Karlheinz Stockhausen
Encyclopedia
Karlheinz Stockhausen (kaʁlˈhaɪnts ˈʃtɔkhaʊzn̩; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important (Barrett 1988, 45; Harvey 1975b, 705; Hopkins 1972, 33; Klein 1968, 117) but also controversial (Power 1990, 30) composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music" (Hewett 2007). He is known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music
, aleatory
(controlled chance) in serial composition
, and musical spatialization
.
He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln
and the University of Cologne
, and later studied with Olivier Messiaen
in Paris, and with Werner Meyer-Eppler
at the University of Bonn
. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School
, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music
, but also on jazz
and popular music
. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical box
es through works for solo instruments, songs, chamber music
, choral
and orchestral music, to a cycle of seven full-length operas. His theoretical
and other writings comprise ten large volumes. He received numerous prizes and distinctions for his compositions, recordings, and for the scores produced by his publishing company.
Some of his notable compositions include the series of nineteen Klavierstücke
(Piano Pieces), Kontra-Punkte for ten instruments, the electronic/musique-concrète
Gesang der Jünglinge
, Gruppen
for three orchestras, the percussion solo Zyklus
, Kontakte
, the cantata Momente
, the live-electronic Mikrophonie I
, Hymnen
, Stimmung
for six vocalists, Aus den sieben Tagen
, Mantra
for two pianos and electronics, Tierkreis
, Inori
for soloists and orchestra, and the gigantic opera cycle Licht
.
He died of sudden heart failure at the age of 79, on 5 December 2007 at his home in Kürten
, Germany.
. The village, located near Kerpen
in the vicinity of Cologne
, was displaced in 1956 by the strip mining of lignite
in the region, although the castle itself still exists. His father, Simon Stockhausen, was a schoolteacher, and his mother Gertrud (née Stupp) was the daughter of a prosperous family of farmers in Neurath in the Cologne Bight
. A daughter, Katherina, was born the year after Karlheinz, and a second son, Hermann-Josef ("Hermännchen") followed in 1932. Gertrud played the piano and accompanied her own singing but, after three pregnancies in as many years, experienced a mental breakdown and was institutionalized
in December 1932, followed a few months later by the death of her younger son, Hermann (Kurtz 1992, 8, 11, & 13).
From the age of seven, Stockhausen grew up in Altenberg
, where he received his first piano lessons from the Protestant organist
of the Altenberg Cathedral, Franz-Josef Kloth (Kurtz 1992, 14). In 1938 his father remarried. His new wife, Luzia, had been the family's housekeeper. The couple had two daughters (Kurtz 1992, 18). Because his relationship with his new stepmother was less than happy, in January 1942 Karlheinz became a boarder at the teachers' training college in Xanten
, where he continued his piano training and also studied oboe and violin (Kurtz 1992, 18). In the first half of 1942, he learned that his mother had died, ostensibly from leukemia, although everyone at the same hospital had supposedly died of the same disease. It was generally understood that she had been a victim of the Nazi policy of killing "useless eaters" (Stockhausen 1989a, 20–21; Kurtz 1992, 19). Stockhausen later dramatized his mother's death in hospital by lethal injection, in Act 1 scene 2 ("Mondeva") of the opera Donnerstag aus Licht
(Kurtz 1992, 213). According to one source, as a young teenager he worked as a cobbler (Prendergast 2000, 52). In the autumn of 1944, he was conscripted to serve as a stretcher bearer in Bedburg
(Kurtz 1992, 18). In February 1945, he met his father for the last time in Altenberg. Simon, who was on leave from the front, told his son, "I'm not coming back. Look after things". By the end of the war, his father was regarded as missing in action, and may have been killed in Hungary (Kurtz 1992, 19). A comrade later reported to Karlheinz that he saw his father wounded in action (Maconie 2005, 19). Fifty-five years after the fact, a journalist writing for the Guardian newspaper stated unequivocally, though without offering any fresh evidence, that Simon Stockhausen was killed in Hungary in 1945 (O'Mahony 2001).
