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Stockhausen, Karlheinz

53K views 276 replies 63 participants last post by  Mandryka  
#1 ·
There was no guestbook for this great one ;)

We all know he is quite controversial, not just because his works are not easily understandable (let's say it that way :D ), but also because of distorted press reviews about declarations on just a way to see 9/11, which costed him the celebration of a festival and a relationship with a daughter...

I'm quite addicted lately to, quite probably, his masterwork: LICHT.

What do you have to say about him?

Greetings.
 
#2 ·
I think he is one of the greatest composers ever. Regardless of whether one likes his music or not, the sheer inventiveness and the astonishing work ethic are, well, beyond anyone. Also, as a composer I benefit enormously from studying his work; really inspiring stuff and teaches you tons.

Haven't listened to the entire LICHT yet, just three whole operas and a few fragments from others. Some of my favorite Stockhausen pieces are from LICHT - Kathinkas Gesang (Samstag), Klavierstueck XIV (Montag; probably the most accessible Stockhausen piece I know, apart from Amour), Orchester-Finalisten (Mittwoch), Donnerstags Abschied (Donnerstag), etc. I also like Mantra, Klavierstuecke VII and X, Freude and Harmonien from Klang, Mikrophonie I... eh. A lot of terrific stuff :)
 
#4 ·
A charlatan and a performance artist more than a real composer, if you ask me. As a provocateur, perhaps one of the all-time greats, delivering a decisive slap in the face to the sometimes snooty classical music intellegentia. As an honest-to-goodness musician, I think he is a complete failure. Proof that technical knowledge of musical notation does not a great composer make. The only thing intruiging about his Helicopter Quartet is not the music itself (which is ugly and forgettable), is that it is being played in 4 different helicopters. Beethoven didn't need stunts like this to be noticed, he let the quality of his music bring him his fame.

Don't worry Stockhausen fans...it's just my opinion and do not let my comments get in the way of your enjoyment of this man's works. if it is meaningful to you, that's really all that matters, right?
 
#15 ·
A charlatan and a performance artist more than a real composer, if you ask me.
Even the most cursory review of the 25 works chronologically from Kreuzspiel to Momente will shown someone with any understanding of composition that Stockhausen was a remarkably gifted, innovative, inspiring - and probably great - composer.

Perhaps you could choose of one those works and supply a brief structural analysis to back up your assertion.
 
#5 ·
Right. I find his sonic explorations and his approach to sound in a spatial sense to be exhilarating. His pioneering efforts in electronic music and subsequent influence speaks for itself. It's easy enough to throw around words like "charlatan", but Stockhausen was incredibly knowledgeable about composition, clear in his intentions, and groundbreaking in his techniques and with his results. But most of all, I just enjoy the fascinating worlds of sound that he created.
 
#6 ·
It's easy enough to throw around words like "charlatan"
In Stockhausen's case, yes, it is easy.

but Stockhausen was incredibly knowledgeable about composition, clear in his intentions, and groundbreaking in his techniques and with his results.
That may all be true, but being clear in your intentions and knowledgeable about music does not justify the end result's of one's efforts. Being "groundbreaking" is not necessarily a good thing, either. As far as I'm concered, Stockhausen broke ground in his efforts to further the perversion of good music. Just my opinion.

But most of all, I just enjoy the fascinating worlds of sound that he created.
Well, there you go. I cannot fault you for genuinly liking his sound. I respect your opinion, I really do, I just do not respect Stockhausen.
 
#12 ·
The trouble with this conversation is that people are using the word "great" as if it meant one thing, but actually to mean something else. Use "great" for those composers you like, by all means, but don't then sideslip into implying that because composer X is "great" his or her music has some absolute value, because that's what great means. It's not a useful way of progressing the conversation.

If Tapkaara doesn't like Stockhausen's music, that is of vanishingly small relevance to its quality. About as much relevance as the fact that I do like his music. If we want to assess the quality of a composer's music we have to address the music, not individuals' varying responses to it.

Music is communication, and the message that people get from it is important - in fact I would argue that the message is the music. But the reaction to the message is not the message.
 
#13 ·
I think that the problem with some listeners is that they judge C20th music by the standards of the C19th. On the face of it, this sounds insane, and they don't do this consciously, but in reality this is what they are doing. I think one has to have a degree of flexibility to enjoy post-WW2 music like that of Stockhausen. It may not give you a warm fuzzy feeling, but it may just hieghten your perception of art if you make yourself open to it.

