Stockhausen Interview: The Most Beautiful Sound

 

Oh man I love avantgarde music

 

Yeah man, this is Stockhausen at his best.

Truly creative and unsettling work. I don't like to throw around the description "genius" easily, but here it's well deserved I think.

 

Again with these pseudo composers, Stockhausen and those other "friends", they were the great scam of contemporary classical music. Think, those "geniuses" are so brilliant that decades and decades later their "music" is dead and buried and no performer comes close to it. And these guys have definitively contributed to the elitism and definitive isolation and death of classical music.

 

Measuring quality on the scales of mass approval is the biggest joke of them all.

 

Did you listen to it?

 

You're absolutely right about elitism, it's bad, no matter what form it takes. But to say Stockhausen contributed to the death of classical music is certainly an opinion, because... well, I've heard his works referred by many names, but "classical" is certainly not one of them.

 

That is stupid as stupid can be on not many, but on all levels. ))

 

always loved stockie : ) and really enjoyed the beef he had with Aphex Twin. Would have been better a collab though...

 

Full interview

 

Sea at night is a beautiful sound...

 

Frankly, I wouldn't be so clear-cut, however it must be said that Webern, Stockhausen and his entire school have left nothing but rubble in so-called Western cultured music. And this is a fact. This is totally self-referential music. And it is no coincidence that it is never performed in any theater or contemporary classical music festival. The point is that these were avant-garde composers, now historicised. It is not art music, but only scientific research. On the issue of elitism, yes. But it is a common problem of all classical music in general.

 

why sounds? the concept is all.

 

This is the great scourge of contemporary classical music. It's precisely the opposite. The concept is nothing without sound. The biggest composers of all time have proven the opposite. And their music has survived centuries and centuries and still performed today.

 

Stockhousen is very difficult for me to listen to. About the classical music thing...just because a piece is written for traditional orchestral instruments and performed in a concert hall doesn't at all mean that it a classical composition.

 

Last edited: May 4, 2024

He is the Autechre of classical instruments

 

examples of classical music composers whose music was ignored for centuries

ChatGPT
Certainly! There are several classical composers whose music was largely overlooked during their lifetimes and for many years after their deaths, only to be rediscovered and appreciated later. Here are a few examples:

1. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) - Although Bach was renowned as an organist during his lifetime, his compositions, especially his large-scale choral works like the Mass in B Minor and the St. Matthew Passion, were not widely appreciated until the 19th century when Felix Mendelssohn helped to revive interest in his music.
   
   
2. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) - Vivaldi was a prolific composer during the Baroque era, particularly known for his concertos, including "The Four Seasons." After his death, his music fell into obscurity until the mid-20th century when recordings and performances of his works led to a resurgence of interest.
   
   
3. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) - Schubert's music was overshadowed by his contemporaries during his lifetime, and he struggled financially. It was not until after his death that his symphonies, chamber music, and especially his lieder (German art songs) gained widespread recognition for their beauty and emotional depth.
   
   
4. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) - Mahler's symphonies, which are now considered some of the most profound works of the late Romantic era, were not well-received during his lifetime. It wasn't until several decades after his death that conductors like Leonard Bernstein championed his music and helped establish his reputation as a major composer.
   
   
5. Charles Ives (1874-1954) - Ives was an American composer whose innovative and experimental music was largely ignored during his lifetime. His compositions, which often incorporate elements of American folk music and avant-garde techniques, gained recognition in the mid-20th century for their originality and complexity.
   

These are just a few examples of classical composers whose music was overlooked for years before being rediscovered and celebrated by later generations.


So much for that theory.

 

i am not sure if i agree.

most composers did not have an orchestra at their hand when they were writing a score.

and i actually couldnt care less if bach wrote something for wood organ, because the piece also works just fine when played on an upright piano or a cembalo.
it will simply remain the same piece when you use different sounds.

reducing the musical idea of a works on custom shaped sound events is more what stockhausen does. try to replace the door creaks between the breathing sound and the tape stop effect in hymnen with a piano and you´ll see what i mean.

the concept behind bach´s compositions is exclusively how one event follows the other.

stockhausen´s concept is much broader. it was based on the idea to make use of modern technology, the idea to shock people and become an interesting performer by using extremly loud amplification, panning sound events in physical spaces, using sound events which are not musical instruments, gaining public funding, then teaching others about the new idea.

the more complex a concept is, the less important it becomes which sounds you use, unless your concept does not yet include at all the sound - which can be the case for classical music as well as modern music.

 

Last edited: May 4, 2024

To duble down on my "you are stupid"-comment:

Can you follow?