and piano at the Hochschule für Musik Köln
(Cologne Conservatory of Music) and musicology
, philosophy, and Germanics
at the University of Cologne
. He had training in harmony
and counterpoint
, the latter with Hermann Schroeder
, but he did not develop a real interest in composition
until 1950. He was admitted at the end of that year to the class of Swiss composer Frank Martin
, who had just begun a seven-year tenure in Cologne (Kurtz 1992, 28). At the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1951, Stockhausen met Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts
, who had just completed studies with Olivier Messiaen
(analysis) and Darius Milhaud
(composition) in Paris, and Stockhausen resolved to do likewise (Kurtz 1992, 34–36). He arrived in Paris on 8 January 1952 and began attending Messiaen's courses in aesthetics and analysis, as well as Milhaud's composition classes. He continued with Messiaen for a year, but he was disappointed with Milhaud and abandoned his lessons after a few weeks (Kurtz 1992, 45–48). In March 1953, he left Paris to take up a position as assistant to Herbert Eimert
at the newly established Electronic Music Studio of Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
(NWDR) (from 1 January 1955, Westdeutscher Rundfunk
, or WDR) in Cologne (Kurtz 1992, 56–57). In 1962, he succeeded Eimert as director of the studio (Morawska-Büngeler 1988, 19). From 1954 to 1956, he studied phonetics, acoustics, and information theory with Werner Meyer-Eppler
at the University of Bonn
(Kurtz 1992, 68–72). Together with Eimert, Stockhausen edited the journal Die Reihe
from 1955 to 1962 (Grant 2001, 1–2).
(b. 1957), and Majella (b. 1961) (Kurtz 1992, 90; Tannenbaum 1987, 94). On 3 April 1967, in San Francisco, he married Mary Bauermeister
, with whom he had two children: Julika (b. 22 January 1966) and Simon (b. 1967) (Kurtz 1992, 141 & 149; Tannenbaum 1987, 95).
Four of Stockhausen's children became professional musicians (Kurtz 1992, 202), and he composed some of his works specifically for them. A large number of pieces for the trumpet—from Sirius (1975–77) to the trumpet version of In Freundschaft (1997)—were composed for and premièred by his son Markus (Kurtz 1992, 208; Markus Stockhausen 1998, 13–16; Tannenbaum 1987, 61). Markus, at the age of 4 years, had performed the part of The Child in the Cologne première of Originale, alternating performances with his sister Christel (Maconie 2005, 220). Klavierstück XII and Klavierstück XIII (and their versions as scenes from the operas Donnerstag aus Licht and Samstag aus Licht
) were written for his daughter Majella, and were first performed by her at the ages of 16 and 20, respectively (Maconie 2005, 430 & 443; Stockhausen Texte 5:190, 255, 274; Stockhausen Texte 6:64, 373). The saxophone duet in the second act of Donnerstag aus Licht, and a number of synthesizer parts in the Licht operas, including Klavierstück XV ("Synthi-Fou") from Dienstag
, were composed for his son Simon (Kurtz 1992, 222; Maconie 2005, 480 & 489; Stockhausen Texte 5:186, 529), who also assisted his father in the production of the electronic music from Freitag aus Licht. His daughter Christel is a flautist who performed and gave a course on interpretation of Tierkreis in 1977 (Stockhausen Texte 5:105), later published as an article (C. Stockhausen 1978).
In 1961, Stockhausen acquired a parcel of land in the vicinity of Kürten
, a village east of Cologne, near Bergisch Gladbach
in the Bergisches Land
. He had a house built there, which was designed to his specifications by the architect Erich Schneider-Wessling, and he resided there since its completion in the autumn of 1965 (Kurtz 1992, 116–17, 137–38).
