Flashes of a Mad Logic

Among composers of electronic music, there is none so mystical and dedicated as Germany's Karlheinz Stockhausen. He talks about "expanded sense of time" and "sound-visions," and when he sees a sumo wrestling match in Japan, he flips because "the prolonged preparation and then the quick violent act" have a profound impact on his music. For the moment, the sounds that come out of his tape recorder put Stockhausen, 38, out in front of the avant-garde by several thousand volts.

In San Francisco last week, modernists and would-be modernists took over the Opera House, heard Stockhausen himself present four of his compositions. Many in the audience applauded respectfully, while a few pulled the plug and walked out.

Command Post. An early work, Zyklus (1955), was relatively baroque and totally unelectrical. A lone musician, encircled by 40 pieces of percussive hardware, moved busily among them, making light, tinkling noises and harsh rasps and thumps. The score, which was mounted on a revolving ring, allowed the musician to begin where he pleased; when he came full circle, the piece was over. Two other works were played on a tape recorder that Stockhausen himself operated from his command post in the tenth row, modulating and ricocheting the sound among four huge speakers mounted in the auditorium.

In Mikrophonic I, all hell broke loose: sounds resembling runaway trains, breaking glass, blasts of hot steam, foghorns and whooshing jets flashed, crashed and faded like movements in some psychedelic symphony. The effects were achieved by two men who rubbed, scratched and bashed a gong with sticks, stones, brushes and mallets, while two other roving performers picked up the sounds with hand microphones and fed them into filters where further distortions were added.

Another composition, Momente, featured an orchestra plus chorus and soloist who, among other things, snapped their fingers, scraped their feet, giggled and whispered lovingly (Stockhausen confesses that he was in love when he wrote the piece). One musician poked a gong with drumsticks while another "played" the organ with the palms and backs of his hands. Stockhausen declared that Momente was still unfinished and, to the dismay of some listeners in the audience, added that "some day it will be played all evening."

Surprise Momentum. Not everyone gets a charge out of Stockhausen's electro-innovations. But the upper echelons of electronic composers, which include America's Vladimir Ussachevsky and Milton Babbitt, consider him the most inventive. French Composer Pierre Boulez, who is himself pretty handy with a modulator, says flatly that "Stockhausen is the greatest living composer, and the only one whom I recognize as my peer." Stockhausen tends to agree. Aggressively indifferent to criticism, he is interested only in exploring every corner of the aural landscape. He has completely done away with traditional music forms, conceives his works instead in terms of "moments" or time lapses that are carefully structured but follow no conventional rhythmic pattern.

Yet, for all the bizarre effects, his compositions have flashes of a kind of mad logic. Sometimes inane, often infuriating but rarely boring, Stockhausen's music is not, as many conclude on first hearing, the work of a prankster. He often composes twelve hours a day. "I want to be able to bring sounds from every surface area of the room," he says. "Why not loudspeakers on swings overhead, or a completely globular room with loudspeakers blanketing the walls and the listeners on a platform suspended in the center?" As far as some concertgoers are concerned, a better idea would be to suspend the composer.

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