Stockhausen

[Michael D. Workman]

A propos Stockhausen, early electronic music maestro, as mentioned in
COL49, there is this interview with Bjork:
http://www.pip.dknet.dk/~pip971/bjork/b_stock.html

Here's a few snippets:

"I think when it comes to electronic music and atonal music, Stockhausen's
the best. He was the first
person to make electronic music before synthesis- ers were even invented. I
like to compare him to
Picasso for this century, because like him he's had so many periods. There
are so many musicians
who've made a whole career out of one of his periods. He goes one step
ahead, discovers
something that's never even been done before musically and by the time
other people have even
grasped it he's onto the next thing. Like all scientific geniuses,
Stockhausen seems obsessed with the
marriage between mystery and science, although they are opposites. Normal
scientists are obsessed
with facts: genius scientists are obsessed with mystery. The more
Stockhausen finds out about
sound, the more he finds out that he doesn't know jack shit; that he's
lost. Stockhausen told me
about the house he built himself in the forest and lived in for ten years.
It's made from hexagonal
pieces of glass and no two rooms are the same, so they are all irregular.
It's built out of angles that
are reflective and it's full of spotlights. The forest becomes mirrored
inside the house. He was
explaining to me how, even after ten years, there would still be moments
when he didn't know
where he was, and he said it with wonder in his eyes. And I said, "That's
brilliant: you can be
innocent even in your own home", and he replied, "Not only innocent, but
curious." He's such a
humorist."

[...]

	"BG: I've got a problem that I get very excited about music. I panic
because I feel I don't have time to do it all, does that worry you?
	KS: Yes and no, because I have learned now in my life that even the very
early works made 46 years ago are not understood by most of the people. So
this is a natural process that if you find something that surprises you,
then for others it's even harder to incorporate that into their being. So
it would take sometimes 200 years before a large group of people, or even
for individuals to have reached the same stage that I have reached after
having spent, let's say, three years eight hours in the studio to make
something. You need as much time as I did just to hear it. Let's not even
talk about understanding what it means. So that is the natural process that
certain musicians make something that needs a lot of time to be listened to
many, many times, and that's very good."


Cheerio,

Michael Workman
Northwestern University
Department Of Cardiology
________________________________________________________________

"Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black
matter for the King that led them to it."

--Henry V, Shakespeare