Piece Description

Most artists are content to play the notes, but there's a handful of composers and musicians who work at the level of sound itself, turning meaning, finding nuance, charting new hitherto unheard directions in music through a contemplation of the meaning of sound itself. In a series of five non-narrative features, four composers and one music movement grapple with sound from its spiritual to its theoretical dimensions. The artists include John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Brian Eno, Keith Jarrett and in a Minimalist Meditation, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, LaMonte Young and John Adams. Karlheinz Stockhausen died in the midst of our production of his Thoughts in Sound segment. His passing in December 2007 only served to highlight the often forgotten impact of this German music titan. Minimalist composer Philip Glass once referred to Karlheinz Stockhausen's music as "neurotic" but the German icon's adherents have included The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Miles Davis and Frank Zappa. Like John Cage, he is as much a philosopher as a composer, writing music for what he called the Post-Apocalypse. He ran into some trouble in 2001 when he called the world trade center bombings "Lucifer's greatest work of art." When you hear Karlheinz Stockhausen's thoughts in sound from this rare 1982 interview, you might understand why he said that. Thoughts in Sound is produced in three formats: a series of five five-minute, stand-alone features, a half-hour documentary, and an hour-long documentary that contains a companion half-hour of the artists? music to illustrate their words.