Music, of course 4.1: Remembering Stockhausen…

Karlheinz Stockhausen is dead; with him is lost a unique musical voice that occupied the rarefied air of revolutionary genius. Sometimes controversial, always challenging, he was a composer’s composer- and a performer’s nightmare. His mature works spanned more than a half-century, encompassing all genres and facets of modern music. Instead of pushing boundaries, he redefined them. His music was not necessarily aurally pleasing- that was never the point. Rather, it was the constant prodding, cajoling, and downright forcing of listeners to broaden their definition of musical acceptability that was his hallmark. For some he was a purveyor of the musical equivalent of pornography, an assault on the senses and good taste in equal measure. For others he was a mad puppeteer, his fingers weaving strands of sound into unrecognizable masses bereft of logical form or aesthetic function. For me, he was neither.

I found Stockhausen to be the personification of what a composer should be: a medium through which musical ideas are transmitted, regardless of the popular reception. He did not succumb to the tired image of the typical avant-garde artist, namely the borderline sociopath who believes only in “weird for the sake of weird.” That is not, however, to imply that any number of his works did not leave me confused and disjointed. I fail to see how this can be considered a shortcoming, though. Music need not always be pleasant, relaxing, and simplistic. The longer we accept the banality of aural comfort, the further our senses slide into mediocrity. Were it not for the incessant push of modern trends in music, we would still be listening to classical-era styled works. For some this would present no great conflict. To them I would pose a question: how much closer could classical (in the historically-oriented use of the word) music approach perfection than Mozart?

At the risk of generalization, most timeless music was considered brash and shocking in its day. Without Mozart there would have been no Beethoven. Without Beethoven, there would have been no Mahler. The list continues unabated.When one mourns the passing of another the tendency to wax philosophic is an immutable force. Having bowed to such, I believe that Stockhausen represented a turning point in the history of music. He affected such a dramatic break with past traditions that the course of music history was irrevocably altered. In the eyes of some, this is the single grievance that damns him. To me, it serves as the guiding principle to new generations of composers: full speed ahead. Karlheinz Stockhausen opened the doors to the future of music; one wonders if humanity as a whole will ever gain the courage to step through them.