Remembering Karlheinz Stockhausen
Remembering Karlheinz Stockhausen – the 6th anniversary of his “flight to eternity” was just a couple of weeks ago, and I missed it, but – coincidentally – just last evening I was drawn to some old recordings I happen to have… and ended up listening to “Carre” -composed in 1958/59! And it still sounds very modern – even ahead of modern, to me. What a genius he was! His intentions, in his own words: “This piece tells no story. Every moment can exist for itself. One must leave time if one wants to let this music enter. Most of the changes take place very gently INSIDE the tones. I hope that this music may evoke a little quietude, depth and concentration, the consciousness that we have much time if we let it go, that it is better to come to oneself than to run wild, ‘for the things that happen need someone to happen to, someone must receive them’.”
Amen to that! My own work – my next concert, early in the spring of the New Year – is also an invitation to “leave time”. I am looking to The 2nd Law of Synchronicity… and also for inspiration and structure “INSIDE the tones”.
David Salminen 