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Karlheinz Stockhausen, aus LICHT, Holland Festival, 31 May–10 June 2019.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Max Erwin
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Extract

Why Karl Heinz [sic] Stockhausen entitled his music for oboe, bass clarinet, piano, and four percussionists Kreuzspiel is incomprehensible. Following a system of ‘static music’, the indefensibleness of which Theodor Adorno already demonstrated the previous year to its Flemish inventor, the sound of the piece goes far beyond that which we have been accustomed to call music. That he finds a few devotees to celebrate his work … doesn't change things a jot. Every idea finds its prophets. And its sect.

Albert Rodemann, Darmstädter Tagblatt, 23 July 1952.Quoted and translated in Martin Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt, 84–85.
In February 1971, so the story goes, a barefooted figure with a wizard's staff handed Karlheinz Stockhausen a copy of the Urantia Book, a dense, hugely esoteric text describing the spiritual place of mankind in the universe through chapters like ‘Socializing Influence of Ghost Fear’. Most people would probably have politely thanked the figure and then escaped as quickly as possible, but this is Stockhausen we're talking about, so he devoted the rest of his life to transforming Urantia into ‘music, libretto, dance, actions and movements’, as the programme to aus LICHT credits him.

Type
FIRST PERFORMANCES
Information
Tempo , Volume 74 , Issue 291 , January 2020 , pp. 99 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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