After lecturing at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik at Darmstadt (first in 1953), Stockhausen gave lectures and concerts in Europe, North America, and Asia (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 2, 14–15). He was guest professor of composition at the University of Pennsylvania
in 1965 and at the University of California, Davis
in 1966–67 (Kramer 1998; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 2–3). He founded and directed the Cologne Courses for New Music from 1963 to 1968, and was appointed Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln
in 1971, where he taught until 1977 (Kurtz 1992, 126–28 & 194; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 3). In 1998, he founded the Stockhausen Courses, which are held annually in Kürten (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 6–9, 15).
, which often involved unconventional devices. The score for his piece Refrain, for instance, includes a rotatable (refrain
) on a transparent plastic strip. Early in the 1970s, he ended his agreement with Universal Edition and began publishing his own scores under the Stockhausen-Verlag imprint (Kurtz 1992, 184). This arrangement allowed him to extend his notational innovations (for example, dynamics in Weltparlament [the first scene of Mittwoch aus Licht
] are coded in colour) and resulted in eight German Music Publishers Society Awards between 1992 (Luzifers Tanz) and 2005 (Hoch-Zeiten, from Sonntag aus Licht) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 12–13). The score of Momente, published just before the composer's death in 2007, won this prize for the ninth time (Deutscher Musikeditionspreis 2009)
In the early 1990s, Stockhausen reacquired the licenses to most of the recordings of his music he had made to that point, and started his own record company to make this music permanently available on Compact Disc (Maconie 2005, 477–78).
, North Rhine-Westphalia. He had just the night before finished a work recently commissioned for performance by the Mozart Orchestra of Bologna
(Bäumer 2007).
, Edgard Varèse
, and Anton Webern
, as well as by film (Stockhausen 1996b) and by painters such as Piet Mondrian
(Stockhausen 1996a, 94; Texte 3, 92–93; Toop 1998) and Paul Klee
(Maconie 2005, 187).
In August 1951, just after his first Darmstadt visit, Stockhausen began working with a form of athematic
serial
composition that rejected the twelve-tone technique
of Schoenberg
(Felder 1977, 92). He characterized many of these earliest compositions (together with the music of other, like-minded composers of the period) as punktuelle
("punctual" or "pointist" music, commonly mistranslated as "pointillist") Musik, though one critic concluded after analysing several of these early works that Stockhausen "never really composed punctually" (Sabbe 1981). Compositions from this phase include Kreuzspiel
(1951), the Klavierstücke I–IV
(1952—the fourth of this first set of four Klavierstücke, titled Klavierstück IV, is specifically cited by Stockhausen as an example of "punctual music" in Texte 2, 19), and the first (unpublished) versions of Punkte
and Kontra-Punkte (1952) (Texte 2, 20). However, several works from these same years show Stockhausen formulating his "first really ground-breaking contribution to the theory and, above all, practice of composition" (Toop 2005, 3), that of "group composition" (Toop 2005, 3), found in Stockhausen's works as early as 1952 and continuing to the present time (Toop 2005, 3). This principle was first publicly described by Stockhausen in a radio talk from December 1955, titled "Gruppenkomposition: Klavierstück I
" (Texte 1, 63–74).
In December 1952, he composed a Konkrete Etüde, realized in Pierre Schaeffer
's Paris musique concrète
studio. In March 1953, he moved to the NWDR studio in Cologne and turned to electronic music
with two Electronic Studies
(1953 and 1954), and then introducing spatial placements of sound sources with his mixed concrète and electronic work Gesang der Jünglinge
(1955–56). Experiences gained from the Studies made plain that it was an unacceptable oversimplification to regard timbres as stable entities (Texte 1, 56). Reinforced by his studies with Meyer-Eppler, beginning in 1955, Stockhausen formulated new "statistical" criteria for composition, focussing attention on the aleatoric
, directional tendencies of sound movement, "the change from one state to another, with or without returning motion, as opposed to a fixed state" (Decroupet and Ungeheuer 1998, 98–99). Stockhausen later wrote, describing this period in his compositional work, "The first revolution occurred from 1952/53 as musique concrète, electronic tape music, and space music, entailing composition with transformers, generators, modulators, magnetophones, etc; the integration of all concrete and abstract (synthetic) sound possibilities (also all noises), and the controlled projection of sound in space" (Stockhausen 1989b, 127; reprinted in Schwartz & Childs 1998, 374). His position as "the leading German composer of his generation" (Toop 2001) was established with Gesang der Jünglinge and three concurrently composed pieces in different media: Zeitmaße
for five woodwinds, Gruppen
for three orchestras, and Klavierstück XI
(Kohl 1998a, 61). The principles underlying the latter three compositions are presented in Stockhausen's best-known theoretical article, ". . . wie die Zeit vergeht . . ." (". . . How Time Passes . . ."), first published in 1957 in vol. 3 of Die Reihe
(Texte 1, 99–139).
