for good and bad. And his passion for music was very real. But let's be honest: his music never achieved popular acclaim in any sense and it never will. Of course he's not alone. Many composers of his generation like Berio, Xenakis, wrote music that is too difficult for even the educated music consumer, and our only exposure will be on a few scant recordings. Watching trends in so-called "classical" music, I think it's kind of funny that while much attention is now on performing music in historically informed styles, the vast majority of music written in the last half of the 20th century is being utterly ignored. There are some unfortunate casualties, like Roger Sessions. And there are some composers like Messiaen (Stockhausen's teacher) whose music really is becoming better known. But alas, I don't think this will ever happen to KS. Name one piece of music written by any serialist composer in that style that has made it into the "standard rep" of our orchestras. Can't do it, can you? There is one, Wozzeck, but then, it's an opera. That whole generation of composers was led down a dead end path -- just the opposite of what they thought they were doing. On the other hand....any interested reader should definitely get a Stockhausen work that is well worth hearing: Gruppen. Then to hear what craziness I can't tolerate, hear the Helicopter Quartet.

Musically worthless? If you merely could name any 'musically worthwhile' schools of 20th and 21st century...
I did take a listen to the Helicopter Quartet and I LIKED IT. Again, looking at classical music as something that has to be classics is fairly... I can't find the right polite word now.
If you think that electro-acoustic, musique concrete or structuralism is OUT - I've got something to say about that.
Firstly, it's like stating that Munch or Dali were geeks whose art is unbearable and the recent trends should follow artists like Constable.
Give it up. You can't force artists finding new ways of expression and stick to methods that have been surpassed or aren't actual anymore.
In your mind, what's good 'classical'? Blunt movie soundtracks where the composer has to follow the picture and hit a larger audience?

In my opinion, Wagner was GROSS. Sick. I can't stand his theatral operas. Not for a while. Generally, librettos about "stoltze Koennigin" are so awkward they make me turn the radio off until the next day.
And I'm a person who can listen to Luc Ferrari, Throbbing Gristle or John Cage or Ligeti or Lustmord or Die In Progress or Burzum or Pig Destroyer all day long.

Secondly if you think that modern music reaches no audience you're wrong.
Here in Slovakia I can listen to modern classical for one hour a day 5 days a week on Slovak Radio.
And you're wrong if you think K.S. (or majority of modern composers) intended to have their works played all around the world.

You maybe should stop posting in this thread indeed.
It's an extreme sign of despect.


HAILS TO KARLHEINZ.

 

[musicmind]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FalconP /img/forum/go_quote.gif Mere "tunelessness" or strange ideas is unlikely to bar a musician from becoming well known and well admired: after all, people as "tuneless" as Cage, Xenakis and Nono have nevertheless quite a big recording legacy. And, as Cage has sagaciously observed, everything eventually becomes melodic.

Especially Cage's 4'33'', it grows more melodic everytime I hear it

 

[zumaro]

I forgot to say RIP Stockhausen as well, and to give thanks for him for being a constant, thought provoking and hugely entertaining presence in my musical world for as long as I can remember.

 

[lwd]

Such a famous name... and yet the only piece of his on record is Gruppen. Now that he is gone perhaps we will have the chance to re-examine his contribution to music. RIP KS. Apparently there's a very good recording of Stimmung which has just come out....

 

[david123]

Quote:

Karlheinze Stockhausen was a visionary. Like virtually all visionanies, he was reviled by the more near-sighted among us.

I agree with your general idea that most artistic visionaries have to suffer with this. Chamberlain too voiced this sentiment when he wrote “the mightiest of these ruling heroes are the princes of intellect, men who … exercise a defining and transforming influence upon the thought and feeling of many generations … but who seldom, perhaps never, ascend their throne during their lifetime …”

Granting that this does unfortunately happen, an important point needs to be made that an artist being condemned by his contemporary public does not automatically mean that he is in fact a visionary. The more likely probability is that the work in question is of dubious artistic merit.

 

[david123]

I have to say I find it quite ironic that there are impassioned pleas in this thread for sensitivity, honouring the dead, civility and reverence. If people want to trash him, even in his "RIP thread" I say go ahead. This is the same guy who, when asked for his thoughts immediately following the 9/11 attacks, called them "the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos." He evidently had no problem callously disrespecting the dead so what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

The ridiculously impractical requirements for his works remind me very much of Oswald Spengler's thoughts on the future of art:

Quote:

The symptom of decline in creative power is the fact that to produce something round and complete the artist now requires to be emancipated from form and proportion. Its most obvious though not its most significant, manifestation is the taste for the gigantic. Here size is not, as in the Gothic and the Pyramid styles, the expression of inward greatness, but the dissimulation of its absence. This swaggering in specious dimensions is common to all nascent Civilizations--we find it in the Zeus altar of Pergamum, the Helios of Chares called the "Colossus of Rhodes," the architecture of the Roman Imperial Age, the New Empire work in Egypt, and American skyscraper of today...

To paraphrase Schopenhauer, art minds not the times but the eternities. I think the best way to judge the artistic merit of a work is to wait and see if it endures through the ages. If you truly believe that 200 or 300 years from now anyone will care about Stockhausen, more power to you.

 

[FalconP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by david123 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have to say I find it quite ironic that there are impassioned pleas in this thread for sensitivity, honouring the dead, civility and reverence. If people want to trash him, even in his "RIP thread" I say go ahead. This is the same guy who, when asked for his thoughts immediately following the 9/11 attacks, called them "the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos." He evidently had no problem callously disrespecting the dead so what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Ah, I know it will happen; just surprised it took three pages...

 

[Sordel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by david123 /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you truly believe that 200 or 300 years from now anyone will care about Stockhausen, more power to you.

I'm not at all interested in what his reputation will be in two centuries' time: just in whether I should be listening to him now. It seems to me that the jury's out on that one.

 

[gratefulshrink]

The 9/11 quote was unfortunate, but understanble considering that Stockhausen pretty much lived in his own universe since the 1980's (both musically and personally).

lwd: I'm not sure why you think "the only piece of his on record is Gruppen". I think there are about 10-15 of his pieces that appeared on conventional record labels, prior to when he only released/licensed his music on his private label. BTW, those private CDs are not that hard to get -- ther used to be a very simple way to order from a website in England at a cost of about $20 per CD (inclusive). Believe it or not, Amoeba Records in Hollywood used to stock a bunch of his private label CDs. I would always pick up a couple when visiting in LA.

Stockhausen will now probably start to get the wider attention he deserves/deserved -- sadly -- due to his death.

Madman or genius or both.

From what I gather from reading all those insane scores on his CDs (plus the pictures of the performances), his music is/was probably much, much more intense live than recorded. He routinely had explicit arrangments/directions on where vocalists and instrumentalists would be place around a performance space (not to mention what languages -- real or invented -- that the vocalists would sing in). Musical theatre for the LSD-inspired classical music enthsiasts, I suppose....Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead loved his stuff, after all.......

 

[lwd]

Sorry, I meant to say Gruppen is the only piece I have on record. It was late at night.