I recently borrowed Stimmung from my local library, and listened to it right through (80 minutes or so). While I only did that once, and don't intend to repeat that experience, I quite enjoyed it as a one-off. It was refreshingly different to most choral works that I know. Music (for me) is all about broadening my horizons and increasing my perception. Otherwise, it would just be boring, always listening to the same old cliches...
 
#14 ·
A truly extraordinary figure in the entire pantheon of the western art music legacy, there is nothing quite like him - a true pioneer & visionary. I've been listening to a lot of his work since his death in 2007 ... re-visting old stuff and exploring the previously uncharted late works, Licht & Klang. Favorites include ...

Kontrapunkte
Kreuzspiel
Klavierstucke I-XIX
Gesang der Junglinge
Zeitmasze
Gruppen
Kontakte
Telemusik
Hymnen
Momente
Stimmung
Mantra
In Freundschaft
Michaels Reise
Luzifers Tanz
Der Kinderfanger
Oktophonie
Orchestral Finalists
Elektronische Musik mit Tonszenen vom Freitag
Sonntags Abschied
Freude
Cosmic Pulses
Star Signs
 
#16 ·
Well, Tapkaara only seems to like the more conservative composers (for want of a better word) of the C20th. I think that for him, even someone like the relatively middle of the road Lutoslawski would be unacceptable. So Stockhausen for him is beyond the pale. I think people who have a bias toward disliking post WW2 music should probably avoid being negative. Of course, they have a right to post here like anyone else, but they should not be surprised that they will come up against some heavy opposition if they post some very extreme assertions like his ones above. Kind of reminds me of Mirror Image, but without the abuse. He was so closed-minded, it wasn't funny. Anyway, I agree with Some Guy on this matter...
 
#17 ·
Seriously, I think that dismissing the more "conservative" composers of the century is just as biased of closed-minded as dismissing those who are more "experimental"... especially if we are to be honest and admit that we cannot objectively discern just whom of either camp will prove themselves the most worthy over time... thus we can only listen to and support that which we enjoy... that which resonates with us. I wouldn't offer much of an opinion on Stockhausen either way, not having heard much of anything. The helicopter bit seems like a stupid conceptual art schtick, but then I have a recording of his Stimmung which is in no way the work of a "charlatan"... indeed I quite enjoy it. Nevertheless... I somewhat imagine that claims as to Stockhausen being one of the "greatest composers ever" are more than slightly inflated.
 
#18 ·
I had a shocking revelation yesterday.

I was sitting on the train, plagued by extreme boredom (ebook ran out of batteries), I was very annoyed, hot, hungry and not so pleased with my destination.

I decided to listen to some of Stockhausen's KlavierstĂĽcke, since I felt like I wanted to listen something I hated...

And suddenly, the music talked to me. Don't know why.... maybe it's music for people that are extremely bored. Bare passage of time, just events of sound...
 
#19 ·
I had a shocking revelation yesterday.

I was sitting on the train, plagued by extreme boredom (ebook ran out of batteries), I was very annoyed, hot, hungry and not so pleased with my destination.

I decided to listen to some of Stockhausen's KlavierstĂĽcke, since I felt like I wanted to listen something I hated...

And suddenly, the music talked to me. Don't know why.... maybe it's music for people that are extremely bored. Bare passage of time, just events of sound...
Maybe the piece sounded better than the train travelling on rails? That could be why.
 
#21 ·
Sorry, Rasa, but I think your normal commonsense has eluded you here.
The Klavierstucke, of which even the first 12 are highly diverse, are all tightly composed, amenable to clear, cogent analysis, and, of course, expressive. For me they are far more successful realisations of a post-Webernian ethos than say the piano works of Barraque or Babbitt, which, to me, are dry and ascetic. Maybe not so much the Barraque.
But don't you find Klavierstuck X viscerally exciting?
It's entirely understandable that they didn't give up all their secrets on one listening - they require repeated listening to get to know them, but study repays the effort.
 
