Wedding Program Wording For Lutheran Ceremony

Stockhausen in Italian disco

Questo articolo è comparso su Liberazione dell'8 maggio 2007.

“Stockhausen serve l’imperialismo!” si infiammava nel 1974 Cornelius Cardew, in un atto di autoaccusa dal sapore esplicitamente maoista. Cardew, compositore simbolo della tradizione sperimentale inglese, già membro del collettivo AMM, di Stockhausen era stato allievo. Nell’ingombrante eredità del maestro tedesco, individuava una via all’avanguardia implicitamente conservatrice: l’obiettivo era la rivoluzione, mica gli Hymnen definiti da Luigi Nono “un pietoso raffazzonamento nazionalistico”. Qualche anno dopo, con spirito invero più leggero, su Stockhausen si concentreranno gli attacchi psichici del Temple ov Psychick Youth e dei gruppuscoli neoisti. Insomma, mica roba da poco…

Al cospetto di una delle più grandi figure del ‘900 musicale, le reazioni non possono che essere scomposte. Perché Stockhausen, oltre che compositore, è personaggio-simbolo: segnato da una sorta di misticismo estremo, narcisista, megalomane, il vecchio Karlheinz resta nondimeno uno dei nomi più influenti degli ultimi cinquant’anni in musica, e questo vale sia in ambito “colto” rather than in the "popular". If you look at the cover of "Sgt Pepper's" by the Beatles, you'll see the face in the upper left corner, right next to Lenny Bruce. It seems that Paul McCartney was in love with im Gesang der Jüngling Feuerofen in 1966, but some tracks in his music so much infatuation are scarce. Stronger the influence of Stockhausen on krautorocker 70 Germans, including the masters of consumer par excellence, Kraftwerk. Legend has it that the same Kraftwerk came from studies with the master, is not true. A study with Stockhausen was, if anything, Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt of Can, but no matter. What is interesting is rather to note that the electronic experiments of German have done to inspire whole herds of followers already in very difficult times, then finally to explode in the '90s. Not explain how an otherwise Kontakte, composition of 1958-60, is the generation of discs on the shelves next to techno much later works of Aphex Twin or Autechre.

Kontakte, for historians of music, is in the midst of this adventure called school of Cologne at the studios of electronic music NWDR, a small band of pioneers subverted, since the '50s, language and grammar of European feel, with these effects to be accepted today. So here they are, raver the end of the century / millennium, tirelessly passing from tribal to techno complex architecture of the old masters, fetish Stockhausen in the first place. No wonder that to him, a stone's throw from the eighties, has been entrusted with the opening in Rome of Waiting for Dissonance, preview of the most famous Italian festival of electronic music, traditionally oriented to mix dance music and digital experiments " uncultivated. " It was a debut of absolute one (world premiere of 13th Hour: Cosmic Pulses, Italian premiere of Mittwochs-Gruss, the endless cycle Licht), contained in a May 16 program that provides, at the Teatro Palladium, the heroes of folk Laptop The Books and May 25, at the Chiostro del Bramante, a day dedicated to the very interesting Italian label Die Schachtel. Worlds collide, and miraculously communicate, such a long, far too long. Who has not yet noticed it, come back to cultivate those dualisms pop vs. avant-garde and buried for ever consigned to history.