Taking stock

Stephen pollard - Stockhausen the fraud

Stockhausen...was, I would suggest, one of the great cultural frauds of the twentieth century. This judgement has nothing to do with the somewhat tedious tonal v atonal debate or adherence to the pentatonic scale - plenty of other composers whose music I don't properly appreciate, such as Boulez, for instance, do not write music in the traditional classical idiom but are clearly worthy of study and a hearing - but is based on the simple fact that Stockhausen had no discernible talent even on his own (spurious) terms; nor did he evince any rigour in the composition of his pieces.

You're havin' a larf mate! That effort took three bleedin' orchestras!

I do like some avant garde sounds and Stockhausen was influential in ways that can be seen in a lot of contemporary music but was he a great composer? No.