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Click
on any thumbnail to see a larger photo.
 During
1963 Glenn and Steve attended a lecture demonstration given
by Karlheinz Stockhausen (thumbnail, left) at the University
of Pennsylvania. Stockhausen was thirty-five years old when
Glenn and Steve saw him. They told me of their encounter with
him in a near hysterical frenzy of excitement. He had accepted
a position as a Visiting Composition Professor for the spring
term of 1964 at the University of Pennsylvania. Glenn and Steve
urged me to study with him.  At
first I was apprehensive. Their persuasions won me over. Soon,
I too succumbed to the ‘Artist Of The Age’ image so
capably represented by Karlheinz! The “Debussy Trail”,
as I have come to call it, had led swiftly and directly to Stockhausen’s
work and persona and now, here I was, preparing to study with
him!
(Thumbnails, above
right and below left, are of Ron Thomas during this time.)
 I
rented a room on Hamilton Street in Powelton Village for
$40 a month. Karlheinz was living in New York City, touring
the United States with Max Neuhaus and David Tudor, and traveling
to Philadelphia for a full day of teaching each week. I frequently
arranged to meet him on the train since I went home often to
Montclair by way of Newark (his route as well). Often, en route
to his next college-lecture-performance gig, he flew out of
Philadelphia on the evening of our class. We frequently dined
and rode to the airport by cab together. In this way I was able
to spend a lot of time with him outside the class. It is clear
at this distance (2000) that I got a rare glimpse of Karlheinz
as a very human and personable individual and for this I am
very grateful.
He praised my
seriousness, and I think he had a good opinion of the two
works I had brought with me to show him. (The Piano Work
1 [Sonata] 1963 and Desire Caught by the Tail 1963
[revised in 1965] Incidental music for Pablo Picasso’s
play). He had brought with him tapes of European performances
of his music which he played for us and analyzed. My first hearing
of Carre for 4 orchestras and 4 choruses was devastating.
I came to know a lot about this piece and even these many years
later there are passages in it that still choke me up when I
hear them. The unique and appealing sensibility of Stockhausen’s
musical world is perfectly displayed by this unusual masterpiece.
My awe of him and his music became inordinate to the point of
folly and it took until 1972 to shake my hero-worship of him.
 (Thumbnail
is of a slide rule made during this period.)
He divided his
teaching day between a morning of listening to and analyzing
his works, and an afternoon studying his recently completed
Plus Minus, a plan by which a composer may fashion a
musical/dramatic work conceived along the lines of his formal
principles. We helped him finalize a German to English translation
of the instruction booklet. These classes were excellent. Quirky
as Karlheinz was and is, the legend that his classes were foolish
and frivolous is entirely false. Plus Minus was a formidable
and valuable discipline. It is also a perfect self-analysis
by Karlheinz of the compositional methods he had in fact created
during the '50s and '60s.
Mary Bauermeister
on occasion came to the class with him. Mary, an outstanding
artist in her own right, became Karlheinz’ second wife.
She knew many prominent people in the New York art world and
took Karlheinz and me, often in the company of Korean Video-Artist
Nam June Paik, on whirlwind tours of studios and parties where
we met Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Jim Dines, Jasper Johns, and
Morton Feldman. Before Karlheinz returned to Germany in 1964,
I persuaded Glenn to give him an original work of his. Mary
saw and loved it, as we had hoped she would, and subsequently
visited our studio in New Jersey. She assured Glenn that she
would find buyers for Glenn’s work in Europe and those
sales enabled him to move to Europe in 1970. But I’m slightly
ahead of the story.
 Glenn
and Steve left the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art after one
year. (Thumbnail, left, is recent photo of Glenn.) While
I studied with Stockhausen they visited various art-sites in
France and Italy, most of them suggested by Hobbson Pittman,
who heartily approved of, and substantially planned, their trip.
I was invited to return to Germany with Karlheinz where I would
have joined the list of English-speaking assistants he always
hires. Perhaps I should gone but I had to get away from him.
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