Rather amusing quote from Finnissy here which might be of interest:

MF: Stockhausen's Mikrophonie or Gruppen locate themselves in a period, people tend not to use those titles any more, or Formel or Carré.

Christopher Fox: But Carré isn't called Australian Sea Shanties, or Maldon.

MF: I wouldn't call something 'Square': a colloquialism for ponderous and old fashioned! Supposing, since I believe it is part of the material, Momente were called 'My Life with Mary Bauermeister and other women' - you de-emphasize the structural level... Stockhausen is emphasising the structure in his choice of title.

(in Uncommon Ground, p. 23)

Of course it's relevant, but that's not what you asked, and Richard didn't say anything was irrelevant anyway. You asked how going further than its maximum value 'is worthwhile in terms of the sonic results thus produced'. I didn't (and still don't) understand what you mean by 'worthwhile'.

And from an Oxford point of view?

People don't have to be explicitly relating things to sound all the time in order to retain an awareness that sound is going to be the primary medium through which what they are talking about reaches listeners.

No, but I imagine one could derive additional interest and insight into it if one did read the notation.

They're more than welcome to do so, and to publish their thoughts on the internet as Al has done.

I know you don't talk about 'the common man' - that was Al - but you do keep talking about people who use their 'specialist' or 'aficionado' status to set themselves apart, which seems to presuppose some pre-existing division of humanity into those who are or can become specialists, and those who can't.

Oh, and by the way:
I'm not going to answer that. I'm joining the other contributors to this thread in a conspiracy to prevent you from ever finding out what 'spirituality' means.

Nothing really to find out! Any more than trying to find out what God is really like.

I thought you were accusing me of something more general than having studied music at Cambridge! Though since you mention it, I never came across the word 'seriality' in Cambridge. (And I don't think the question's unimportant, I just thought the answer was already evident in what Richard wrote.)

I didn't say it's not related to sound. I said people don't have to be constantly explaining how it's related to sound. When I listed some comments that I'd found helpful and illuminating, that was precisely because I could imagine ways in which they might inform my listening experience. If they don't inform yours, fine, but they were helpful to me, and since I'm a relative novice to Stockhausen I think I'm probably a reasonably good guinea pig in the current context (which incidentally is why I was doing more watching than posting in the earlier stages of this thread).

So why don't they, then? Given the number of reservations you have about the thoughts of almost everyone in this discussion, I'm surprised by your readiness to assume any better of this vast majority who haven't yet found a voice.

I'm not telling you that either.

Dear Ian,

It was very helpful and a great service for you to recapitulate the debate we've had here, as it helps me see my comments from someone else's perspective. I really do feel that we've made some progress toward understanding each other.

We've already agreed that there is too much 'positivism' -- i.e. excess optimism that structure and sounding result map onto one another on a 1:1 basis. But you have now organized the recap in such a way that I have been put into the positivist camp as well, which is tiresome and frustrating.

The reason I go to Henck and read about order and disorder is because this is the listening experience which Stockhausen wanted to impart. That intention may or may not come through. The degree to which it succeeds or fails to come through is the result of compositional decisions. I realize as well as anybody that it isn't entirely a result of that, it also requires the subjective input of the listener and the interpreter. If someone would take the Henck text (which doesn't really contain all that much music notation), figure out Stockhausen's intention, and then on a point-by-point basis show how this intention corresponds, or does not correspond, to their listening experience, I would want to read such an account.

Anything else would be less interesting to me, though certainly not uninteresting: I have now read a couple of Al's essays, too, and I welcome them; their principal value, to me, is to serve as a reminder that Stockhausen's music is meant for all people, regardless of background. I'm not especially taken with his impressions, per se, but with the fact that he's made them available and put so much thought, sensitivity, and writing skill into them. I doubt you need encouragement from me, but I hope you keep up the good work

However, I don't see this thread as the place to do publicity work for Stockhausen, or to couch everything I say in caveats about what information is appropriate for what type of listener.

