Idiolexicon

Last year, I attended the three-night San Francisco Tape Music Festival, and my relationship with music still hasn't completely recovered. I went in with a fairly minimal knowledge of contemporary experimental music. Many of the pieces I heard there were quite annoying--could there be any other word for them?--but to call them annoying would somehow be to miss the point. Calling them annoying would be like calling Artaud crazy. Well yes, of course he is, but what else is he?

The finale of the festival was a performance of Stockhausen's Hymnen (1967), a two-hour piece that doesn't pull any punches. It's about, well, the world, and as it thrusts toward its inevitable ending, the central question makes itself clear: do we even stand a chance?

But the world of this music is much more than a reflection of current events. Like twentieth century poetry, Stockhausen's music is a music that can include anything: found material, other people's music, static, extraneous noise, silence--this is a music that says yes.