Music Matters

Stockhausen

Saturday 15 December 2007 12:15-13:00 (Radio 3)

Tom Service presents a special programme looking back on the life and music of one of the 20th century's most distinguished and controversial composers - Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died last week.

Duration:

45 minutes

In this programme

Stockhausen Special

Download the complete programme on this week's Music Matters podcast

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was an icon of the avant-garde. In this special edition of Music Matters dedicated to the man and his music, Tom talks to Stockhausen's family, friends and collaborators to find out just what it was that marked him out as such a pioneering and influential figure in 20^th Century music.


Joining Tom for the programme is Morag Grant, who has written extensively about the post-war avant-garde and new German music. Together, they reflect on the life of a man who courted controversy throughout his life. They discuss the influences on Stockhausen's early work and his response to the cultural climate in post-war Germany. Stockhausen biographer, Robin Maconie, also talks with Tom about the roots of Stockhausen's all-encompassing creativity.

When Stockhausen went to Paris to study with Messiaen after the war, he met composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, and together they became the driving forces of the musical avant-garde. From his base at IRCAM in Paris, Boulez explains the significance of Stockhausen's work in the 1950s and his unique contribution to music-making ever since.


But what was Stockhausen really like? When news of his death came, his son Markus was on tour in Chile. In a moving interview, he reveals the nature of his father's single-minded personality and his relationship with a son who worked intensively with him for 25 years, but was estranged for the last 6 years of his life.

Throughout the 1970s, Stockhausen turned his thoughts to cosmology and the notion that he was from Sirius. This gave him a profound sense of universalism, which applied not only to his compositions, but also to an increasingly closed circle of people in his life - the key players being Kathinka Pasveer and Suzanne Stephens, who were both living and performing with him to the end.


With further contributions from writer and music critic, Paul Griffiths, clarinettist, Lesley Schatzberger, comedian and writer, John Bird, and pianist Nicolas Hodges, alongside archive of Stockhausen himself.

BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now will also pay tribute to Stockhausen on Saturday 15^th December at 10.30pm.

Music Matters

Episode and Playlist Information

• 5 Jan 08 Film and Music
• 15 Dec 07 Stockhausen
• 8 Dec 07 Itzhak Perlman
• 1 Dec 07 Scarlatti
• 17 Nov 07 Chick Corea
• 10 November 2007
• 3 Nov 07

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