The Stockhausen Foundation announced December 7 that Karlheinz Stockhausen died on December 5. No cause of death was given.
Stockhausen most recently was best-known for comments made following the events of September 11, 2001, when he described the attack on the World Trade Center as "the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos." He apologized immediately, saying that his remarks were intended allegorically and that he abhorred the attack.
The incident was, perhaps, emblematic of his entire career. Stockhausen was a deep thinker, but could appear unworldly; he was widely known, but not much heard. While millions recognize his name, far fewer know his music.
Born in 1928, Stockhausen became famous in the mid-1950s, creating a series of rigorously worked out compositions that "answered the need felt in postwar Europe for reconstruction and logic," as Paul Griffiths noted in his New York Times obituary. However, unlike other European composers of his generation, Pierre Boulez and Luigi Nono, for example, Stockhausen became well-known even beyond classical music circles.
Part of this, it must be noted here in Stereophile, was because the German broadcasting system, WDR, championed his compositions and lectures and the Deutsche Grammophon record company released his works throughout the world. That allowed adventurous listeners a chance to hear his music as it was produced.
Those listeners included John Cage, who is said to have influenced Stockhausen to relax the rigor of his early compositions, and perhaps also contributed the leitmotif of his later career: that pitch, tone, and melody are all unified by a holistic concept of vibration—that entire works could also be seen as the deconstruction of a single event. This concept led Stockhausen to concentrate on electronic music for many years, although he returned to a thematic approach—if not conventional orchestration—over the last 20 years.
One innate quality in Stockhausen's music that wasn't necessarily obvious in his recordings was his theatricality. Many of his works paid particular attention to the spatial positioning of his performers. Gruppen (Groups), written for three ensembles, involved space, not simply tone, so that audiences became immersed in his sonic world. Other pieces not only put musicians in other parts of the venue, but upon adjacent rooftops. The apotheosis of this was scene three of Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light), which was entitled Helikopter-Streichquartett (Helicopter String Quartet), which required four helicopters circling the venue, each containing a member of a string quartet, synchronized by click tracks, broadcasting music to the hall, where it was mixed together along with copious amounts of prop noise. As impractical as that sounds, the piece has been performed several times and was recorded by the Arditti Quartet.
However, Stockhausen's theatricality was not limited strictly to the aural dimension. Sternklang (Star Music), he insisted, must be performed outdoors at night. Inori included "adorations" for dancer-mimes, while Harlekin (Harlequin) was written for a dancing clarinetist. Freitag (Friday) had a typewriter making love to a copying machine.
In the late 1960s, many popular musicians cited Stockhausen as an influence. The Beatles included him in the photo montage on the cover of Sgt. Pepper—he's the fifth from the right on the last row—and Frank Zappa listed him among "the people who have contributed in many ways to make our music what it is" on the gatefold of Freak Out. Miles Davis, Brian Eno, and Bjork have also acknowledged his influence.
Stockhausen's most ambitious work, Licht (Light), took him 26 years to compose. The opera, which is divided into seven parts, one named for each day of the week, will receive its first complete performance next year at the European Centre for the Arts Hellerau in Dresden, Germany.
Stockhausen's final, uncompleted, work was called Klang (Sound) and was to consist of 24 pieces for chamber ensemble. He had completed 13, but the most prophetic, was perhaps, as LA Times critic Mark Swed suggests, Heaven's Door, which was performed last year in Italy. Swed described the performance: "'A percussionist knocking, battering, drumming, in 2 x 7 moods,' according to the composer's notes, 'with wooden beaters on a heaven's door made of wood.' Finally the door opens, and a terrifying noise erupts, leading to a wailing siren. A little girl from the audience walks onto the stage and through the door. The siren stops."
We'll let Stockhausen have the last word: "Any sound can become music if it is related to other sounds...every sound is precious and can become beautiful if I put it at the right place, at the right moment."
