Karlheinz Stockhausen is dead at age 79. I can't claim the kind of knowledge of the man and his works that some of my friends can, but when I was young, he was the first person who made me aware that what I then thought of as "classical music" was not strictly the purview of dead men in powdered wigs. He helped open my ears to the possibilities of electronic, avant-garde, and modern concert music, and, ultimately, jazz. So he'll always mean something to me.