Why I love Stockhausen

By Björk

For me, Stockhausen was one of the pioneers who started a new root in music. The electronic root, whose aesthetic is very specific, has its own organic interior, a structure that has DNA independent from other music trees (for example, the classical Beethoven/Wagner/Mahler tree or the blues/rock/Philip Glass branch). When Karlheinz harnessed electricity into sound and showed the rest of us, he sparked off a sun that is still burning and will glow for a long time.

For my generation, Stockhausen's published lectures had unbelievable impact. He was the most hopeful of figures: the 21st century was going to be great. The classical teachers in my school, meanwhile, kept moaning about the good old days of music and changing the masses of music pupils into slave performers, putting to sleep any creative thought or the will to make new things.

I remember sitting in his studio in Cologne, surrounded by 12 speakers, him creating a current traveling up and down, swirling around us like the force of nature that electricity is, my insides pulsating to his noise - primordial, modern and futuristic. He celebrated the sound of sound, in both his electronic music and his acoustic music. For example, my favourite piece of his, Stimmung, is vocal only, using the voice as a sound and exploring the nuances of it in a microscopic way, rid of the luggage of the opera tradition or any other vocal disciplines, styles or techniques.

Now the 21st century has started, Karlheinz was right, things are great, we are communicating telepathically, of course (as he prophesied), and music schools have changed, allowing more room for fresh young minds that are writing music on computers. I look around me, listen to the rumbles and the noises and all the music that is being made today by youngsters, and I feel he wasn't so far off. He knew.