Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th at the ripe age of 79 years old. Stockhausen was a pioneering experimental composer who annotated electronic music, encouraged chaos in his compositions, and made music from math. In a loving statement made by his publisher Stockhausen-Verlag:
IN FRIENDSHIP and gratitude for everything that he has given to us personally and to humanity through his love and his music, we bid FAREWELL to Karlheinz Stockhausen, who lived to bring celestial music to humans, and human music to the celestial beings, so that Man may listen to GOD and GOD may hear His children.
On December 5th he ascended with JOY through HEAVEN’S DOOR, in order to continue to compose in PARADISE with COSMIC PULSES in eternal HARMONY, as he had always hoped to do: You, who summon me to Heaven, Eva, Mikael and Maria, let me eternally compose music for Heaven’s Father-Mother, GOD creator of Cosmic Music.
A Serial Composer
The prolific artist composed 362 individually performable works, published by Universal Edition in Vienna and Stockhausen-Verlag in Germany. Many of his written works were published by the Stockhausen Foundation for Music. According to an article on pitchf#*k:
The 362 works Stockhausen composed include the world’s longest opera cycle (Licht, completed in 2003), the first annotated and published piece of electronic music (1954’s Electronic Study II), and a piece for string quartet that also called for four helicopters (1993’s Helicopter String Quartet). Like John Cage, he demonstrated a fascination with aleatory composition, that which accounts for an element of chance. Early in his career he was also a proponent of serialism, composition based on mathematical formulas.
A short documentary about the artist and his unusual music:
He will be sadly missed, especially among experimental electronic musicians. Fortunately, he left us with a legacy that will survive a very long time in this celestial sphere.
There will be a public farewell ceremony on Thursday December 13th in the chapel of Waldfriedhof in Kuerten before he is buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery), also in Kuerten.
R.I.P. Karlheinz… Look up my friend Psimurgh, you might enjoy making noise with him in your new life.
Karl Stockhausen Links
Obit on Stockhausen’s website
pitchf#*k article
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Electronic Music’s Enfant Terrible (*1928)
“Excerpt from Karlheinz Stockausen’s May 1972 lecture to the Oxford Union on ‘Four Criteria of Electronic Music’. It proved to be astonshingly priescent. If you like this, get the whole lecture from Stockhausen-Verlang.”
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