#23 ·
I have been listening to Stockhausen's Gruppen lately - I find it quite an amusing work!
Im wondering if perhaps Im missing the point and do other people think there is a lot of humour in S's Music?
It would probably aid my appreciation of this Composer if I knew he had a sense of fun
Interested in others opinions on this one :)
 
#24 · (Edited)
There is indeed a great deal of humour in Stockhausen's music, though it often shades into playfulness rather than outright jokes. I find the humour that permeates Licht can be a little laboured, but there is plenty elsewhere. Harlekin for solo clarinet is full of boisterousness and pranks while, in the 'choral opera' Atmen gibt das Leben... [Breathing gives life...], one of the choristers gets the hiccoughs.

I've always felt that the idea of a piece in which the players, one by one, get up and leave the platform while the music is still being performed, leaving just two violinists, to be a very Stockhausen-like joke, particlarly as this was meant as a message to the music's dedicatee. Such a work exists, of course, but it was written 200 years before Stockhausen.
 
#25 · (Edited)
How do you listen to something like KlavierstĂĽck X? I have tried a few times.
I mostly hear harsh, loud and ugly tones coming out of the piano in a seemingly random order.
I'm sure the music is clever in some way, but I don't want to study music to be able to enjoy it. I want to feel it and get to know it from the heart purely by listening. Even if I understood the structure and compositional ideas behind the music, my ears would still hate it. Really, what is there to find in this music other than irritation?
Could you honestly listen to this in bed with headphones for example and expierence something that is remotely pleasant?
I am not attacking, I am seriously trying to understand, because I consider myself a fairly open-minded music listener.
 
#26 · (Edited)
Forgive me if I talk about your post point by point. I'd be interested to know which recording of KlavierstĂĽck X you heard.

How do you listen to something like KlavierstĂĽck X? I have tried a few times.
I mostly hear harsh, loud and ugly tones coming out of the piano in a seemingly random order.
(1) "harsh, loud and ugly" - if you're using harsh as a synonym for dissonant, then I agree with you. Loud: I've just checked my copy of the score and, for sure, there are some ffs and fffs, but I suspect there are more pps and ppps. In fact, the whole compositional arc of the piece is like a comet with a dense 'head' and a protracted, quiet tail made up of the resonances of chords which are allowed to die away to inaudibility. Ugly is wholly your personal value judgement. Interesting, of course, but nothing to do with the music. Personally, my response to this music is that I find it exciting and exhilarating. Just my value judgements, of course.

(2) "seemingly random order" - there is indeed a complicated structure and rationale behind the music but I would have to admit that I need the score and an analysis of the work to guide me through it when I listen to it. I don't really think Stockhausen expects the listener to hear all the details of the structure, particularly in the first few listenings.

I'm sure the music is clever in some way, but I don't want to study music to be able to enjoy it. I want to feel it and get to know it from the heart purely by listening.
(3) "I don't want to study music to be able to enjoy it" - that's an entirely acceptable standpoint but I think that, if you were to study music, you would enjoy particular pieces more. That applies as much to an appreciation of how Mozart varies the concerto form in his string of piano concertos from K413 onwards as it does to a particular piece of Stockhausen.

Each listener is entitled to approach a piece of music how he or she wishes, and every composer has to expect that that will be the attitude of his/her listeners. Composers of the baroque and classical periods did expect their audience to appreciate the structure which is why expositions were repeated in sonata form movements (so the first time listener could remember the material and so better appreciate what the composer did in the development section) and why Haydn's jokes aren't funny if you don't understand the way he subverted form, in order to be amusing, because you don't understand the form.

Even if I understood the structure and compositional ideas behind the music, my ears would still hate it.
Really, what is there to find in this music other than irritation?
(4) This sound suspiciously like someone determined not to enjoy this music. Which is fine, and I realise that there is nothing that I can say which will sway you because of your attachment to being right about this. Or tell me that I have got that wrong, please.

(5) Irritation is an emotion which we choose to have - it isn't in the music so it can't be found there. Once more, there's nothing wrong in finding it irritating - you wouldn't be the first! There is plenty of music which I find intensely irritating starting with almost everything Tchaikovsky wrote. But I accept that the irritation is in me, not the music.

Could you honestly listen to this in bed with headphones for example and experience something that is remotely pleasant?
Yes.

I am not attacking, I am seriously trying to understand, because I consider myself a fairly open-minded music listener.
I appreciate that and I hope you don't think I am attacking your position - in the sense of judging it or you for holding it. I think, if you want to remain open-minded you owe it to yourself to find out a little about how the music is put together but, if you don't like the idiom, you don't like the idiom and there's not a lot more to be said - except to reiterate that your response to the music is just that, it doesn't say anything at all about the music, so any suggestion, however disguised, that the music might be at fault should be let go of.

