Your obituary of Karlheinz Stockhausen cannot but make the reader feel doubly sorry for the poor chap (December 15, 2007). Although you do acknowledge his passionate search for “sounds never heard before,” you quickly turn to describing these sounds as little but “rattling and plicking.” Your damning praise is summed up thus: “No plink or plunk was quite the same (to him) as any other.” How very sad. To round off this cheerless obituary, you do not tire of repeating that “he was never popular,” or that “the general public did not get the message.” How dreadful, too. The fact remains that Stockhausen is a musician of world renown, and that his exploration of sound will stay with us for generations. Sooner or later the general public will dutifully turn up to appreciate his rich oeuvre. That is in the general public’s very nature.