KEY POINTS:
Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died on December 5 at the age of 79, was the dauntingly remote face of hardline contemporary music in the 1950s. Taking his lead from Webern and Messiaen at their most cerebral, works like his Klavierstucke seemed to defy rather than invite pianists to try them.
Yet his Gesang der Junglinge, with its angelic choirboy voice flickering in and out of spidery, pulsating electronics, resonated with an irresistible humanism.
This dimension was strengthened for me, 29 years later in a dimmed Barbican Hall, when Gesang cast its spell from five speakers around the audience. The occasion was Music and Machines, a 10-day BBC tribute to the composer.
The final sentences of Stockhausen's introduction in the programme indicated an immense faith in the power of the new music which would "not leave sensitive souls in peace, but rather transport them into realms of outer and inner space which people have never dreamt in their wildest dreams".
The severe Stockhausen of the '50s had loosened up by the late '60s, turned on by Eastern philosophies and the contemporary hippie ethos. Even today, the composer's website proudly tells the tale of how he made it on to the cover of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper.
In this country, Stockhausen performances were rare, although when pianist David Guerin and percussionist Wayne Laird gave the New Zealand premiere of Kontakte in 1978 to mark the German's 50th birthday, the Maidment Theatre was packed and the event made the TV news.
By the late '70s, Stockhausen was immersed in the creation of a Wagnerian Ring for our times - the great Licht or "Light" cycle of seven operas, epic in scope and cosmology. With a pragmatic blend of practical Kapellmeister and canny businessman, he published smaller, performer-friendly extracts, meaning you can now spot the duelling saxes of Knabenduett from the first of his operas, on the worryingly addictive YouTube.
There were controversies good and not so good to come. The 1990s saw the Helicopter Quartet, with each player in a separate whirlybird and the final soundscape mixed out of shimmering tremolos and slicing chopper blades. The creation of the work, interspersed with great chunks of KS philosophising, was caught in a film by Frank Scheffer that screens from time to time on the Arts Channel.
Less happy was his slightly loopy response to 9/11 as being "a great work of art"; sadly, the resulting scandal drew attention to the fact that Stockhausen's music was not so easy to access.
Stockhausen performances are in low supply on local concert programmes, although perhaps AK09 might consider his Gruppen for three orchestras as a follow-up to AK03's Twin Peaks with the NZSO and APO. Nevertheless, this major force in 20th century music has become far less remote in the past few years.
In 2005, Scarecrow Press published Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, a lucid study by New Zealander Robin Maconie, whose perspectives on Stockhausen owe much to his blurring the borders between collaborator and commentator.
And then there is always the chance to luxuriate in the new Harmonia Mundi recording of Stockhausen's 1968 Stimmung with Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices. This is a 70-minute meditation-come-prayer, springing from the overtones of a single chord as the six voices and their electronic shadows pursue their spiritual journey around the globe. Aotearoa is not forgotten along the way, with an invocation to the Maori god, Tangaroa.
* Robin Maconie, Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (Scarecrow Press, 2005); Stockhausen, Stimmung (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807408, through Ode Records)
Maconie will discuss Stockhausen's work on Upbeat, Radio NZ Concert, today at noon.
