Friday, December 07, 2007

RIP Karlheinz Stockhausen

We tend to note the passing of important 20th/21st century composers on this blog, so I figured ol' Karlheinz deserved mention too, even if neither myself nor my brothers had as much personally invested in his music as in other composers. For a thoroughly impersonal obituary in the NY Times, see here. I studied several of his electronic works in one of my music classes back in college. And actually, my 20th century music history teacher refused to teach Stockhausen because of his infamous statements about 9/11. I always thought that that was the wrong way to go about treatment of what one crazy-ass old man said about them, especially given the importance of Stockhausen to several trends of 20th century music, and the fact that the history curriculum spent so much time teaching Wagner.

2 Comments:

Blogger Jack said...

There's a more substantial obituary in the Guardian (via Alex Ross).

If you look for Stockhausen on YouTube you'll turn up a number of short bits of things.

12/07/2007 5:29 PM  
Blogger nate said...

My customized Google homepage shows the latest posts from two blogs, Alex Ross' and the Comics Curmudgeon. Since sometime yesterday the top post of each has been a note in memoriam of someone who was born in 1928 and just passed away: Karlheinz Stockhausen, and "They'll Do It Every Time" cartoonist Al Scaduto. Weird.

12/09/2007 9:25 AM  

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