Black Wednesday

Back in the '60s, the deaths used to come in threes, but not on the same day. On Wednesday, the world of music lost three important and irreplaceable figures: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Andrew Imbrie and H. Wiley Hitchcock.

December 5 was also the day Mozart died.

Karlheinz Stockhausen R.I.P.

Stockhausen features in one of my all-time favorite composer-meets-composer stories, but unfortunately not as the hero. Still, I can't resist sharing, and trusting that it takes nothing away from today's well-merited eulogies.

The narrator is Morton Feldman.

Stockhausen asked for my secret, "What's your secret?" And I said, "I don't have any secret, but if I do have a point of view, it's that sounds are very much like people. And if push them, they push you back. So, if I have a secret: Don't push the sounds around."

Karlheinz leans over to me and says: "Not even a little bit?"