His work with electronic music and its utter fixity led him to explore modes of instrumental and vocal music in which performers' individual capabilities and the circumstances of a particular performance (e.g., hall acoustics) may determine certain aspects of a composition. He called this "variable form" (Wörner 1973, 101–105). In other cases, a work may be presented from a number of different perspectives. In Zyklus
(1959), for example, he began using graphic notation
for instrumental music. The score
is written so that the performance can start on any page, and it may be read upside down, or from right to left, as the performer chooses (Stockhausen, Texte 2, 73–100). Still other works permit different routes through the constituent parts. Stockhausen called both of these possibilities "polyvalent form" (Stockhausen, Texte 1, 241–51), which may be either open form (essentially incomplete, pointing beyond its frame), as with Klavierstück XI (1956), or "closed form" (complete and self-contained) as with Momente
(1962–64/69) (Kaletha 2004, 97–98).
In many of his works, elements are played off against one another, simultaneously and successively: in Kontra-Punkte ("Against Points", 1952–53), which, in its revised form became his official "opus 1", a process leading from an initial "point" texture of isolated notes toward a florid, ornamental ending is opposed by a tendency from diversity (six timbres, dynamics, and durations) toward uniformity (timbre of solo piano, a nearly constant soft dynamic, and fairly even durations). In Gruppen
(1955–57), fanfares and passages of varying speed (superimposed durations based on the harmonic series
) are occasionally flung between three full orchestras, giving the impression of movement in space (Maconie 2005, 486).
In his Kontakte
for electronic sounds (optionally with piano and percussion) (1958–60), he achieved for the first time an isomorphism
of the four parameters of pitch, duration, dynamics, and timbre (Stockhausen 1962, 40).
titled Momente
(1962–64/69), for solo soprano, four choir groups and thirteen instrumentalists (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 18). In 1963, Stockhausen created Plus-Minus, "2 × 7 pages for realisation" containing basic note materials and a complex system of transformations to which those materials are to be subjected in order to produce an unlimited number of different compositions (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 20; Toop 2005, 175–78). Through the rest of the 1960s, he continued to explore such possibilities of "process composition
" in works for live performance, such as Prozession (1967), Kurzwellen
, and Spiral
(both 1968), culminating in the verbally described "intuitive music" compositions of Aus den sieben Tagen
(1968) and Für kommende Zeiten (1968–70) (Fritsch 1979; Kohl 1981, 192–93, 227–51; Kohl 1998b, 7; Toop 2005, 191–92). Some of his later works, such as Ylem (1972) and the first three parts of Herbstmusik (1974), also fall under this rubric (Maconie 2005, 254 and 366–68). Several of these process compositions were featured in the all-day programmes presented at Expo 70, for which Stockhausen composed two more similar pieces, Pole for two players, and Expo for three (Kohl 1981, 192–93; Maconie 2005, 323–24). In other compositions, such as Stop for orchestra (1965), Adieu
for wind quintet (1966), and the Dr. K Sextett, which was written in 1968–69 in honour of Alfred Kalmus of Universal Edition, he presented his performers with more restricted improvisational possibilities (Maconie 2005, 262, 267–68, 319–20).
