Dissonant Terror: Stockhausen’s Lucifer and the Art of 9/11

Abstract

ABSTRACTKarlheinz Stockhausen created a scandal when he described the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center as the greatest work of art, which he attributed to Lucifer, the archetypal rebel of his opera-cycle LICHT. In trying to understand Stockhausen’s comment, it is useful to examine his conceptualization of Lucifer by drawing on Lacan’s psychic register of the Real and Adorno’s concept of dissonance, at the same time critiquing the composer’s perception and depiction of some of the darker regions of the human psyche. Such an examination suggests that Stockhausen’s depiction of Lucifer represents a view of terrorism as a symptom of society’s inability to reconcile with its own internal contradictions and dissonance.