stockhausen - the story in english

[Nika Bertram]

Telepolis:
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/9594/1.html

A Willful Misunderstanding?  
David Huson   19.09.2001 

The Hamburg
Musikfest cancels concerts by Karlheinz Stockhausen following his comments
on the WTC attacks "That's the biggest work of art anywhere, for the whole
cosmos. Just imagine what happened there. There are these people who are
so concentrated on a performance, and then, 5000 people are blown to the
Resurrection, in one moment. I couldn't do that. Compared to that, we're
nothing as composers."  As these words came from the mouth of the
legendary 73-year-old composer on Sunday, the reaction of journalists was
all too predictable. They knew they had hot copy and they ran with it. 
Gathered for a press conference on the eve of two nights of performances
directed by the composer himself, the highlight of the week-long Hamburg
Musikfest, they prompted Karlheinz Stockhausen to say more, asking him if
he was equating art and crime. His answer:  "It's a crime because the
people hadn't agreed to it. They didn't come to the 'concert.' That's
clear. And no one told them that it could kill them.  What happened there
spiritually, this leap from security, from the everyday, from life, that
happens sometimes in art as well. Or else it's nothing."  The quotes were
soon heard on the radio and, according to a -- "I replaced myself with a
small shell script today. I am trying to figure out if that makes me
insignificant or impressive." (anon. on usenet)   statement [0] by
Kathinka Pasveer of the Stockhausen Verlag, which publishes his works,
Stockhausen was willfully misquoted by the popular conservative tabloid
Bild.  But first, a bit of background. Among the works to be performed was
FRIDAY from the LIGHT cycle. Stockhausen began writing the seven-part work
in 1977, each part devoted to each of the seven days of Creation.
Entrenched in the struggle between the elementary forces of good and evil
are Eve, Lucifer and the archangel Michael.  When asked at the press
conference whether these characters were historical figures, Stockhausen
replied that they are always present. For example, Lucifer, in New York.
According to Pasveer, the Bild journalist conflated Stockhausen's comments
into an even more sensational version:  "The whole planning looked like
the greatest piece of art of LUCIFER."  And that's when the organizers of
the music festival and Hamburg's Culture Senator Christina Weiss took
action. "In view of the suffering and mourning in America, there can be no
understanding in these days for unconsidered verbal remarks," Weiss told
reporters after she and the main sponsors of the festival, the Zeit
Foundation, decided to call off the concerts on Tuesday.  Stockhausen,
said to be dumbstruck and depressed, left Hamburg, but had a statement
read out at Tuesday's press conference: "If anyone was offended by my
comments, then I ask for forgiveness, because I never felt or thought what
was read into my words."  Weiss herself emphasized that she felt she knew
where Stockhausen was actually coming from. "I know Stockhausen's mental
universe very well,"  she said. "Stockhausen lives in his own religious
world and is very loose with his vocabulary of demons or good and evil."
Nevertheless, when his comments are isolated, they appear "disgusting."
Weiss added that the performances might take place at some other time, but
for now, "despite his apology," the concerts "would no longer be
acceptable in Hamburg."  A week after the tragic events in New York and
Washington, these are clearly days in which skins are thin all around and
anyone -- not just artists and composers in the media spotlight -- must
suddenly be painstakingly careful with one's own "vocabulary." At the same
time, artists and composers in particular have always been called upon to
breakthrough the dull wall of cliche, to find new and sometimes strange
words, sounds and images towards a clearer understanding of our lives and
experiences.  Karlheinz Stockhausen's long career is certainly exemplary
in this aspect.  His bold experiments with musical forms and
instrumentation (he was among the first composers to work with
synthesizers) was an inspiration to pop icons in the 1960s. You'll find
his face, fifth from the left on the back row, on the cover of The
Beatles' St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  The founding members of
Kraftwerk studied under him in Germany. Musicians as varied as Pete
Townsend and Bjork, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, have all tipped their
hats to his influence in their own work.  James Stonebaker, an American
living in St. Louis, is the Webmaster of the official  Stockhausen [1]
site. Below Pasveer's statement, he writes that two days after that
fateful Tuesday, Stockhausen sent him a fax with his condolences: "We
follow the tragedy in the USA and pray for you all. So terrible." 
Referring to the Bild story, Stonebaker adds, "The reporter who wrote this
rubbish for the sake of his own financial and professional gain should be
condemned by the public for his sensational lies and promptly fired by his
employer."  In Telepolis, Goedart Palm opens [2] his commentary on the
concert cancellations with a play on a famous quote regarding German
history: "Not only is death a master from Germany, but the Germans are
also the inventors of mourning as well." Palm is reminded of David Bowie's
remark that Hitler was the greatest pop star ever and adds, "Stockhausen's
cosmic loftiness is as well known as the morally disturbing circumstance
that artists are gripped with pure envy when means are available to
demonic figures that are not on hand for any work of art."  Palm
especially warns of an encroaching "emotional correctness" and is
particularly put off by the comments of composer György Ligeti, whose
reaction reads, "Stockhausen has taken the side of the terrorists. If he
sees this abhorrent mass murder as a work of art, I unfortunately have to
say that he needs to be locked up in a psychiatric ward."  "But we know
that the process of mourning follows a dramaturgy in the media of the most
limited half-life," Palm concludes, wrapping with a chilling reminder that
only for a while will a couplet churned out by the propaganda machine of
Germany's darkest period hold sway:  Links [0]
http://www.stockhausen.org/reply_to_bild.html [1]
http://www.stockhausen.org/ [2]
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/auf/9595/1.html 

Artikel-URL:
http://www.telepolis.de/english/inhalt/te/9594/1.html