He pioneered live electronics in Mixtur
(1964/67/2003) for orchestra and electronics (Kohl 1981, 51–163), Mikrophonie I
(1964) for tam-tam, two microphones, two filters with potentiometer
s (6 players) (Maconie 1972; Maconie 2005, 255–57), Mikrophonie II
(1965) for choir, Hammond organ
, and four ring modulators
(Peters 1992), and Solo for a melody instrument with feedback (1966) (Maconie 2005, 262–65). Improvisation also plays a part in all of these works, but especially in Solo (Maconie 2005, 264). He also composed two electronic works for tape
, Telemusik (1966) and Hymnen
(1966–67) (Kohl 2002; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 21). The latter also exists in a version with partially improvising soloists, and the third of its four "regions" in a version with orchestra (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 21). At this time, Stockhausen also began to incorporate pre-existent music from world traditions into his compositions (Kohl 1981, 93–95; Texte 4, 468–76). Telemusik was the first overt example of this trend (Kohl 2002, 96).
In 1968, Stockhausen composed the vocal sextet Stimmung
, for the Collegium Vocale Köln
, an hour-long work based entirely on the overtone
s of a low B-flat (Toop 2005, 39). In the following year, he created Fresco
for four orchestral groups, a Wandelmusik ("foyer music") composition (Maconie 2005, 321). This was intended to be played for about five hours in the foyers and grounds of the Beethovenhalle auditorium complex in Bonn
, before, after, and during a group of (in part simultaneous) concerts of his music in the auditoriums of the facility (Maconie 2005, 321–23). The overall project was given the title Musik für die Beethovenhalle (Maconie 2005, 296). This had precedents in two collective-composition seminar projects that Stockhausen gave at Darmstadt in 1967 and 1968: Ensemble and Musik für ein Haus (Gehlhaar 1968; Ritzel 1970; Iddon 2004; Maconie 2005, 321), and would have successors in the "park music" composition for five spatially separated groups, Sternklang ("Star Sounds") of 1971, the orchestral work Trans, composed in the same year and the thirteen simultaneous "musical scenes for soloists and duets" titled Alphabet für Liège
(1972) (Maconie 2005, 334–36, 338, 341–43).
(1955–56) and Telemusik
(1966), and 4-channel Kontakte
(1958–60) and Hymnen
(1966–67). Instrumental/vocal works like Gruppen
for three orchestras (1955–57) and Carré
for four orchestras and choirs (1959–60) also exhibit this trait (Stockhausen Texte 2:71–72, 49–50, 102–103; Stockhausen 1989, 105–108; Cott 1973, 200–201). In lectures such as "Music in Space" from 1958 (Stockhausen Texte 1:152–75), he called for new kinds of concert halls to be built, "suited to the requirements of spatial music". His idea was
government invited Stockhausen to collaborate on the German Pavilion at the 1970 World Fair
in Osaka
and to create a joint multimedia project for it with artist Otto Piene
. Other collaborators on the project included the pavilion's architect, Fritz Bornemann
, Fritz Winckel, director of the Electronic Music Studio at the Technical University of Berlin
, and engineer Max Mengeringhausen. The pavilion theme was "gardens of music", in keeping with which Bornemann intended "planting" the exhibition halls beneath a broad lawn, with a connected auditorium "sprouting" above ground. Initially, Bornemann conceived this auditorium in the form of an amphitheatre
, with a central orchestra podium and surrounding audience space. In the summer of 1968, Stockhausen met with Bornemann and persuaded him to change this conception to a spherical space with the audience in the center, surrounded by loudspeaker groups in seven rings at different "latitudes" around the interior walls of the sphere (Kurtz 1992, 166; Föllmer 1996).
