[NewMusic] Stockhausen-RIP-memories

[kristin miltner]

I remember when I was introduced to Mikrophonie as an undergrad in art
school, before I knew anything about early electronic music, and being
absolutely blown away by the huge lexicon of sounds in that piece, but in
addition, what really resonated with me was the idea of a microphone as a
musical instrument , not just an object used to pristinely reproduce
existing sounds. That really stuck with me.

k

On Dec 8, 2007 12:21 PM, <olorin at lmi.net> wrote:

> i figured it would happen pretty soon - that leaves boulez as the last
> 'old guard' composer who studied w/ messiaen, and he's actually a
> later generation.
>
> wow - lots of stockhausen memories, myself. highly influential. i
> remember studying robin maconies 1970's era book on him while an
> undergrad and listening to mostly electronic works and things like
> gruppen, punkte, carre, etc. the thing i was really struck with was
> how he would come up with a method for organizing a piece of music,
> and that method could be used to write dozens of pieces, all different
> and fresh. yet, each time he'd come up with a different form to
> organize  the next work, which would go in a completely different
> direction from the one before. it's like each one of his pieces would
> be a
> style of its own. eventually after the 70s and the beginning of the
> Licht cycle he settled down somewhat into a recognizable style but
> still produced amazing and interesting music, the content and true
> depth of which will likely remain unsurpassed for generations to come.
>
> like cage he believed that music had a purpose that was divine and
> holy, yet explored it in a different way. the results can be profound,
> amazing enlightening, but also ponderous and overly long (esp the
> opera stuff) but to me, i feel strongly the fault isn't with him -
> it's me. it seems a bit of hero worship, but i feel he's always had
> the human race's interest at heart, even though i might not be getting
> the message at this point in my life. i get the feeling he was
> creating art mainly for the humans of the future, not neccessarily the
> present, and i get a glimpse of it every so often.
>
> of course i love when he's interviewed about the IDM musicians and
> tells them they should be listening to certain pieces of his music. i
> mean, this is coming from the guy who basically INVENTED electronic
> music based on electronic tones using magnetic tape, a pioneer of
> musique concrete, and ran filters and ring modulators on live
> instruments in the early 1960s. interestingly enough i love their
> response - basically 'you should listen to more groove based, simple
> harmonic structured music', which is what Stockhausen was mainly
> complaining about.
>
> a recent listening of hymnen at the transparent tape music fest
> convinced me how
> amazingly fresh and timeless that 45 year old music still is - the
> sounds that he created using tape machines and oscillators rival and
> even surpass anything you could reproduce digitally using max/msp or
> reaktor.
>
> anyway - a great composer, an egomaniac with the work and ideas to
> back it up, a singular voice of modern music - he will be missed.
>
> scott
>
>
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>



-- 
kristin miltner
audio professional
www.myspace.com/miltnerunit