シュトックハウゼン死去

20世紀を代表するドイツの現代音楽作曲家カールハインツ・シュトックハウゼン（Karlheinz Stockhausen）が亡くなった。79歳だった。

Obituary: Karlheinz Stockhausen [Guardian]
合理主義者で、かつ、神秘主義者。そしてブーレーズからビートルズに多大な影響を与えた作曲家

KARLHEINZ Stockhausen, who has died aged 79, was one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music. He was fond of quoting Blake's lines "He who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in Eternity's sunrise"; and like Blake, the pursuit of his vision led him down strange, and often awkward paths. The results earned him a reverence among a cult following which is unique among 20th-century composers; but they also earned him a fair amount of ridicule. Roger Scruton's memorable judgment, that Stockhausen "is not so much an Emperor with no clothing, but a splendid set of clothes with no Emperor" sums up the sceptical view, which in Anglo-Saxon countries has become the dominant one since the 1970s.

Composer Stockhausen dies aged 79 [Guardian]

News of his death was released by the clarinettist Suzanne Stephens and flautist Kathinka Pasveer, two "companions" who had been associated with him for than 30 years and performed many of his works.

"In friendship and gratitude for everything that he has given to us personally and to humanity through his love and his music, we bid farewell to Karlheinz Stockhausen, who lived to bring celestial music to humans, and human music to the celestial beings, so that man may listen to God and God may hear His children," they said in a statement.

Stockhausen Interview

[Karlheinz Stockhausen official site]

http://www.stockhausen.org/

ドイツ作曲家のシュトックハウゼンさん死去 [朝日新聞]

５０年代から６０年代にかけて前衛音楽を主導。７０年の大阪万博でも連続作品演奏会を開き、近年は、ロックやノイズ系を愛好する若者たちにもファン層を広げていた。

Karlheinz Stockhausen: 1922-2007 [Guardian]

Stockhausen's influence on musicians as wildly different as Mingus and Kraftwerk, the Beatles to Björk, speaks for itself. So too does his restless creativity, which surely puts him on a par with the greatest of composers: whether it was writing a quartet for multiple helicopters or coaxing crackles painstakingly out of magnetic tape, Stockhausen believed with disarming intensity that what he did was the most important thing it was possible to do, that music came before everything else. It's a cliche, maybe, but we are the poorer for his loss.

『ニューヨークタイムズ』によると、1966年の初来日が作曲者の芸術的進展に決定的だったという。シュトックハウゼンは日本の伝統的文化に深く傾倒し、それを作品に取り入れた。東京で《テレムジーク／Telemusik》を作曲、そしてケルンに戻り各国の国歌を素材にした《ヒュムネン／Hymnen》を発表した。
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Influential Composer, Dies at 79 [New York Times]

His first visit to Japan, in 1966, was crucial to his artistic development. He was impressed by traditional Japanese culture and gained an awareness of himself as an artist in a global context. In Tokyo he composed the electronic piece “Telemusic,” in which recordings of music from around the world are made to intermingle. On his return to Cologne, he produced “Anthems” (1967), an electronic composition based on national anthems. For a few years after that, much of his work was devised for his own live-electronic performing group.

ただ、シュトックハウゼンというと、どうしても「最近はどうしているのかな」という印象が強かった。もちろん、《光／リヒト》という大作オペラに取り組んでいたのは知っていたが、なんとなく理知的な「前衛」から横滑りして「神秘」の彼方へ転向してしまったような── Guardian の記事なんか読むと、シュトックハウゼンはウィリアム・ブレイクの「幻視」に魅惑されていたようだ。

そしてそのようなときに、彼の名前が一般のマスコミを賑わせたのが、例の「シュトックハウゼン事件」と呼ばれる9・11同時多発テロに関する発言だった。BBC や『ニューヨークタイムズ』の訃報でもそのことが触れられている。

German composer Stockhausen dies [BBC NEWS]

The composer also attracted controversy after the terrorist attacks on New York on 11 September 2001, which he reportedly described as "the greatest work of art there is in the entire cosmos".
He apologised for the upset caused by the comments, but denied making the statement, saying he had been misquoted.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Influential Composer, Dies at 79 [New York Times]

More recently, he made news for his public reaction to the attack on the World Trade Center. Not widely known outside the modern-music world in 2001, he became infamous for calling the attack “the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.” His comments drew widespread outrage, and he apologized, saying that his allegorical remarks had been misunderstood.

まあいろいろと書きたいことがあるけど、今日は《コンタクテ／Kontakte》や《グルッペン／Gruppen》といったシュトックハウゼン初期の代表作を聴いてこの偉大な作曲家を偲びたい。ご冥福をお祈りいたします。