Although Stockhausen and Piene's planned multimedia project, titled Hinab-Hinauf, was developed in detail (Stockhausen, Texte 3:155–74), the World Fair committee rejected their concept as too extravagant and instead asked Stockhausen to present daily five-hour programs of his music (Kurtz 1992, 178). Stockhausen's works were performed for 5½ hours every day over a period of 183 days to a total audience of about a million listeners (Wörner 1973, 256). According to Stockhausen's biographer, Michael Kurtz, "Many visitors felt the spherical auditorium to be an oasis of calm amidst the general hubbub, and after a while it became one of the main attractions of Expo 1970" (Kurtz 1992, 179).
for two pianos and electronics (1970), Stockhausen turned to formula composition
, a technique which involves the projection and multiplication of a single, double, or triple melodic
-line formula (Kohl 1983–84a; Kohl 1990; Kohl 2004). Sometimes, as in Mantra and the large orchestral composition with mime soloists, Inori
, the simple formula is stated at the outset as an introduction. He continued to use this technique (e.g., in the two related solo-clarinet pieces, Harlekin ["Harlequin"] and Der kleine Harlekin ["The Little Harlequin"] of 1975, and the orchestral Jubiläum
["Jubilee"] of 1977) through the completion of the opera-cycle Licht in 2003 (Blumröder 1982; Conen 1991; Kohl 1983–84a; Kohl 1990; Kohl 1993; Kohl 2004; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 10). Some works from the 1970s did not employ formula technique—e.g., the vocal duet "Am Himmel wandre ich" ("In the Sky I am Walking", one of the 13 components of the multimedia Alphabet für Liège, 1972), "Laub und Regen" ("Leaves and Rain", from the theatre piece Herbstmusik (1974), the unaccompanied-clarinet composition Amour
, and the choral opera Atmen gibt das Leben
("Breathing Gives Life", 1974/77)—but nevertheless share its simpler, melodically oriented style (Conen 1991, 57). Two such pieces, Tierkreis
("Zodiac", 1974–75) and In Freundschaft
("In Friendship", 1977, a solo piece with versions for virtually every orchestral instrument), have become Stockhausen's most widely performed and recorded compositions (Anon. 2007a; Deruchie 2007; Nordin 2004).
This dramatic simplification of style provided a model for a new generation of German composers, loosely associated under the label neue Einfachheit or New Simplicity
(Andraschke 1981). The best-known of these composers is Wolfgang Rihm
, who studied with Stockhausen in 1972–73. His orchestral composition Sub-Kontur (1974–75) quotes the formula of Stockhausen's Inori (1973–74), and he has also acknowledged the influence of Momente on this work (Frobenius 1981, 53 + note 59–60). Other large works from this decade include the orchestral Trans
(1971) and two music-theatre compositions utilizing the Tierkreis melodies: Musik im Bauch
("Music in the Belly") for six percussionists (1975), and the science-fiction "opera" Sirius
(1975–77) for eight-channel electronic music with soprano, bass, trumpet, and bass clarinet, which has four different versions for the four seasons, each lasting over an hour and a half (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 24–25).
("Light: The Seven Days of the Week") (Maconie 2005, 403–544). The Licht cycle deals with the traits associated in various historical traditions with each weekday (Monday = birth and fertility, Tuesday = conflict and war, Wednesday = reconciliation and cooperation, Thursday = traveling and learning, etc.) and with the relationships between three archetypal characters: Michael
, Lucifer
, and Eve
(Kohl 1983–84b, 489; Stockhausen Texte 6:152–56, 175, 200–201). Each of these characters dominates one of the operas (Donnerstag [Thursday], Samstag [Saturday], and Montag [Monday], respectively), the three possible pairings are foregrounded in three others, and the equal combination of all three is featured in Mittwoch (Wednesday) (Kohl 1990, 274).
