RIP - Karlheinz Stockhausen

The world lost one of the 20th century's most polemic cultural figures last week with the death of Karlheinz Stockhausen (which I only saw mention of today). Allmusic does a really nice little obituary of him and his importance. Unfortunately (thanks in no small part to his detractors and those who hated "modern" music), Stockhausen's name is usually dropped as a joke/reference to pretention and/or technology ruining things culturally, but in my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. While I don't enjoy all of his music (though, in fairness, I've only heard a couple dozen of his 326 works), much of it is excellence, and the importance he had across the musical genres and geographic regions of the world can't be overestimated. A sad loss, indeed.