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Dan Coren
The road not taken:
My personal debt to Stockhausen
DAN COREN
The German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen died December 5 at age 79.
As the excellent New York Times obituary observed, Stockhausen was a great composer who could have been much greater had he not chosen, in the early 1970s, new-age guru bullshit over the hard work of composing. As I wrote in an earlier article (click here), my love for Stockhausen’s music— and of his pioneering work in electronic music especially— played a large role in my leaving the cloistered world of academia for the cutting-edge world of software development.
Now that he’s gone, perhaps Stockhausen’s early works– masterpieces like Gesang der Jünglinge, Telemusik, Refrain, and the very early super-serial chamber work, Kontrapunkt – not to mention the purely electronic version of Kontakt – will again become available to the general public.
To read a response, click here.
My personal debt to Stockhausen
DAN COREN
The German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen died December 5 at age 79.
As the excellent New York Times obituary observed, Stockhausen was a great composer who could have been much greater had he not chosen, in the early 1970s, new-age guru bullshit over the hard work of composing. As I wrote in an earlier article (click here), my love for Stockhausen’s music— and of his pioneering work in electronic music especially— played a large role in my leaving the cloistered world of academia for the cutting-edge world of software development.
Now that he’s gone, perhaps Stockhausen’s early works– masterpieces like Gesang der Jünglinge, Telemusik, Refrain, and the very early super-serial chamber work, Kontrapunkt – not to mention the purely electronic version of Kontakt – will again become available to the general public.
To read a response, click here.
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