Theodor W. Adorno und Karl-Heinz Stockhausen

Gespräch über Neue Musik (1960) [49:39]

Stockhausen, Karlheinz · The unsettling question of the Sublime. · By Terry Castle · Published Aug 27, 2011

”(…) But everybody was saying crazy things then. ­Witness the venerable German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose shocking remarks at a press conference at a music festival in Hamburg six days after the attacks made headlines. The events of 9/11, he’d enthused, were ‘the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.’ Things had gone from bad to worse to incendiary when, like Batman’s Joker, he warmed to his theme: ‘Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for ten years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying; just imagine what happened there. You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment. I couldn’t do that. By comparison, we composers are nothing.’

Stockhausen’s comments produced immediate repugnance worldwide. (…)”

via nymag.com · 9/11 encyclopedia