RE: [microsound] Stockhausen and his reality ?

[Kurt Hoffman <supine@xxxxxxxx>]

Perhaps you're all tired of this...(I'm not, I have always been 
fascinated and appalled by the guy's tripped out megalomania)...the 
New York Times ran coverage of the Stockhausen flap that paints the 
www.stockhausen.org version of what went down as wishful. Quoting 
from an article by Anthony Tomassini in Sunday's Times:

> Mr. Stockhausen [...]was taking questions before a four- day 
> festival of his works in Hamburg. In disjointed comments that were 
> taped by a German radio station and reported internationally, Mr. 
> Stockhausen, 73, called the attack on the World Trade Center "the 
> greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos." 
> Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving "something 
> in one act" that "we couldn't even dream of in music," in which 
> "people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a 
> concert, and then die." Just imagine, he added: "You have people who 
> are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are 
> dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn't do that. In 
> comparison with that, we're nothing as composers."
>
> When he realized how the reporters were reacting, he backtracked and 
> asked that his words not be quoted. "Where has he brought me, that 
> Lucifer?" he asked, referring to one of three invented characters, 
> along with Eve and Michael, who regularly figure in his works.
>
> It was too late. The Hamburg concerts were abruptly canceled. Mr. 
> Stockhausen left town, refusing further comment. On his Web site 
> (www.stockhausen.org) he protested that his words had been 
> distorted, that he had been speaking metaphorically, that Lucifer, 
> the "cosmic spirit" of anarchy who uses his intelligence "to destroy 
> creation," was the creator of the "satanic composition," that is, 
> the attack. German media and cultural figures continued to condemn 
> him.

my favorite quote:

> it is important for artists to reclaim art from such reckless 
> commentary, as Gyorgy Ligeti did recently in suggesting that Mr. 
> Stockhausen be confined to a psychiatric clinic.

k
--Boundary_(ID_LTcuAri5E9IVmw6jacE1rg)
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