Spot the difference:
Karlheinz Stockhausen interviewed on the BBC’s Culture Show
Taxi driver Guy Coma interviewed on the BBC’s News 24
Thanks to Avant Music News for spotting this absolute gem. A 7-minute clip from an edition of BBC 2’s Culture Show, featuring Stockhausen. It includes a rare interview with the man that must rank as one of the stupidest I’ve ever seen. You’ve got just 11 minutes (we only see 5 here – how bad must the rest have been?) with one of the towering figures in 20th-century musical history. What’s your first question?
‘Could you tell me what the most beautiful, or most interesting sound you’ve ever heard is?’
And your second question?
‘So what do you think about melody? Do you hum tunes?’
To his great credit Stockhausen is by turns patient (the Berg/Schoenberg/’degenerate music’ question is a shocker), honest, talkative, and keeps exactly to time. Bonus material – ideologically edited archive material of Stockhausen looking like a wacky atonal weirdo, and some nice snippets of him rehearsing 3x Refrain.
Matthias Röder said
Tim, I don’t know what your conception of intelligence is, but Stockhausen is certainly not stupid.
Tim Rutherford-Johnson said
Absolutely – my suggestion is that the interviewer (and thus the interview) was pretty dumb. I thought under the circumstances Stockhausen handled it with good grace.
Ben.H said
That was interesting, but kind of painful. Presumably, the missing interview footage was of Stockhausen being asked whether or not he owned two sheds.
mwanji said
“You are such a dramatic person.” Classic!
I presume you saw the Sun Ra (speaking of composers from other worlds) documentary that was on BBC2 a couple of days ago?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6590747214784523721
Matthias Röder said
Sorry, Tim, it seems I completely misread you!
Matthias
Tim Rutherford-Johnson said
No problem Matthias
Ben – Ha! Exactly …
Mwanji – no, sadly I missed that. I hardly watch any TV live these days, but I’m starting to think I should…
julio said
Yes that interview ws very disappointing..the culture show also interviewed Elliott Carter (round the time of his season at the rfh) and similar questions of the music’s ‘difficulty’ were asked. It was slightly better, but you felt he gave stock answers to the same questions asked over and over again..not saying that these aren’t interesting questions but the ppl with the microphone have to sit down and think about ways of asking that will get ineteresting answers (or arguments).
It’s coverage of contemporary music (or any music – from 50 cent to Scott Walker to Carter) really explodes the whole mission of the ‘culture show’ to cover lots and do it well.