If you would like some harmonious Stockhausen, I recommend Tierkreis, twelve little tunes, one for each sign of the zodiac. It's available in a variety of instrumentations. Then there's the Indianerlieder, twelve songs for two people, based on a single tone row, admittedly, but a very benign one. Or Stimmung which is famously based on a single chord made up of B flat and five of its natural overtones (B♭, F, B♭, D, A↓♭, and C).
 
#27 ·
Some Stockhausen tunes.

Four of the signs from Tierkreis arranged for a trio of flute/piccolo, clarinet, trumpet/piano - each is played three times, each time in different instrumentation and decoration.

This work was originally written for twelve music boxes and the first version of Leo is the closest to that sound.

 
#28 · (Edited)
I too struggle with this piece. Struggle that is, to hear any reason why one 'phrase' or 'passage' should follow another. Struggle to hear whether what goes on in the vertical dimension (ie. harmony) has any coherence or if it is irrelevant to the construction. If it is based on some sort of serial technique I'd like to know what rationale governs the composers choices.

Perhaps Jeremy or someone else has some of the answers and could explain.

You see for me, although some of KS's orchestral and ensemble pieces are fairly approachable if one sticks to reveling in exotic textures and their 'sound design', (Gruppen is an example of a piece that can excite on a purely sensuous level), I find piano music to be the great leveler. It exposes the composers bare musical thoughts without the 'window dressing' of novel timbre or instrumental colour.
I am struggling to find the musical 'content' so to speak.

On another point Jeremy, relating to your earlier post. it is my firm conviction that the repeat of the exposition in the classical sonata has really nothing at all to do with the listener's memory and every thing to do with 'architecture'. Leave out the repeat and the whole edifice comes crashing down. Every concert goer knows Beethoven's 5th but no conductor is going to not repeat the exposition, even if the audience is made up entirely of Beethoven biographers and no one present is hearing it for the first time. It would make a nonsense of the whole movement.
In Klavierstuck X, if a performer left out say, bars 50 - 60 (random choice to use as an example) would it matter? Would the piece suffer?
This is not a wind up but a serious question. If you reversed the order of notes on one page would the piece lose something? Audibly?
 
#34 · (Edited)
I too struggle with this piece. Struggle that is, to hear any reason why one 'phrase' or 'passage' should follow another. Struggle to hear whether what goes on in the vertical dimension (ie. harmony) has any coherence or if it is irrelevant to the construction. If it is based on some sort of serial technique I'd like to know what rationale governs the composers choices.

Perhaps Jeremy or someone else has some of the answers and could explain.

You see for me, although some of KS's orchestral and ensemble pieces are fairly approachable if one sticks to reveling in exotic textures and their 'sound design', (Gruppen is an example of a piece that can excite on a purely sensuous level), I find piano music to be the great leveler. It exposes the composers bare musical thoughts without the 'window dressing' of novel timbre or instrumental colour.
I am struggling to find the musical 'content' so to speak...

In Klavierstuck X, if a performer left out say, bars 50 - 60 (random choice to use as an example) would it matter? Would the piece suffer?

This is not a wind up but a serious question. If you reversed the order of notes on one page would the piece lose something? Audibly?
Let me assure you that Stockhausen's KlavierstĂĽck X has a fully defined, fully worked out and tightly disciplined structure, just as much as has the Hammerklavier sonata. The differences are that (a) the KS piece is an order of magnitude more complex and (b) a twelve tone idiom is intrinsically (far) harder to understand aurally. Leaving out any part of the work would be as damaging as leaving out a chunk of the Hammerklavier.

I don't have the many hours it would take (and, in the absence of the necessary skills, access to enough analytical material) to respond adequately. But I don't want to shirk my task so I hope the following will help. I must acknowledge my debt to Jonathan Harvey for his 'bird's eye view' of the piece published in his book on the composer.



Harvey says "the main idea of the piece is a big gesture followed by tiny isolated vestiges or after-echoes of it". I hear that idea, at the macro level, in the overall arc of the work as I said in my earlier post: it's like a comet with a dense head followed by an extended, increasingly etiolated, tail. Of course, this is an entirely novel way to structure a piece so KS has a free hand to decide what the structure is going to be which means it cannot be assessed in relation to any preexisting works - the work stands or falls on whether you think this is an interesting idea to listen to someone playing with for half an hour.

