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Stockhausen's Legacy,
Beatles to Squandered Genius
(Update1)
by Mark Beech
December 8 (Bloomberg) -- Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died Dec. 5 aged 79, divided opinion like few musicians had done before him. His admirers are mourning a man they call the greatest German composer since Wagner.
The heavy words ``genius,'' influential'' and ``pioneering'' are being thrown into obituaries. So is the over-used term ``controversial,'' which for once is justified to describe his mixed legacy.
Stockhausen influenced everyone from the Beatles and Bjork to Pierre Boulez. He was more avant-garde than Arnold Schoenberg, trying to push further the boundaries of music.
Sometimes he led it in startling new directions, such as his 1952-53 masterwork ``Kontra-Punkte.'' In other experiments, he took it up a blind alley: ``Am Himmel Wandre Ich'' (In the Sky I Am Walking), mangled North American Indian prayers.
His groundbreaking works dropped traditional tunes. ``Gruppen'' (Groups) for three orchestras had slowly changing patterns. ``Stimmung'' (Tuning) dwelled for 75 minutes on a single chord of B flat ninth.
Stockhausen's ``controlled chance'' paved the way for ``systems music'' and ambient works like Brian Eno's ``Thursday Afternoon.''
Stockhausen mixed music with real sounds. His 1956 ``Gesang der Juenglinge'' (Song of the Youths) combined electronics with voices. ``Kontakte'' (Contacts) of 1960 was one of the first compositions to mix live instruments with prerecorded material. ``Telemusik'' (1966) used Japanese monks and ``Hymnen'' (1966-7) blended national anthems into the electronic stew.
This technique has since surfaced everywhere from Steve Reich's ``City Life'' to John Tavener's ``In Alium.''
Sgt. Pepper
He was an electronic pioneer, using synthesizers long before the Beatles adopted the Mellotron for the 1967 single ``Strawberry Fields Forever.'' Three months later, the group put Stockhausen on the cover of ``Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.''
By the 1970s, Stockhausen's beats found echoes in long compositions by German bands Can, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. Miles Davis and Frank Zappa also hailed his work, though some of those who claimed indebtedness might have been name-dropping just to appear cool and cultured: Stockhausen has long been more spoken about than actually listened to.
He sowed the seeds for computerized and sampled compositions up to the 21st century. Stockhausen took the musical template of Olivier Messiaen and Anton Webern and tore it up. His classical influence on others was less obvious, though his pupil Wolfgang Rihm and members of the ``Darmstadt School'' such as Boulez have followed a similar path.
Obsolete Music?
Stockhausen's music can sound dated. Some of his pieces, using now-obsolete synthesizers, can never be performed as they were written.
His reputation was not helped by his reported comments that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were ``works of art,'' even after his hasty claim that these remarks had been misunderstood.
Stockhausen seemed happy to squander his credibility. He gave his critics plenty of ammunition by saying he was descended from the stars in a megalomaniac manifesto ``Toward a Cosmic Music.'' This came along with plans for a new dynasty to rival Bayreuth -- he set up an extended family of female admirers and was married twice with six children, one of whom is the trumpeter Markus Stockhausen. He wrote an opera for every day of the week, as if to out-Wagner Wagner himself. The result was ``Licht'' (Light), where Stockhausen smothered clever ideas in 29 hours of self-indulgence.
As if to make the whole project as crackpot as possible, he included a string quartet hovering in four helicopters over the performance. Even some of his most ardent fans could not follow him into ``Licht.''
Savior or Shamster?
Stockhausen's later works do a disservice to the sage and savior who became seen as a shamster and a simpleton. He was too prolific and ambitious for his own good. He wrote 362 individually performable pieces in his life, his Web site says.
We may do best to remember him, first by recalling the conductor Thomas Beecham, who was asked whether he had heard any Stockhausen. No, he said, but I believe I have trodden in some.
Then, by contrast, you can put on one of Stockhausen's most uncompromising CDs, such as the Berlin Philharmonic's rendition of ``Gruppen.'' It surges to a breathtaking climax. A great brass chord swirls around the hall, and then proudly dies away.
Stockhausen will be buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Kuerten, Germany, and a commemorative concert will take place at the Suelztalhalle in Kuerten. The composer would have been 80 on Aug. 22, 2008. His ``Momente''
[I got that one ... not shabby]
will be performed at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon in October 2008. The Mozart Orchestra of the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna, Italy, said last month that it would hold the premiere of a Stockhausen work, "Zodiac,'' in September 2008.
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(Mark Beech writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Mark Beech in London at mbeech@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: December 8, 2007 13:13 EST
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