The Stockhausen Society was founded with one major aim in view and that is to encourage more and more people to get to know, love and enjoy the music of this great composer.

Although we know of many concerts and festivals of Stockhausen’s music on the continent and of audiences of millions at particular events, when it comes down to the basic realities of every day musical life in this country there is a noticeable absence of the composer’s music. In broadcasting, for example, the British musical public had to wait six years before being given the opportunity to hear the performance of SAMSTAG AUS LICHT which had been available to the BBC for broadcasting since 1982. AMOUR, written in 1977, has not been broadcast here, neither has IN FRIENDSHIP. In regular broadcast features such as Record Review there is no contemporary music reviewed at all let alone Stockhausen’s. This Week’s Composer has featured Duke Ellington, Maxwell Davies and Berg but not Stockhausen.

Why is this?

One of the answers seems to be that most contemporary music is seen as "problematic". I have listened to and recorded tens of programmes variously called "Is this music?" (Lutoslawsky 1964), "The Problem of New Music" (Goehr - frequently) and "The Same Trade as Mozart" (BBC2 1969) right up to the Reith Lectures and Goehr’s "The Survival of the Symphony" and many others. As if to kick something harder when it’s down, the broadcast introductions to Stockhausen’s music are designed, it seems, to frighten off the faint-hearted and sometimes the not-so-faint-hearted. A broadcast introduction to GRUPPEN devised by Robin McConie and lasting for ten minutes, concerned itself with the first eight groups only (less than a minute’s music) and dealt at length with their pitch, density, dynamics etc and would have been ideal for an elite composition class at the Paris Conservatoire. Five years earlier, however, Roger Smalley gave an excellent talk about PIANO PIECE I in which he answered, with examples played by himself, the question "What do we hang on to in this music?"

This last question is the one which is constantly asked whenever one's  interest in Stockhausen’ s music is mentioned. It is also a highly important question because, in an interview in the December 1987 issue of Gramophone magazine, Sir George Solti stated that he is aware that 80% of his audience cannot read a score - yet they go to the concerts week in week out, year in year out. Concerts of what? Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius.... Why do they keep going?

Perhaps what they experience is summed up in my favourite quote on music by Shakespeare:  "‘Tis wondrous how sheep’s guts can hail (haul) the souls from men’s bodies". This gives rise to an impatient desire to hear the music again and again. At the same time, the music of these great masters is familiar: there are common underlying musical structures and a similarity of language. It is often said that if a new Mozart symphony were to be discovered tomorrow, people would flock to hear it because they would know in advance that there was a good chance they were going to enjoy it. They would know there was something "to hang on to".

This leads to a dilemma pertaining to all contemporary "avant-garde" music, but to a greater degree in Stockhausen’ s case where each work seems to be totally different to the previous one - so different, in fact, that it is difficult for someone new to the music to believe that any two works are by the same composer. The Tierkreis works are the only exception.

This dilemma can be expressed thus: EITHER Stockhausen’s music is for the enjoyment, exploration and study of a dedicated, intellectual band of select disciples OR it is accessible for everyone to enjoy whether they can read a score or not. Stockhausen’s own words do not help very much. About REFRAIN he writes:

"Those who want to understand what I have written in REFRAIN will need to read the score.

Those who want to understand how the performers interpret my score will need to know the score and compare it with performances.

Those who simply want to hear a piece of music AND NOT UNDERSTAND IT need only listen" (my capitals).

An intellectual statement alienating composer and public if ever there was one. But is the statement true? What level of understanding is Stockhausen talking about? And if true, it would immediately exclude the 80% of music lovers referred to by Solti: of the rest, how many would have the time to study, or more prosaically, afford the £56.00 needed to purchase the sheet of card and plastic strip? Yet in many other statements Stockhausen has said that he is writing music for the whole world, that only music can save mankind from all sorts of ills.

If Stockhausen’s music is for a small exclusive band of dedicated cognoscenti then this society would be elitist and exclusive, and would exclude Steve and myself to boot! But we do not believe that this is so. We know and believe that Stockhausen’s music is truly great and can be universally appreciated and "understood" and has the power to "hail the souls from men’s bodies". While the scholarly and useful contributions from the Griffiths, Maconies and Toops of this world are eagerly sought by the few, they can in no way promote the beauty, the relevance, the sheer power and excitement of the music to the many.

This is the society’s major aim and we hope that all members will play their part, however small, in achieving it. It is indeed an uphill task to rid the music of the damage done to its reputation by such titles as "Music and Machines" (a tape recorder is a device, a church organ a genuine machine), from such articles as that on GRUPPEN by Roger Smalley in the Musical Times in 1972 (a treasure in another context) and from the pompous pronouncements of critics anxious to demonstrate that they are not lagging behind in the intellectual stakes.

Paradoxical as it may seem, Stockhausen’s genius is so great that he has managed to create complex and intricate masterpieces using the simplest of musical structures and formulae which anyone can follow, enjoy and ‘sing’.

 It was Mozart who wrote to his father words to the effect that "in this concerto I have written melodies to delight the people and harmonies to confound the professors"

Let us rescue Stockhausen from the commentators and give delight to a wider public.

Editor’s note: I apologise for the constant repetition of the word "I" in this issue but Steve is swotting for his finals.