Wolfgang Rihm is a very accomplished composer that I respect.
Wolfgang Rihm, for example, whom I know well and appreciate, is still much closer to romanticism and yet very progressive as a composer. Did he let Stockhausen stop him?
...
He had a special relationship with his later teacher Karlheinz Stockhausen. He had once written him the following on a sheet of paper:
"'Dear Wolfgang Rihm, please follow your own voice completely. Yours, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen.' - And I hung that on my wall with a thumbtack, and it hung above my desk for decades. And I had it hanging there for a long time, until it threatened to turn yellow, because it was, as always with Stockhausen, still written in green felt-tip pen at that time."
That's a great story and both teacher and pupil gain points in my book from my learning it.
It reminds me of the story Xenakis told of how, after he failed to understand Messiaen's harmony classes and decided he had to go back to basics to learn music theory, Messiaen encouraged him to try using the theories he already knows as an engineer and build music from that...
People surely enjoy lives (professionally or as enthusiasts) that take place in the traditions and institutions of European high art. I don't begrudge anyone that, not even Stockhausen. It seems lovely to me. I have a political critique of the traditions and institutions themselves, the power they confer, and the social hierarchy they tend to reflect. I don't propose a revolution to smash them. I would rather I urge them to get out more, measure and reflect on their service to their communities, and think about what they could do better. Clearly sometimes they do this and sometimes they succeed.
My style of critique is polemical and I try to express my feelings in it sincerely. If this offends then I am sorry about that. Causing offense is not my motive or goal. But I do in fact resent how the arc of the careers of Boulez and Stockhausen consumed so much mind share and resources. I argue that it shows that their radical modernism in the early post ww2 period was more about generational succession than about aesthetics. I dislike a system that seems to provide incentive for artists to strive and compete for such exaggerated rewards.
Please don't take it personally. I don't intend to. I make polemical statements quite often. How about "Romanticism from Bayreuth to Pink Floyd Laser Shows." But I really do strive to avoid personal attacks and I assume that we can agree that we don't all need to like the same things in the same ways.