"One experiments and has to choose always the best results." Karlheinz Stockhausen

When listening to the BBC Proms, (on the Internet just go to BBC Radio 3 and you can listen to this summer long festival of concert music), I came along a name of a composer I had not heard about since the hazy memories of the '70's -- Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen, a German Composer was born in 1928 and died this past December. He was always weird and cool to a young guy in the 70's. Listening to Stockhausen could be compared to looking at a Picasso -- your listening to something, but you're just not sure what it is. And like Picasso, depending upon your own mood, it could annoy the heck out of you or it could interest you or it could actually engage you. Some of it is so bad and insane sounding that you want to throw a brick at the radio.

If you are like me, there is a tendency to think of this type of music as music that is nothing more than an annoyance -- almost childlike and not worthwhile. However, one composition, in listening to this year's Proms broadcasts of concerts of Stockhausen's work struck me: Gesang der Jünglinge (literally "Song of the Youths"). The text of Gesang der Jünglinge is from a Biblical story in The Book of Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a fiery furnace but miraculously they are unharmed and begin to sing praises to God. There are three basic types of material used: (1) the recorded voice of a boy soprano, (2) electronically generated sine tones, (3) electronically generated pulses (clicks).

The boy soprano sings these beautiful verses with a background that is generously described as cacophonous: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RkdO_qBGvM

It makes no sense to us until this is placed in a historical context. This work is based upon the historical experience that Stockhausen endured in his youth. In 1941 or 1942, he learned that his mother had died, ostensibly from leukemia, though everyone at the same hospital had supposedly died of the same disease. It was generally understood that she had been a victim of the Nazi policy of euthanasia for what the Nazis called "useless eaters". In February 1945, he met his father, Simon, for the last time in Altenberg. Simon, who was on leave from the front, told his son "I'm not coming back. Look after things." Young Karlheinz, not yet twenty, was then conscripted in the German Army to be a stretcher bearer in Germany during the closing months of the war. The young Stockhausen, walking through the murderous cacophony, just like Daniel into the furnace...

So, if you ever get a chance to listen to Stockhausen, you will need an open mind and a bit of empathy.