Stockhausen; conversations with the composer

About this book

Still in his early forties, Karlheinz Stockhausen has been hailed as "the Prophet of a new world of sound" and "a composer of unarguable greatness," and attacked for his "mystical, semi-hippie philosophy" and for his "impenetrable" music. Not since Stravinsky has a composer generated such excitement and controversy. But unlike composers such as Schönberg, Webern, and Stravinsky - who worked almost solely within a Western tradition - Stockhausen has fostered within himself a global musical responsiveness. His concerts in Europe, New York, Japan, and the Middle East have offered occasions for a new kind of musical ritual and, in come instances, have provoked disruptive audience protests. Stockhausen's following among the young (one critic has called him "the Pied Piper of Youth") can undoubtedly be attributed to his pluralistic temperament as well as to the fact that Stockhausen's recent concerts have seemed more like thaumaturgical rituals than the typically decorous "cultural" event. In this book of extraordinary conversations, Stockhausen talks to Jonathan Colt (poet and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine) about the artist's role, as both receiver and transformer, and about new ways of breaking down the boundaries of audience-composition perceptions. The composer discusses his life, his unique approaches to composition, his attempts to integrate Eastern and Western musical traditions, and his explorations of new sound material and designs for acoustical environments. He offers provocative views on the relationships between contemporary music, art, and politics, speaking always as an advocate of the integrative function of art. For Stockhausen, music is a medium by which to discover oneself; and it can, in his words, "become still more open, universal, more cosmically oriented. Sooner or later when one has achieved this consciousness, one will travel there as a cosmic tourist and by that show that everything exists at once."--Inside cover.