karlheinz stockhausen's influence on today's electronic music
he is so incredibly german. if you listen to the music of composer karlheinz stockhausen you can hardly believe that such a man of the old school and with such a sense for innovations of the musical language had nevertheless influenced the young electronic wizzards' community of the nineties with their often uncomplicated methods regarding music as an endless dance environment. and he never became a fan of popular music in general as far to my knowledge. why should he?
after world war two some advanced composers were going to leave the world of conventional instruments starting to make recordings with maintanance devices from the radio stations. they wanted to reach out for sounds nobody had heard before. and also it was for the first time that nobody was needed to perform this music. it was electronically built up in several layers and could only be heard through tape machines. the two centers of this development were the radio stations in milano, italy, in cologne, germany and by raymund scott in new york. before there were only electric amplified instruments around like the electric guitar or the electric organ still being played more or less conventionally like classical instruments. and there was a growing need for these new sounds especially from the film industries. yet during the war oscar sala had built the trautonium which became an important device in some of alfred hitchcock's movies and there was this russian sound inventor and creator leon theremin who had constructed a special electronic instrument about the same time out of a radio set which was used in some of jack arnold's b-movies i think(e.g.tarantula).
but apart from these "musical outsiders" as i like to call them with my greatest respect the main direction was defined by heavy weight composers such like karlheinz stockhausen, pierre boulez or john cage. when i was a pupil at school i switched on the radio every tuesday and thursday night at 11 p.m. to hear what was behind this far out and often intellectually overloaded music. somehow stockhausen had managed to stick out among all others. there was obviously more to find out than just some or other bizarre sounding effects. it was around 1958 when he visited the conservatory in duisburg where i had attended some composition lessons. stockhausen was giving a public lecture about what's new going on on the musical battlefield. for the first time i heard electronic music from tape. to me it sounded like flashing toilets in outer space and the audience was laughing. everyone had probably the same sort of imagination and couldn't get it together as being music we were listening to. i remember very well how he reacted and how he had remarked that he had seen people laughing when they were involved in a car accident. for me it sounded strange and exciting at the same time. but how could i 'manufacture' these strange sounds myself ? that was for me the most important question which i had to solve sooner or later. it obviously needed a special knowledge and also money to get hold of these special machines. out of a sudden a man sitting beside me raised his hand saying that all these weird sounds were planned giving us a shock and making a lot of money out of it. stockhausen replied that he did these "experiments" just for musical reasons. he didn't need the money as he had married a rich wife. my lnner alarm clocks were ringing stormingly and from this moment on i knew i had to stay close to karlheinz stockhausen. may be he had to offer some more good advice which i could need making my way as a composer, too.
it was amazing to see how he had organized live set ups. lets take his piece "microphonie 1" which he had composed in 1966. four musicians were standing at a huge tam-tam with some 'creation tools' and a microphone in their hand. the tam-tam was prepared at parts with chalk or colophony so that a hard paper bucket for example could scratch upon the chalk- or colophony field. or an electric razor was another device which created a rich world of sounds touching the surface of the tam-tam. two microphones was scanning the different sound areas of the tam-tam and got connected with two maihak w49 radio play eqs, passive filters with strong slope characteristics (years later i was able to get hold of them at an undertaker's shop). stockhausen was sitting in the audience at a little mixer and created something like a 'tam-tam live dub mix'. if you are able to attend such a performance these days it still would sound completely up to date. or let's face one of his electronic masterpieces 'kontakte'. I have heard from other djs that they have made performances with this piece of music going along with rhythm tracks and so did i. of course such a piece is strongly thought over and entirely composed and in the composer's view it shouldn't be regarded just as another effect bank. but this music can be heard in so many different ways and not only in a concert hall with darkened lights and the ears rotating like radar antennas that not a tiny bit is going to be overheard. in order to make a naked electronic music event more live adequate stockhausen additionally composed a score for percussionists so that the electronic music and the musicians came closer to the audience. imagine this was in 1960 and 40 years later we don't show any difficulties in linking to completely other stuff from 'foreign' musical worlds in order to find out how rich our possibilities of performing can be. i can hear the warning voices stating that everything can be brought down to a cheap effect. yes, it can. but if we got only even one good example which proves the contrary it makes it all worth.
it was in the year 1967 when i had a job as a music teacher when i heard that karlheinz stockhausen was giving a performance of his new created piece 'kurzwellen'(short waves) in bremen. early in the afternoon i went to bremen so that i could also listen to the rehearsal. five musicians were equipped each with a short wave receiver and some additional instruments. again they got linked with a small mixer and the famous maihak w49 filters. everybody had a little score in which i could read an arrangement of the signs +, - and 0. seemed to look like a composition directory to me. the musicians were searching on the radio for something short wave specific in sound and rhythm, kept it in tune for a while playing with their 'ordinary' instruments and again searching for another sound signal coming from the radio. meanwhile stockhausen was mixing and giving treatments following his score and it turned out to become a concert of a, let's say 'advanced ambience' category. this all had happened one year before can was borne!
it happened years later. i was about to take off from can in order to follow my own nose when i phoned stockhausen. i wanted to see him again after all these years. first he said he didn't have time but then he changed his mind : come for dinner tonight. we were talking about his influence on the young music scene in general and i mentioned to him how important his ideas have been to me . can had been without a singer for some time and i told him how unreplacable the short waves had become to us searching for a singer or for other material coming out of the radio.today you would probably make a download from the internet. and that kurzwellen had become such an important key event, especially for myself. stockhausen replied that this piece got released on a record but as the record company didn't sell more than 3 units in one year they wanted to take it off the catalogue. this made him going to hannover, the place where the record company was situated and as he said he was fighting like a lion that this piece was going to remain in the catalogue.
he is a real good mother of his music i think. he gave me all his records when we said good bye. and wrote the following notice onto the kurzwellen sleeve : "dear holger, this is apparently my most important record and you should say that to everybody. cordially, karlheinz stockhausen."