Philip Glass called his music neurotic. The Beatles put him on the cover of Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Thomas Pynchon references him The Crying of Lot 49. Karlheinz Stockhausen was a towering, often controversial figure in modern music who said he was writing music for the “post-apocalypse” the time of man’s reintegration. The German composer was prone to grandiose statements, verbally and musically. He passed on December 5, a few months shy of his 80th birthday next August.

Stockhausen was an icon whose shadow was cast over 20th century music. He was the dark lord to John Cage’s clown prince. He was the force that minimalism and the new tonality pushed against. He was also the impetus for the early psychedelic experiments of Pink Floyd. The Beatles‘ “Revolution No.9″ was pure, albeit naive and not very listenable faux-Stockhausen. His influence can be heard in the original mix of The Grateful Dead’s Anthem of the Sun. Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt, from the German rock group, Can, were students of Stockhausen’s as was techno-tribal, Fourth World Music pioneer, Jon Hassell. The darker industrial strains of electronic music all owe a debt to the composer

In a review of Michaels Reise (Michael’s Journey) from his opera Licht I wrote that he was still “a master of the movement and transmutation of sound in space.” And that’s still how I approach Stockhausen. From the metallic, shearing slabs of several movements of Aus Den Sieben Tagen to the cosmic hymnal of Stimmung, Stockhausen created unique, fanciful and enveloping sound worlds. One piece, Goldstaub (Gold Dust), required performers to live and fast in isolation for four days and then come out to a common room to play single sounds. The heightened sensitive silence results in a meditative work of delicate, brushed pointillism. Needless to say, it didn’t get performed very often.

Kimberly Haas and I had the opportunity to interview Stockhausen in his hexagonal home outside of Cologne in 1982. It was one of the more heavily researched interviews I ever conducted and we needed it all. Although Stockhausen is an imposing figure, he turned out to be charming and quite the raconteur. He gave us a copy of his latest album at the time, Sirius, and insisted on signing it. He wrote “(Heart) Liebe Stockhausen.” He was then and remained frighteningly insightful, spiritually and musically fearless.

In a press release his two companions, clarinettist Suzanne Stephens and flautist Kathinka Pasveer, wrote:

“On December 5, he ascended with joy through heaven’s door in order to continue to compose in paradise with cosmic pulses in eternal harmony.”

There’s a nice write up in the New York Times and obits can be found everywhere in a Google search. Coincidentally, I’ve been immersed in Stockhausen’s music and words, reversioning that 1982 interview in a series for PRX.org. Stockhausen’s words and music are never far beneath my consciousness.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 12:08 pm and is filed under electronica, Space Music, Echoes Interviews, Progressive Rock, Concepts in Music, psychedelic, In Memoriam, Minimalism, Krautrock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.