Stockhausen: a Biography.

'Biography' is perhaps too ambitious a description of this interesting but inconclusive compilation of notes and interviews (I reviewed the German edition (1988) in Music & Letters, lxx (1989), 441-2). The author has tracked down and interviewed surviving family and other key witnesses from the composer's childhood to the mid 1950s, throwing light on the early years, which for long were fairly well concealed from view. I wish, indeed, that he had stayed with these years instead of attempting to cover the whole life: there must be a wealth of material that has simply not made it on to the printed page. For a German readership the book offers a filtered glimpse of the person …