Hmmm - it does sometimes seem as if 'spiritual' means 'whatever anyone wants it to mean'.

That may be.  However, I'd rather think of this in terms of "How can Stockhausen's assertion that his music is highly spiritual enable us to think about it in a different way?" than "Somebody had better demonstrate to me that Stockhausen's music is inherently spiritual, or I'll never trust him again."  As the composer, KS's statements about his work are not necessarily to be taken as gospel in an objective sense - but what they can do is provide entirely credible suggestions for potentially worthwhile speculation.

This (pragmatic) post is in memory of the recently deceased Richard Rorty.

Amazing how the sounds seem to be of least consequence to many such writers on new music!

Not at all (nor a concession - that distinction is always clear. You might be able to hear a row in a piece, but that doesn't make the row itself any more meaningful).

We can take it for granted that we like it, not that it necessarily has the power to be meaningful to those who aren't necessarily interested in the technical minutiae (and why should they be?). Does saying something is 'good' mean anything more than simply 'I like it'?

It does indeed. Consider little G. E. Moore the Apostle, in 1902: "Certain facts may seem to give countenance to the general assertion that to think a thing good is to prefer it or approve it, in the sense in which preference and approval denote certain kinds of will or feeling. It seems to be always true that when we thus prefer or approve, there is included in that fact the fact that we think good ; and it is certainly true, in an immense majority of instances, that when we think good, we also prefer or approve. It is natural enough, then, to say that to think good is to prefer. And what more natural than to add: When I say a thing is good, I mean that I prefer it? And yet this natural addition involves a gross confusion. Even if it be true that to think good is the same thing as to prefer (which, as we have seen, is never true in the sense that they are absolutely identical; and not always true, even in the sense that they occur together), yet it is not true that what you think, when you think a thing good, is that you prefer it. Even if your thinking the thing good is the same thing as your preference of it, yet the goodness of the thing--that of which you think--is, for that very reason, obviously not the same thing as your preference of it. Whether you have a certain thought or not is one question; and whether what you think is true is quite a different one, upon which the answer to the first has not the least bearing. The fact that you prefer a thing does not tend to shew that the thing is good; even if it does shew that you think it so.

"It seems to be owing to this confusion, that the question 'What is good?' is thought to be identical with the question 'What is preferred?' It is said, with sufficient truth, that you would never know a thing was good unless you preferred it, just as you would never know a thing existed unless you perceived it. But it is added, and this is false, that you would never know a thing was good unless you knew that you preferred it, or that it existed unless you knew that you perceived it. And it is finally added, and this is utterly false, that you cannot distinguish the fact that a thing is good from the fact that you prefer it, or the fact that it exists from the fact that you perceive it."

All good mainstream British stuff that.

He doesn't talk about it, therefore it's of no consequence to him? Hmmm.. no offense, but if by talking about the sounds you mean what you offered in your post #76, then I can see why Henck didn't do that. Of what interest would that be to anyone but himself, or to a friend with whom he is exchanging ideas? Putting such (interesting) observations in a book just seems a little flimsy -- what you have demonstrated is not the way the piece can be interpreted, but that it is possible to interpret it with traditional dramatic criteria. I think we can forgive Henck for thinking such an excursion far too subjective and prescriptive, perhaps even too didactic.

Then what do you mean by meaning? The row affects the way decisions are made, and those decisions are audible. The row itself is an abstract object, and the composer makes it meaningful by emphasizing its inherent, unexplored meanings through composition (ideally, it isn't just an unreflected cycling of a gamut of pitches). Again, I reject the distinction between "audible" and "essential" because there's such a slippery slope. Clearly nothing about Klavierstueck X is essential to someone who sees it as just a cloud of talcum powder. At the other end stands a hypothetical Stockhausen aficionado who follows every nuance and traces it back to its structural determinants.
Most of us who take the piece seriously are somewhere in between.

Sometimes the decisions don't make a difference, I guess, but does anything really matter, in the end, except to those who want it to matter?

I'm afraid I don't have the willpower to read right through this thread.

But since Stockhausen has been mentioned....does anyone have an opinion on his opera 'Der Junge Herr'? If one is inclined to like 'Wozzeck' and 'Lulu' (which I am), am I likely to enjoy 'Der Junge Herr'?

And any opinions on the (currently deleted) Dohnanyi recording of it?

It's been a while since I heard it (and I didn't get through the whole thing) but it's not terribly Bergian.
As far as I remember it is neo-classical and has more in common with The Rake's Progress.
Do, please, correct me if I'm wrong.

No, no, no, you're not wrong, harmony, not at all!

Der Junge Lord is not a "Bergian" piece, it is a comical parable. I have the old recording conducted by Von Dohnányi on CD.

I could place a few fragments on Sendspace.