Karlheinz Stockhausen, R.I.P.

It is with great sorrow that I must report on the passing of one of the greatest musical minds, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Many years ago I fell in love with his music due to a hearing of Hymnen. It motivated me to read his theory and to hear as much of his music as possible. Eventually, I used his essay "The Four Criteria of Electronic Music" to develop my own organizational system for largescale compositions. Of course it started as a way to generate forms for electronic compositions, but I found that it could work well with acoustic instruments, even as a structural basis for tonalist compositions (although I have rarely found any need to write much tonalist music), particularly for the sort of tonalist composition one hears these days from composers who want a sort of tonalist sound without being locked into tonalist functional harmony.

At one point I wanted to go to Germany to study with Stockhausen. I was warned off by my academic advisor ("no, you will kill each other") and a composition professor ("oh, you would learn alot, but you would end up hating his guts."). So, I never did make it out there, which is probably for the better, since his work of the last few years has been quite eccentric and not really, at least at a few listenings, not of the quality of his early works.

Stockhausen was, of course, a prickly character, with some odd and even unsavory manners. But it is almost solely due to him that I became interested in music theory and was able to develop my own system of form. I am sad that I never got to meet him, but I could say the same of Scarlatti.

Western Civilization lost one of its greats.