Karlheinz Stockhausen, RIP

Pioneering avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen died on Wednesday. Stockhausen's experimental electro-acoustic music influenced everyone from John Cage to the Beatles, David Bowie to Sonic Youth. He was 79.
Link to Stockhausen.org, Link to Associated Press obituary

[#1 posted by j.black , December 7, 2007 6:09 PM]

Oh man, total sadness.

[#2 posted by StrangerWithoutCandy , December 7, 2007 6:33 PM]

I'm framing the e-mail I got from him this year.

This is a brazilian times heavier than when Iannis "Scarface" Xenakis died, yo.

[#3 posted by Ford MF , December 7, 2007 6:47 PM]

Stockhausen was alive?

[#4 posted by StrangerWithoutCandy , December 7, 2007 6:52 PM]

Yes. Like KISS.

[#5 posted by the Other michael , December 7, 2007 6:53 PM]

my RSS feed is always late -- I just submitted this, then saw it on the front page.

7min interview w/ some good sounds and some early clips of the 50s/60s weirdness.

There are some cartoons on his official site.

Who knew he had a MySpace page.

Well, at least 2400 people, so I guess it's only a surprise to us few MySpace curmudgeons.

I remember playing Stockhausen tapes when I came home from college, and my father thought something was wrong with the stereo.

[#6 posted by ill lich , December 7, 2007 7:09 PM]

I wonder what music they will play at his funeral/memorial service. . . I imagine 20 minutes of microphone feedback performed by Max Neuhaus, perhaps conducted by Boulez.

I guess Krzysztof Penderecki is the last of the 20th century greats left now.

[#7 posted by William Joseph Dunn , December 7, 2007 7:12 PM]

An acquired taste but, I really loved the short he did with the Bros. Quay.

[#8 posted by Zvi , December 7, 2007 8:27 PM]

Without definitely saying that Stockhausen did not influence John Cage, it is quite a bit more likely that the most important influences ran the other way: Cage was 16 years his senior and had created significant chance, prepared instrument, and noise pieces in the 1930s and 40s, whereas Stockhausen only began composing in the 1950s.

[#9 posted by DougO , December 7, 2007 8:51 PM]

My introduction to his music came with the query - what makes music? Sounds and .......... silence.

[#10 posted by David Pescovitz , December 7, 2007 9:50 PM]

@The Other Michael (#5), Thanks for posting those additional links.

[#11 posted by kyleklip , December 7, 2007 11:58 PM]

Rest in peace. He has a ton of CD's on the market...

"I guess Krzysztof Penderecki is the last of the 20th century greats left now."

Don't forget Morton Subotnick!

[#12 posted by Dave X , December 8, 2007 3:14 AM]

http://startlingmoniker.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/rip-karlheinz-stockhausen/

[#13 posted by evan_phi , December 8, 2007 3:46 AM]

As a composer, Stockhausen was a huge influence on the music I am currently writing. I am writing a piece in memoriam of him now. My composition professor/advisor told me about this yesterday when we were discussing my new piece. I was doing it in a style similar to "Stimmung", and I am deciding to put even more Stockie elements into it now.

As for living composers, don't forget György Kurtág, the composer of the "Kafka Fragments".

He will be missed greatly.

Thanks for those links above!

[#14 posted by standard_grey , December 8, 2007 4:38 AM]

Oh, man. Such an influence on the sound/onkyo stuff I do now.

I got my first Stockhausen record when I was 10. My mom was a high school English teacher, and she bought it for a "Write to different types of music"(jazz, symphonic, etc) class exercise, and gave the record to me when she was done with it. To me, "Gesang der Junglinge/Kontakte" was just simply the coolest thing ever on headphones for a 10-yr old's wild imagination.

I stumbled on CBC Radio's "Brave New Waves" one summer night a few years later, age 13. I still consider myself very lucky to be exposed to this kind of cool stuff at such a young age...

[#15 posted by rushkoff , December 8, 2007 1:10 PM]

They did a big piece of his at CalArts when I was there in the 80's. Very trippy, even life-changing spatial music thing. We lied on gym mats, if I remember correctly, and it came from all around us. Live.

His stuff had a virtuosity to it that a lot of other 'experimental' music lacked.