Yes, I enjoy listening to it.
Even though hearing a two channel audio-only recording is a very poor substitute for the experience of the piece live - something I am looking forward to getting when
Mittwoch is staged in Birmingham later this year.
It's not my favourite scene from
Licht - I would easily place
Michael's journey around the world,
Lucifer's dream,
Synthi-Fou, to say nothing of the wonderful
Outer space above them if I were ranking the scenes from
Licht in terms of "favourite". Still less is it one my favourite pieces of all music - it probably wouldn't make the top thousand, given my liking for music as varied as Monteverdi's
Duo seraphim, Schubert's last piano sonata and Mary Chapin Carpenter's song O
nly a dream.
But whether or not it is one of my favourite pieces, or whether or not I like it, says nothing about the quality of the music - as a composition, as a valid component of a stage work, as a concept, or as anything else. To imagine that my liking for any piece of music confers on it some objective recognition of quality would be taking hubris to new levels.
If people don't like the
Helicopter quartet because of the noise it makes, that's fine. It's just that that says nothing about the music, only the individual listener's response to it.
If people don't like it because they don't understand how it's put together, then to criticise it or the composer because of that is just intellectually moribund. The answer is to find out how it's constructed and then assess it. If people don't want to make the effort, that's fine, too, but again it says nothing about the music.
Anyone who has read an analysis (or made their own) of the piece - even at a simple level - and then wishes to criticise it is on firmer ground.
I've already made my case (briefly) for Stockhausen here:
http://www.talkclassical.com/17758-stockhausen-real-composer-put-2.html. I pointed out that, between 1950 and 1964, each of the 23 works he wrote in that period is, axiomatically, completely different from all the others (and every other piece of music ever composed). That makes it hard to assess the quality of the composer because you have to know most of the works well. It's not like hearing half a dozen Mozart piano concertos in the K400s and being able to make a reasonably accurate assessment of the whole canon, and being able to make inferences about Mozart's concertante style in general, his approach to the orchestra, his approach to the piano, and so on. An understanding of
Kontra-punkte, say, ain't going to help you with
Gruppen or
Kontakte. Of course, as a listener, you don't need to know any of this, you only need to surrender to the hedonistic pleasure of the music.
Between 1964 and the start of
Licht in 1977, there are many further unique works, though a bit of repetition creeps in: eg,
Telemusik is a dry run for
Hymnen,
Sternklang is a vast extension of
Stimmung and so on.
For those people who just want to use Stockhausen as a whipping boy (and there are some on TC) - just go ahead. It says nothing about the composer.
For those who are genuinely bemused by the composer, but have an open mind, I would
not suggest the
Helicopter quartet - or
Gruppen. Bearing in mind what is actually available easily, I suggest choosing
Kontakte. There is a fine performance by Jonny Axelsson and Fredrik Ullen on Caprice CAP21642. In this work for piano, percussion and electronic music, Stockhausen extends the range of timbres available from a piano and a large battery of percussion instruments into the electronic realm. It is essentially a duet for electronics and humans (and the electronic component is a satisfying stand-alone work). If you hear it as a work about sounds, sound quality and timbre, and if you think of it as that duet, you'll get it with half a dozen listenings.
Have I answered the question?