Musikfest IV: Space is the Place

In the early days of the internet, when Netscape was still the browser of choice and only the foolhardy would have dared type their credit card number into it, Karlheinz Stockhausen had his own website. It was modest by modern standards, but it allowed web-savvy listeners to buy official Stockhausen merchandise -including CDs of his music, much of which was otherwise out of print- as well as browse through a selection of scores and sketches. There was also a curious page where one could view a (fairly extensive) collection of cartoons that were generally rude about Stockhausen’s music, often using it as the punchline for jokes. The page may have been an inconsequential piece of filler, but it opened the unexpected -even somewhat jarring- possibility that, beneath all the conceptual rigour and forbidding theory, there was a composer with…