WE all sometimes say things that come out in ways we did not intend. This is how defenders of the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen are trying to explain away the grotesque remarks he made during a press conference in Hamburg on Sept. 17, when asked for his reactions to the terrorist attack on the United States.

Mr. Stockhausen, who emerged in the 1950's as one of a reigning trio of avant-garde composers that included Pierre Boulez and Luigi Nono, was taking questions before a four-day festival of his works in Hamburg. In disjointed comments that were taped by a German radio station and reported internationally, Mr. Stockhausen, 73, called the attack on the World Trade Center ''the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.'' Extending the analogy, he spoke of human minds achieving ''something in one act'' that ''we couldn't even dream of in music,'' in which ''people practice like crazy for 10 years, totally fanatically, for a concert, and then die.'' Just imagine, he added: ''You have people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5,000 people are dispatched into eternity, in a single moment. I couldn't do that. In comparison with that, we're nothing as composers.''

When he realized how the reporters were reacting, he backtracked and asked that his words not be quoted. ''Where has he brought me, that Lucifer?'' he asked, referring to one of three invented characters, along with Eve and Michael, who regularly figure in his works.

It was too late. The Hamburg concerts were abruptly canceled. Mr. Stockhausen left town, refusing further comment. On his Web site (www.stockhausen.org) he protested that his words had been distorted, that he had been speaking metaphorically, that Lucifer, the ''cosmic spirit'' of anarchy who uses his intelligence ''to destroy creation,'' was the creator of the ''satanic composition,'' that is, the attack. German media and cultural figures continued to condemn him.