I would suggest listening to the piece a few times without making any attempt to understand it, just to get a feel for how it works as an exercise in exploring this idea of gesture+vestiges.

Having said that KlavierstĂĽck X is entirely novel at the macro and micro levels, it turns out to be somewhat conventional at an intermediary level: it is in a quasi-sonata form, in that there are four large parts: broadly fulfilling the roles of exposition, development, recapitulation and coda. Of course, the recapitulation is not at all a simplistic repeat of the exposition.

The first part - the exposition - is a big group of ideas followed by six isolated vestiges made up of more less single voice material, followed by six further vestiges characterised by clusters. The rest of the work proceeds similarly as a succession of gestures (formally, groups), each with vestiges.

Check out this YouTube video:


I suggest this one because it shows each page of the score, so you can see where the groups and vestiges are.

The first big group of ideas runs continuously to 3:13. You can hear and see that it is not one long rant, there are many short ideas differentiated by the type of playing used in each - for example, the change of soundworld at 0:31, from the highly decorated, single voice material (actually it's the exposition of the underlying tone row) to massive forearm clusters should be clear. (I'll come back to this.)

Holding notes and letting them reverberate is a big aspect of this piece and these fermata provide easy markers for the listener throughout the work, since every main group (gesture) and vestige is isolated in its sea of reverberation or silence. I think I am right in saying there is no group or vestige that includes a significant fermata, so, in fact, the structure is very simply laid out: every time there is a held note or a silence you know the next thing you hear is a new group or vestige.

At 3:13, the composer asks the pianist to hold four pitches from the material that's just been played and these are sustained to 3:27. The six 'single voice' vestiges are at 3:27, 3:38 (just E, then D sharp, E, with the first E held), 3:41, 3:44 (just one note, G), 3:46 and 4:11.

Then come the six chordal vestiges, at 4:17, 4:27, 4:40, 5:00, 5:48 and 6:00. This last ends at 6:25 and there is then a very long reverberation, broken only at 7:04 by a transitional passage (consisting of one fairly consonant seven part chord followed by a very high A), before the development section starts (in the manner of the opening of the exposition) at 7:31.

The second part has three increasingly long sections, each made up of increasingly short cluster and chord material (groups), each followed by five vestiges (the first long, the rest short, in each case). For the 'recapitulation' (third section) KS, typically, homes in on a previously insignificant idea (repeated notes) and makes a big number of them, followed by the vestiges, once again.

Finally, in the coda, there are three more groups, each with attendant vestiges, the groups becoming ever shorter and effecting "a general mixture and gentle disintegration or liquidation, as Schoenberg would say...".

I've mentioned that there is an underlying set and the thematic material is worked out from it serially. It is hard to hear the set because most of what you hear is material which is structurally decorative. The pitches of the set are shown in the score by larger noteheads (just about visible on the video). The cluster chords have precise start and end points and I would not be at all surprised if the width of the chords was also derived from the set. Nor would I be surprised if the durations of the pauses were also strictly derived from the set (there are plenty of example elsewhere where KS does both these things). A strict analysis of this is beyond me and I don't know of a published one.

Going back to the styles with which the ideas in the first big group are played. Stockhausen identifies 19 ways of playing the keys (he did similarly, later on, in Mantra). These are:
single-voice chromatic or semi chromatic darting fragments, terminating often in some goal note;
2 part chords pp; 3 part chords p; 4 part chords mf; 5 part chord f; 6 part chords ff; 7 part chords fff;
clusters played with the fingers; hands ; forearms;
glissandi: of finger clusters (gloves recommended); hand clusters;
arpeggios up; down;
rapidly repeated notes and chords; one trill;
half pedal; silent depression of forearm clusters in the bass to aid reverberation; silent depression of key immediately after attack ditto.

KS then develops seven "character types" out of this material and these characterise the elements of the groups and the vestiges. So, for example, the first and sixth of the chordal gestures (at 4:17 and 6:00) are made out of forearm clusters, while the inner four use hand and finger clusters (with glissandi). No doubt, you've found the one trill!

