On living legends and future music

NZ composer and musicologist Robin Maconie has written a meticulously researched autobiography of the man many believe to be the world’s greatest living composer, German electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Maconie is regarded as the world authority on Stockhausen, and his book Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen is the result of 40 years of studying his work. As well as detailing the process of writing Other Planets, Maconie discusses the future of classical music in NZ in an article for the Listener: “[Although] we may not be able to compete with the artistic and intellectual resources of New York, London or Vienna, other areas of excellence that we can realistically aspire to are contemporary music, electronic music and computer music, expertise that is thin on the ground elsewhere in the world. Imagine developing music software to the level that Weta has achieved in computer animation. It can be done.”