Lachrimae Antiquae Stockhausen

Moodily, General Buckman opened the third drawer of the large desk and placed a tape-reel in the small transport he kept there. Dowland aires for four voices...he stood listening to one which he enjoyed very much, among all the songs in Dowland's lute books.

For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.




The first man, Buckman mused, to write a piece of abstract music. He removed the tape, put in the lute one, and stood listening to the Lachrimae Antiquae Pavan. From this, he said to himself, came, at last, the Beethoven final quartets. And everything else. Except for Wagner. He detested Wagner. Wagner and those like him, such as Berlioz, had set music back three centuries. Until Karlheinz Stockhausen in his Gesang der Jünglinge had once more brought music up to date.


Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, 1974.