Stockhausen 1928-2007

Karlheinz Stockhausen died few days ago.

In my opinion Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the greatest composer born in the first half of the 1900, together with Olivier Messiaen, Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez and Steve Reich.

Stockhausen's music might be hard to approach and his taste for very spectacular performances has been regarded as megalomany from some critics, as it is the case for the helicopter string quartet where each of the string quartet players has to play on a different helicopter. However his originality and enormous influence on much of later music cannot be mistaken.

I suggest to visit Stockhausen's official website, there is also a section called multimedia with several audio clip from his production.

A video with an example of Stockhausen experimental music can be found on the blog of Ensemble Intercontemporain.

An interview in English to Stockhausen can be found here on you tube. It is worth watching it even if the interviewer's main interest seems to be provoking. My favourite answer from Stockhausen is "I didn't break it, I just left it as it is" when asked on his relationship with classical and romantic music.

"Im freundschaft" for clarinet solo (composed in 1977) is his major contribution to the clarinet repertoire in my knowledge.