"One experiments and has to choose always the best results"
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Karlheinz Stockhausen condenses a lifetime of radical curiosity and ruthless discipline into a single principle: experiment widely, then judge without mercy. Coming of age in postwar Europe, he helped invent the modern studio as an instrument, splicing tape, synthesizing tones, and projecting sound through space with scientific zeal. In pieces like Gesang der Junglinge, Kontakte, and Gruppen, he generated enormous fields of possibilities and then assumed the composer’s duty as a selector, choosing the material that best served a musical intention. The phrase carries an imperative: one does not merely play with chance; one takes responsibility for the outcome.
The stance sits in productive tension with contemporaries who embraced indeterminacy. Whereas John Cage often welcomed outcomes as they happened, Stockhausen pursued contingency in order to refine it. He trusted ear and intellect to sift the noise of experimentation into articulated form. The laboratory metaphor is apt: tests are exploratory, but the conclusions must be clear, replicable in their aesthetic logic, and strong enough to bear repeated listening.
Yet the word best is not a claim to absolute standards. It names a moving target shaped by the work’s aims: clarity of structure, freshness of timbre, the right relation of gesture to silence, the felt coherence of a moment within a larger form. Stockhausen’s concept of moment form, where each section is complete in itself yet part of a greater constellation, demanded exactly this level of selective rigor. The thrill of discovery had to meet the discipline of omission.
Beyond music, the sentence offers a method for creative life. Generate options, explore beyond habit, and then choose with purpose. Experimentation without selection yields chaos; selection without experimentation yields formula. Art thrives where both are held together, the search expansive and the judgment exact.
The stance sits in productive tension with contemporaries who embraced indeterminacy. Whereas John Cage often welcomed outcomes as they happened, Stockhausen pursued contingency in order to refine it. He trusted ear and intellect to sift the noise of experimentation into articulated form. The laboratory metaphor is apt: tests are exploratory, but the conclusions must be clear, replicable in their aesthetic logic, and strong enough to bear repeated listening.
Yet the word best is not a claim to absolute standards. It names a moving target shaped by the work’s aims: clarity of structure, freshness of timbre, the right relation of gesture to silence, the felt coherence of a moment within a larger form. Stockhausen’s concept of moment form, where each section is complete in itself yet part of a greater constellation, demanded exactly this level of selective rigor. The thrill of discovery had to meet the discipline of omission.
Beyond music, the sentence offers a method for creative life. Generate options, explore beyond habit, and then choose with purpose. Experimentation without selection yields chaos; selection without experimentation yields formula. Art thrives where both are held together, the search expansive and the judgment exact.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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