Gesang der Jünglinge - Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen died on Wednesday at the age of seventy-nine. He was, among other things, a pioneer in the composition of electronic music, and since nowadays upwards of ninety-five percent of the sounds heard in the most popular of pop music are all electronic, his passing merits a mention. Not that his music sounds the least bit like Britney Spears's backing tracks. To see how unlike, listen to his Gesang der Jünglinge, the first piece of his I ever heard. (Paul McCartney has said that this piece was a big influence on the Beatles in their studio experimentation phase circa 1966-67.) "Gesang der Jünglinge" means "Song of the Youth," the youth in this case being the boys in the fiery furnace from the book of Daniel, from which the text is taken.
It's noted in his obituaries that he made a foolish remark in the aftermath of 9/11, calling the attacks "a work of art," which was seen by many as cold-blooded at best. I thought it was a case of an intellectual ruminating in public, which if you've ever been around ruminating intellectuals you know is an enterprise fraught with pitfalls. Ruminating over the meaning of recent tragedies is something best done by intellectuals in private. He soon apologized. Now he's gone, and in Auden's words in his elegy on Yeats, he has become his admirers. Listen to his music and see what you think.