This too is frustrating. I have never said it has nothing to do with people's ldtf, but I also think it's a little arrogant for me to say WHAT it has to do with people's ldtf. Perhaps that's just a personal preference. I am only a big boy in the literal sense of 2 meters tall.
I already tried to answer this: to me (a secular view, admittedly) spirituality is shorthand for the disorganized, mostly subconscious, workings of our mind, formed through biology, prior experience, nature and nurture. They are only mystifying in that they are unfathomable, ultimately. The use of the term spirituality, in this context, is not meant to mystify, but to highlight the mystifying aspects of music. I am arguing that we need to look at all steps in the following chain:

The composer's spirit -->
The composer's ideas -->
The composer's strategy for translating those ideas into music-->
The composer's notation-->
The performer's strategy for translating that notation into sound-->
The performer's actual execution of the notation-->
The arrival of the execution in the listener's ear-->
The listener's interpretive faculty-->
The listener's spirit.

If any of these links is broken, musical communication cannot take place. This doesn't mean that one can't enjoy what one is hearing, but it does show that what gets communicated may in fact be different from what was originally 'broadcast'. I think we can agree that that is an incredibly fragile process and that one should look at all steps in the process. You seem to be focussed on the last three or four of these steps, and I'm focussed on the first three or four, but I don't exclude the last ones. Do you exclude the first? If so, why? Because they are elitist?

I am sure Stockhausen, in all phases of his career, thought about each of these steps. Though I wish he had infused his thinking with a lot more skepticism, namely of the Luigi Pirandello type, or the George Santayana type... this is where I am currently situated in the Stockhausen debate.

Fine, I suppose that's what I'd called 'consciousness', either in an individual or a more collective sense.

OK, I'm not sure if nos. 1-2 can really be separated from each other. Would you see those as roughly akin to the unconscious/conscious side of the mind (that very dichotomy is one of several models that might be used, of course, and stems from Freud)? I would add three extra ones from the beginning.

The society and environment in which Stockhausen was raised and nurtured, and that which he continues to inhabit (that may be two points, actually)-->
His own identity within that society, to do with his class, gender, race, sexuality, etc. and consequent self-perception relative to others-->
Stockhausen's subjective (and possibly critical) interaction with those elements of his own consciousness that are formed by the previous aspects-->

And maybe also:

The musical language that has been developed (by both Stockhausen himself and others, or just others when he was starting out) and the possibilities therein, which Stockhausen can inhabit, appropriate, develop, critique-->

And for the last two points, I would divide them up into more (including the listener's position within and subjective relationship to the society and culture they inhabit, the role that music has/can have in their life, and so on), but I'll leave that for now.

Absolutely (and more!).

No, I don't exclude them by any means, but I think they are most important in the ways that they affect the later stages. And (as implied above), I do want to 'decentre' Stockhausen the individual as the ontological source, as he himself is in some senses the product of a wider society. Where there is an issue, I think, is if there seems quite a bit of redundancy in the earlier steps in the sense of their informing the whole process. So I think it's worth establishing the extent to which this is or is not the case before assigning primary value in some of those earlier steps.

By the way, in terms of the performer's role in it all, I certainly think that's of fundamental importance (much more so than often realised or acknowledged), just haven't so far said so much about it here. The performer is inevitably bringing certain ideologies to bear upon the music and filtering it through those ideologies, to such an extent that there is probably no performance that can be said to be free of such 'interpretation' (other than with pure tape works, though even then there is the question of choice of playback equipment, acoustics, etc.).

Actually, I would also like to filter in the issue of programming (context in which S's music is included, and how it might relate to the other pieces with which it is programmed - something of course of great importance to him), venue, social context of perfomance, likely type of audience, and so on.

In the sense that at present it's only listened to or appreciated in any sense by a very small minority (much smaller than classical music in general which, whilst also a minority interest, has demonstrated a level of staying power of varying periods of time that not much other music could match). But that doesn't mean that necessarily need always be the case (and in fact, many of the claims generally made for it would strongly imply that it isn't). There's also a difference between whether music somehow communicates (in the broadest sense of the word) something to people, whether or not they like it. The first is a question of accessibility, the second of aesthetics. Some artistic work can be meaningful and widely hated, but still important.

No, I know that, just think breaking up into further sub-categories might be productive. Especially in terms of the subjective relationship to external determinants upon consciousness (so as to avoid an overly reductive view, meaning one that reduces an individual purely to being a product of the society/identity from which they come). But 'ideas' are also likely to be affected by the other steps that I mention, in possibly a more direct way than simply being filtered through 'spirit'/'consciousness'?

The other thing I'm thinking about in terms of what you're saying is whether all the things you categorise as 'spirit' are necessarily unfathomable? I know you say 'ultimately', but does that mean it's futile to try and do so, at least partially?

(also, shouldn't 'the performer's spirit' also be included?)