Composer creates storm describing attack on US as 'work of art' HAMBURG, Germany, Sept 18 (AFP) - Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, 73, has roused indignation in Germany for describing last week's catastrophic airplane assaults on New York as "the greatest work of art ever." The renowned contemporary composer, who was speaking to journalists in Hamburg late Sunday, immediately retracted the remark and asked them not to report it. But as a result of what he said, two concerts featuring Stockhausen which were to be given Tuesday and Wednesday were cancelled by the organisers of a music festival at the request of the local cultural authorities and festival sponsors. Hamburg's general director of music, Ingo Metzmacher, had invited the composer to stage performances of his own works at the current Hamburg music festival. The German news agency DPA said the composer had quit Hamburg, greatly upset by the affair. In a statement issued by the music festival organisers, Stockhausen said he had been asked whether characters in his work, such as Lucifer, were historical, and that he had replied "they are always contemporary, for example Lucifer in New York. "I recalled the destruction of art. Any other words outside of this context have no relation to what I meant," he insisted. Hamburg culture senator (minister) Christina Weiss said the composer's reported remark was inexcusable, given the grief and mourning in the United States. "Out of feeling for the political culture of the city and the federal republic, the concerts had to be cancelled," she said. According to DPA, the composer, who had been asked about the attacks on the United States, said: "What happened there is -- they all have to rearrange their brains now -- is the greatest work of art ever. "That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of, that people practise madly for ten years, completely fanatically, for a concert and then die. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos. "I could not do that. Against that, we, composers, are nothing." http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/entertainment/afp/article.html?s=a...