Latest Karlheinz Stockhausen Stories

By Martin Anderson Avant-garde Jewish-Argentinian composer whose absurdist works turned convention on its head "With humour it becomes possible to express a wide spectrum of ideas" - an unusual thought for a contemporary composer. But then Mauricio Kagel was an unusual composer, his standing as perpetual outsider giving him a unique vantage-point. Kagel was deadly serious about not taking life seriously and took a subversive delight in turning convention on its head. Kagel's mind saw behind...

By Vivien Schweitzer It started with a dream he had, in which a string quartet performed with its members flying separately in four helicopters. "It was so strange, I thought that if I suggested it, people would think I was round the bend," Karlheinz Stockhausen, the visionary avant-garde German composer who died last year at 79, says in a film just released on DVD by Medici Arts. Yet that dream actually came to fruition. And the film, intelligently directed by Frank Scheffer, documents the...