Quote: Stockhausen vs. the “Technocrats”

“[…] He’s called Plastikman, and in public, Richie Hawtin. It starts with 30 or 40 – I don’t know, I haven’t counted them – fifths in parallel, always the same perfect fifths, you see, changing from one to the next, and then comes in hundreds of repetitions of one small section of an African rhythm:duh-duh-dum etc., and I think it would be helpful if he listened to Cycle [Zyclus] for percussion, which is only a 15 minute long piece of mine for a percussionist , but there he will have a hell of understand the rhythms and I think he will get a taste for very interesting non-metric and non-periodic rhythms. I know that he wants to have a special effect in dancing bars, or whatever it is, on the public who likes to dream away with such repetitions, but he should be very careful, because the public will sell him out immediately for something else, if a new kind of musical drug is on the market. So he should be very careful and separate as soon as possible from the belief in this kind of public. “

Karlheinz Stockhausen after listening to Plastikman – Sheet One, in 1995
[Audio Culture. Readings in Modern Music by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner]

Posted in academia on July 20th, 2009 by fresh good minimal | 7 Comments