Tag: Stockhausen

In the latest idiotic example of failing to mention a composer when writing about his composition, the BBC reports on a production of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht that won an award from the Royal Philharmonic Society. Besides giving the false impression that the entire opera consisted of the famous sequence involving a string quartet played in helicopters, the article completely omits the name of the composer,  referring to the piece as “Birmingham Opera Company’s Mittwoch aus Licht”. See more examples of composers gone missing here, here, here, and here. I think these things sometimes happen because pop music’s emphasis on the performer, often assuming the performer and the composer are one and the same, is getting carried over into the classical realm.