Karlheinz Stockhausen - Four Criteria of Electronic Music

careck,
you’re pretty much right to be suspicious of herr Stockhausen..
though some of his earlier pieces are interesting and quite listenable ( microphonies 1 & 2 are ones that are worth a go for me )
He was pretty much a racist , dismissing almost all music that wasn’t his as “Too Afro-centric “ merely if they have anything resembling rhythmical qualities. His egotistical answer to any student seeking advice was mainly “Listen to My music, there is always time to learn” Holger Czukay studied under Stockhausen and always said that the only lesson he learned from him was that if you are serious about being an avant-garde musician then you must marry a rich woman!

His early rise to fame in the 50’s was primarily due to him managing to be at the right educational establishment that Herbert Eimert had furnished with new electronic equipment Stockhausen had privileged access to. Eimert is well worth investigating as an ‘actual pioneer’
Basically Stockhausen courted fame and hence became famous as the face of electronic music as ‘high art’ . Most of the ‘theories’ he espoused early on were interesting but the core of them were rewordings of things Henry Cowell had formulated nearly 3 decades earlier!! and the more famous herr S became the more ludicrous and mystical his theories became , to the point of saying that his music was dictated to him by beings from a ‘higher civilization’...( that, right there, is an indication of his self importance ) ...on Sirius.. yep, stuff that Sun Ra had been saying in a much more charming and weirdly convincing manner since the 40’s.. Sun Ra’s music would have been completely dismissed by old square hair Stocky..

Cornelius Cardew wrote a whole critique Called “Stockhausen serves Imperialism” which argued about the ‘racket’ that the bourgeoisie keep up and how Stockhausen was supported and hence made music ONLY for the ruling classes.. probably true for the time but then again Cardew dismissed both David Bowie AND punk rock as fascist.. so maybe not a useful side to take.
of course, before he died herr S had already burnt a lot of bridges by pronouncing that the 9-11 twin towers thing was the pinnacle of performance art ( or something )
here’s the quote from a press conference at a music festival in Hamburg
- The events of 9/11, he enthused, were “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.” .... “Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for ten years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying; just imagine what happened there. You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment. I couldn’t do that. By comparison, we composers are nothing.”. -
you can maybe see how someone who demanded people fasted for 2 days before performing some of his pieces and insisted they hopped around on one leg whilst playing the flute for an hour ( or collapsed ) might be impressed by such excruciating fundamentalist fanatacism.

it was very revealing about the classical music elite that when Stocky died the tribute performances that flooded their venues where almost entirely his ridiculous and irrelevant theatrical/mystical later works rather than any of the complex electronic early pieces that would have required ‘outside’ experts from other than the trained classical music schools to be brought in to technically realise such sounds..

I had a project long ago called Stock, Hausen & Walkman .. in the 90’s a german radio journalist mentioned to me that in an interview he had asked Herr S if he had heard of the project .. Stocky replied that yes he had , “ they often write to me for advice about their music and sometimes, if i have time, i reply.. they are very grateful”. the journalist wanted to know what advice he had sent... I told him the truth... NONE , that it had never happened, I wouldn’t even know where to write to the guy and that it seemed to be yet another example of Stockhausen as a complete fantasist.. the journalist sent me a cassette of the interview for my archives, though it’s in german and my german is minimal so i have never actually listened to it..
For more Karlheinz fun, google “ stockhausen and the neoists “
all that said, I would never discourage anyone from listening to Stockhausen recordings, you have to separate the work from the man and there is often an awful lot of other more interesting people involved in the pieces ( Hugh Davies for instance and Tim Souster etc.. )
  over and out
hope yr doing all right over there Careck..

Wow, I must admit that I was hoping to stimulate some discussion and further info about Stockhausen, his theories and his art.

And you, rockysmalls and Lugia, did not disappoint! Thanks so much for your insights and the added information. Now I have to look up all those other artists you mentioned and listen in on those works...

This forum is lucky to have you!