Petwhac refers to the sensuousness of Gruppen. Personally, I find KlavierstĂĽck X just as sensuous in its own way. The violence, the extreme contrasts, those oh-so-long resonances, the deliberate 'information overload' of the first three minutes - and even the simple utter confidence of the composer - all work together for me. And I just love those cluster chord glissandi (I regret that the recording I've cited underplays them; Frederic Rzewski did a better job).

The recording on the YT video referred to above is by Aloys Kontarsky (still available on Sony?) and was produced by the composer (1965).



How irritating that only the first 'half' of the work has been uploaded by this poster in this form. The same performance (in three chunks not, of course, following the structure of the work) starts here:

 
#30 ·
I greatly look forward to it. Perhaps in return I can help Jeremy overcome the difficulty he has with Tchaikovsky. This can be mutually beneficial. And if I recall correctly you have a problem appreciating Chopin.
Maybe by the end of the process I will begin to enjoy KS, Jeremy will find more to enjoy in PT and you will 'get' FC.
 
#36 · (Edited)
My pleasure - I enjoyed doing it, I just wish I had the time to make it more comprehensive.

In terms of getting to grips with the work, perhaps focus on the first seven and a half minutes - the exposition. I'm sure that, if you play that half a dozen times, watching the score, you'll gain enough familiarity to go on to the rest.

A few points on reading the score.
It's very irritating in that there are no bar lines and no rehearsal marks to refer to.

(1) The smallest particles of the music have a relative duration indicated by the note stems at the top of each system. So the first particle lasts one crotchet (quarter note), the next a breve+quaver (two and one eighth notes, presumably), the third a quaver and so on. The overriding tempo is "as fast as possible" so the pianist has to choose an overall tempo which allows him (or her) to play all the notes within a particle clearly whilst conforming to the marking.

KS puts in tempo qualifiers just like any other composer. The fifth vestige is marked sehr verlangsamen [slowing down a lot]

(2) Notes connected by a thick beam to be played at constant tempo if the beam is horizontal, otherwise accelerando (beam rises), ritardando (beam falls)

(3) Cluster chords are indicated by thick vertical lines

(4) Solid triangles connected to cluster chords indicate they should be played as rapid arpeggios upwards (triangle points up) or downwards

(5) Pitches on stems connected by a slur sustain until the end of a slur.
 
G
#37 · (Edited)
Good stuff, Jeremy. I learned a lot myself about this piece from your (and Harvey's) exposition.

The idea I took away from all this was was more along the lines of a fireworks show than a single comet. Does that make sense? (I will have to check that for myself next time I listen to the piece, though since I don't usually do visuals when I listen, I probably won't be able to corroborate anything.)

I have a quibble with the assertion that twelve tone is intrinsically more difficult to understand. I don't, with my particular (and peculiar) experience, find it difficult at all, so I conclude that its putative difficulty is not intrinsic but extrinsic. (Though you might have just said that diplomatically to let novice listeners off the hook; in which case I've totally blown it here and must be punished. (Condignally, of course.))
 
#38 · (Edited)
Good stuff, Jeremy. I learned a lot myself about this piece from your (and Harvey's) exposition.

The idea I took away from all this was was more along the lines of a fireworks show than a single comet. Does that make sense? (I will have to check that for myself next time I listen to the piece, though since I don't usually do visuals when I listen, I probably won't be able to corroborate anything.)
Thank you. I agree that the piece is a fireworks display. I am certain that Stockhausen's intention was to dazzle, to amaze and, yes, to show off. I find it exciting and exhilarating, as I've said before.

I have a quibble with the assertion that twelve tone is intrinsically more difficult to understand. I don't, with my particular (and peculiar) experience, find it difficult at all, so I conclude that its putative difficulty is not intrinsic but extrinsic. (Though you might have just said that diplomatically to let novice listeners off the hook; in which case I've totally blown it here and must be punished. (Condignally, of course.))
I'm not convinced that one exception to the rule is enough! Show me some evidence that even just a few per cent of the population have no problem with serial compositional processes and I'll change my mind. I am not attached to this position!
 
#39 ·
I 'liked' Jeremy's post. I am not sure yet if I will like the Klavierstucke X, but from listening to some clips of it, I might start liking it, and will give it some more focused attention this weekend. I can now include Gruppen and some different sections of Licht as Stockhausen compositions I rather enjoy, perhaps I will come to appreciate even more of this unique composers oeuvre. I do certainly appreciate all of Jeremy's information and enthusiasm about the work, so thanks!