Skip to main content

What is Stockhausen's legacy?






Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the most important composers of the post war era. He is partially responsible for the creation of the post war modernist music.   But what is his true legacy? Was he the leading composer in his field?

Did he invent the 'timbralist' idea of generating music from a single sound? Well, he did accomplish that concept with "Stimmung'' (Voice) which is completely designed around the single chord of a B flat ninth. But he wasn't the first.  Giacinto Scelsi wrote "Quatro pezzi per orchestre" which is based a single note per movement and that work was written in 1959.
Quatro pezzi per orchestre - Scelsi

 I seriously doubt whether Stockhausen knew about Scelsi's achievement when he wrote Stimmung in 1977.

 Perhaps one of his greatest works  is "Gruppen'' (Groups) composed for three orchestras. Did it change the way we use the orchestra?  He was a pioneer, especially in the early stages of his profession career as a composer; writing for larger orchestras that used unusual combinations. But unfortunately, as vast financial investments received diminishing returns, the use of the orchestra dwindled. Most of modern music is written for much smaller forces.

 Did his electronic compositions change the way we think about music?  Stockhausen mixed music with real sounds. His 1956 "Gesang der Jünglinge'' (Song of the Youths) combined electronics with voices. "Kontakte'' (Contacts) of 1960 was one of the first compositions to mix live instruments with prerecorded material.  He was an electronic pioneer, using synthesizers long before other people were interested in them. Of course, the concept of electronic music did not begin with him.  Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer must have had an enormous influence on Stockhausen's electronic output.
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer
Did the "Licht" series of operas 'out do' Wagner? Did they determine the future of opera?  I don't think so.  They are highly unique art-works and they are unlikely to be a platform of inspiration because of their individuality.  Some composers have tried to write longer works but I do not believe it will become the trend.

 So what is Stockhausen's legacy?  Well, he is not always the first composer to initiate a new direction in modern music but he is the main figure in establishing most of the key trends.  What he achieved with modern music, Beethoven accomplished with the symphony -  set the highest standards for future composers.

 Modern Orchestral Music

Popular posts from this blog

Schonberg - Josef Hauer

In your blog post on "the shadow lurking behind every genius," I delved into the influences behind great composers' output, but you might have omitted a few noteworthy figures. While Arnold Schoenberg is widely recognized as the inventor of the series system in the early 1920s, it's essential to question whether he was truly the only one to devise chromatic methodology. Have you ever heard of Josef Hauer? Interestingly, Josef Hauer was a composer who also explored the concept of twelve-tone composition around the same time as Schoenberg. In fact, the last movement of Arnold Schönberg's Fünf Klavierstücke, Opus 23 (1923) marked the first instance of his 'Method of Composing with Twelve Tones which are related only with one another.' This method, known as serialism or dodecaphonic music, is significantly different from previous compositions because it exclusively employs a set of twelve different tones, avoiding repetition within the series and encompassing ...
Read more

Helmut Lachenmann

H elmut Lachen mann is relatively unknown outside of Germany.  Nevertheless , h e is a figure wh o is growing in significan ce in modern music circles.  Despite his wide experience, h is lack of broad appeal is, in my opinion, largely d ue to the individuality o f his music.  He is  not easy to categori se in an era which is   dominated by trends and cliches. A simple way of describing his music is... *"musique concrète instrumentale". The notion is the creation of a subtlety of transformation of timbre, a manipulation of a continuum from sound to noise, from pitched notes to pitchless textural exploration, and all that in the sphere of (mostly) purely instrumental music. That means that in Lachenmann's music, there's a world of sound that rivals and even surpasses what electronic and electro-acoustic composers can achieve.  -Guardian. Essentially ,  he is a acoustic composer writing electronic sounding music.  He is somewhere...
Read more