Stockhausen

[duluxdog]

So it's rigorously played - but that overlooks all the audio overtones you get in Branca's pieces, which move around and shift like something else. It is rigorous composition but the effect is very much down to the individual listener, who has to pick out the overtones mingling in this cloud of sound. If you get a Branca LP and turn it up really loud, you'll know what I mean.

[swishniak]

wow - looks like we hit a nerve!

its interesting that cage and stockhausen are still compared to eachother so often. maybe in 1955 they were seen as 2 contrasting schools of composition. but now theyre 2 dead guys who both wrote alot (alot alot) of really good music.

landrvr1, im curious; who would be in your top 10 composers (or electronic pioneers / electroacoustic..)?

Haha. I guess so!

I'll exhibit a smidge of humility and recognize that Stockhausen would be in my top 10 list of electronic composers.

But an electronic pioneer? Someone that was constantly experimenting with what tape machines and - later - synthesizers could do? No way. Not even close. By all accounts he hated fiddling with those 'new contraptions called synthesizers' and would insist that others do his patchwork for him. Synths were a means to an end for him. He simply couldn't be bothered. He often referred to synths as pop music machines. And that's my point really.... Stockhausen's enormous contribution to modern music comes as a composer, not as an electronic musician or synth pioneer. To say that Live wouldn't have been created without Stockhausen is silly.

Oh, and here's another example of the perpetuated Myth of Stockhausen. Bjork is interviewing him, and says this in her opening statement:

http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco6/Bjork/bjorkfr.html
He was the first person to make electronic music before synthesizers were even invented.

Bjork, I love you, but you're retarded.


...

ooh - thats rough. i agree that sometimes stockhausen gets overhyped as a pioneer - this is an easy thing for people who havent spent too much time in the books i guess.

but i think stockhausen is interesting because he was dealing with electronic music early on and has written lots of good music; electric and acoustic and in between.

maybe he was so hyped for so long that its his turn to get hated on?. like when he died in dec. all the german journalists could write about him was about his 9/11 quote and that his music was difficult. i think there was alot more to it than that.

[terragong]

not bad for 1966...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0aeagbZ ... re=related

[terragong]

be active on kaRL HEINz...
http://www.stockhausenmusic.com/

[terragong]

and too be fair ...heres ...be active on cage...apple users only...
http://www.essl.at/works/fontana-mixer/download.html