Karlheinz Stockhausen!
 

This man was a giant who graced the early last century, he was highly prolific, ambitious and innovative and composed some of the most spacious, grand, emotive music probably ever written.


I've been listening to the Licht Cycle quite often lately, it's soooo good!


Some of my favorite works from Stockhausen are:


Luzifer's Tanz (from Samstag Aus Licht)
Gruppen
Carre
Inori
The whole Klavierstucke cycle (favorites being #1 and #8)
Lichter Wasser (from Sonntag Aus Licht)
Hymen
Tierkreis
Zeitmasse
Cosmic Pulses
Mantra
Orchester Finalisten (from Mittwoch Aus Licht)


Any other Stockhausen fans here? :band:

Stockhausen gets the occasional shout out around here. I like his electronic stuff more than his traditional instrument 12 tone stuff.

*Hymnen*

That's my fave

Especially side 3

Yes, the John Cage side on the electronic-only version. It's my favorite recording of all time.
I was just pointing out that it was spelled wrong - "hymen" is something else entirely...

lol

I didn't notice

Lol, it was late night, pls forgive me :rofl:


Hymnen is definitely the first truly monolithic, behemoth in electroacoustic music. That work has and continues to be a huge resource in the genre. Gesang Der Jünglinge was great and innovative and all but Hymnen really stepped things up a few levels.

Xenakis' best electroacoustic works (which are really really different again to Stockhausen) are after the 70s.
Though there's the awesome pieces by Pierre Scaeffer, Pierre Henry, Gyorgy Ligeti, Edgard Varese, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna etc etc etc before Stockhausen's Hymnen was written.


I'm diggin' Licht so much lately, I even grabbed a copy of this:

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/13...41l/564713.jpg

The other versions of Hymnen are great as well.
My first time experiencing it live was with Stockhausen
himself as klangregie. Later he taught me how to engineer
the sound in the space. Later performances were with him
being present too.

I will disagree on the Xenakis statement tho.
My third favorite work of all time is his Bohor from 1962.

*Schaeffer* BTW

That's incredible you knew Stockhausen. I was fortunate enough to attend a few lectures by Vladimir Ussachevsky but only ever asked him one question and that was during an official Q&A thing. I asked him a bumbled question about his recording techniques and felt terribly embarrassed afterward. It was obvious I just wanted to talk to him but was too stupid to come up with a respectable question.

For whatever it's worth over the last year or so I've become more and more enamared with Olivier Messiaen.

I have no idea where it ranks among all his works but I love Xenakis' percussion music.

That is awesome! He must have been an inspiring man to be around; so focused, knowledgeable and witty etc


I have a strong love for Diamorphoses, Orient Occident and Bohor, no need to worry. They're such amazing pieces <3 (Stockhausen doesn't have anything on the love I have for Xenakis overall but this thread's not about him :p: )
I do think Xenakis achieved something (as far as electronic music goes) even greater and more immersive but it's all subjective.

Yes, he was a very kind friend the last 7 years of his life and I have lots of wonderful memories.

I had the chance to study with Xenakis beginning in the late '90s, but he was so sick by that time,
that Gerard Pape was doing most of the teaching at Les Ateliers UPIC.

Messiaen was a teacher to both Stockhausen and Xenakis, so it would be natural to gravitate towards his work.

If you have any of your own music I can check out online I'd be interested.

I love practically all - yes, I think, really all of Xenakis' work.
The lesser of his work is leaps and bounds over most of the new crop of composers,
but, you're right, it's a subjective thing based on what you are wanting to get out of it
and also how much effort you're willing to put into it.

Thanks. I'll think about where I can send you. :D

I have almost everything you can get (maybe minus un-necessary multiples of the same piece, though I have plenty of those), over 120 individual works in my collection.
There isn't a single work I dislike that I've heard of his, granted some are more greater than others but he was a real genius and mastermind in contemporary music, nobody like him :love:

I second this question

I'm working on a large scale (not commissioned or anything) electronic work as we speak, I'll send you guys a link when it's done (I intend to publish it among other works too)

What are your first two?

I listened to Orchester Finalisten and Lichter Wasser (both scenes from their respective operas) last night and damn do they have a certain ethereal je ne sais quoi, really gets me on an aesthetic level, stimulates my mind a lot (if that's the right way to say it).

Licht gets too overlooked because of it's size (and I guess because none of the operas have had a truly proper staging because it's near impossible....unless they where turned into opera films). Taken scene by scene, there is a lot to experience, to learn and to get from the cycle. He really put everything into it!!

Yes, they're large productions, but actually every one of the operas have been staged and premiered - each on an enormous scale.

I mean't a full production with complete visuals, I know that they've all been performed (and apparently will all be performed again in two years).
Some/most of the stuff is technically near impossible to stage perfectly, so they have to take other routes to perform it. For instance Welt-Parliament or Evas Zauber.

Yes, these were all "full production[s] with complete visuals" - Welt-Parlament, which is a cappella was not only done in Stuttgart in '96, but was included in the opera premiere of Mittwoch in 2012 and Evas Zauber was premiered in '86 and performed in Milan in '88 as part of Montag.

Well what I mean is, for example: there's that intergalactic meeting between the world leaders, which we're supposed to be immersed in (well the music is incredible) but we have a bunch of people on stilts in a warehouse, not really trying to visually create what it's trying to convey.

Perhaps it's just me but I don't feel as though Karlheinz was intending to create something THAT visually abstract, with his highly ambitious and sort of esoteric cosmic opera cycle.

What do you think? :o: