Stockhausen - Conversations with the Composer

by Jonathan Cott

Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen interviewed by Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone magazine & beyond.

Genres: Music

253 pages, hardback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

i got this book in about 1976, and i have been reading it over and over again ever since. i just love the way it catches a very special and generous moment in western art music culture that probably lasted to the mid-80s, and which has been getting less and less generous, less and less interesting, and more and more impoverished ever since. I go back to this book to remember why I got into what i do in the first place, and it works every time.

[Serdar · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I think the ultimate goal of a creative person is to transform his whole existence as a person into a medium that's more time-less, more spiritual. All my energy goes into the music; and it's not really my music. I don't ultimately know what my music has to do in this world and what it means. Because it must be filled with new meanings, with other people, other spirits. I'm commissioned, so to speak, by a supernatural power to do what I do. I think the spirit, as a personal spirit, will be the music itself, so I don't have to take care of it anymore: it begins to have its own life, and sometimes when I meet it again, I hardly recognize it."

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of many positive results of going thru my library to pick out bks to present via GoodReads as what I've read or am reading is that I get curious about bks that I haven't read & start looking thru them. This is one of them. To Cott's credit, I'd say he knows his shit. I don't necessarily expect much from a Rolling Stone interviewer but Cott was clearly prepared for this interview w/ relevant Indian spirtual quotes & some knowledge about Stockhausen's work. & Stockhausen comes across, at times, as what he's often criticized as being: a bit of a New Age flake. But, then, if you know his music & love it as much as I do, anything that I might dislike as NA flakiness just becomes something educational about Stockhausen. Reading about how he conceived of his orchestral piece "Trans" in a dream is especially noteworthy to me since it's one of my favorite pieces of his.

Ah! I finished this today. Cott does a great job, Stockhausen has plenty to say, there are score excerpts, etc.. Even Stockhausen's egomaniacal dismissal of fellow composers Iannis Xenakis, Gyorgy Ligetti, Krysystof Penderecki, John Cage, & Morton Feldman doesn't stop me from giving this bk a 5.

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

sometimes brilliant sometimes genuinely baffling pontificating on borderline banal observations. what else can on expect from Karl?

[Ankh156 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. I first read it in 1973, when it came out. I was much younger in those days and knew less about Stockhausen's œuvre, hopping to find out more about his approach - which I did. I've followed his career since, and revisiting this text now throws a different light on what I hear of what he had done then, and what he as achieved and created since. I remain an admirer of his sonic universe, and learning (and understanding) more of his thoughts and methods is even more enlightening than it was nearly 50 years ago.