Stockhausen's conception of opera was based significantly on ceremony and ritual, with influence from the Japanese Noh
theatre (Stockhausen, Conen, and Hennlich 1989, 282), as well as Judeo-Christian
and Vedic
traditions (Bruno 1999, 134). In 1968, at the time of the composition of Aus den sieben Tagen, Stockhausen had read a biography by Satprem
about the Bengali guru Sri Aurobindo
(Guerreri 2009), and subsequently he also read many of the published writings by Aurobindo himself. The title of Licht owes something to Aurobindo's theory of "Agni
" (the Hindu and Vedic fire deity), developed from two basic premises of nuclear physics; Stockhausen's definition of a formula and, especially, his conception of the Licht superformula, also owes a great deal to Sri Aurobindo's category of the "supramental" (Peters 2003, 227). Similarly, his approach to voice and text sometimes departed from traditional usage: Characters were as likely to be portrayed by instrumentalists or dancers as by singers, and a few parts of Licht (e.g., Luzifers Traum from Samstag, Welt-Parlament from Mittwoch, Lichter-Wasser and Hoch-Zeiten from Sonntag) use written or improvised texts in simulated or invented languages (Kohl 1983–84b, 499; Moritz 2005; Stockhausen 1999, 18–25; Stockhausen 2001b, 20; Stockhausen 2003, 20).
The seven operas were not composed in "weekday order" but rather starting (apart from Jahreslauf in 1977, which became the first act of Dienstag) with the "solo" operas and working toward the more complex ones: Donnerstag (1978–80), Samstag (1981–83), Montag (1984–88), Dienstag (1977/1987–91), Freitag (1991–94), Mittwoch (1995–97), and finally Sonntag (1998–2003) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 3–7, 26–48).
Stockhausen had dreams of flying throughout his life, and these dreams are reflected in the Helikopter-Streichquartett
(the third scene of Mittwoch aus Licht), completed in 1993. In it, the four members of a string quartet
perform in four helicopter
s flying independent flight paths over the countryside near the concert hall. The sounds they play are mixed together with the sounds of the helicopters and played through speakers to the audience in the hall. Videos of the performers are also transmitted back to the concert hall. The performers are synchronized with the aid of a click track
, transmitted to them and heard over headphones (Stockhausen 1996c, 215).
The first performance of the piece took place in Amsterdam on 26 June 1995, as part of the Holland Festival
(Stockhausen 1996c, 216). Despite its extremely unusual nature, the piece has been given several performances, including one on 22 August 2003 as part of the Salzburg Festival
to open the Hangar-7 venue (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 7), and the German première on 17 June 2007 in Braunschweig
as part of the Stadt der Wissenschaft 2007 Festival (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2007). The work has also been recorded by the Arditti Quartet
.
In 1999 he was Invited by Walter Fink
to be the ninth composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival
.
In 1999, BBC
producer Rodney Wilson asked Stockhausen to collaborate with Stephen and Timothy Quay
on a film for the fourth series of Sound on Film International. Although Stockhausen's music had been used for films previously (most notably, parts of Hymnen
in Nicolas Roeg
's Walkabout
in 1971), this was the first time he had been asked to provide music specially for the purpose. He adapted 21 minutes of material taken from his electronic music for Freitag aus Licht, calling the result Zwei Paare (Two Couples), and the Brothers Quay created their animated film, which they titled In Absentia, based only on their reactions to the music and the simple suggestion that a window might be an idea to use (Anon. 2001). When, at a preview screening, Stockhausen saw the film, which shows a madwoman writing letters from a bleak asylum cell, he was moved to tears. The Brothers Quay were astonished to learn that his mother had been "imprisoned by the Nazis in an asylum, where she later died. … This was a very moving moment for us as well, especially because we had made the film without knowing any of this" (Aita 2001).
("Sound"). Twenty-one of these pieces were completed before the composer's death (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49–50). The works from this cycle performed to date are First Hour: Himmelfahrt (Ascension), for organ or synthesizer, soprano and tenor (2004–2005); Second Hour: Freude (Joy) for two harps (2005); Third Hour: Natürliche Dauern (Natural Durations) for piano (2005–2006); and Fourth Hour: Himmels-Tür (Heaven's Door) for a percussionist and a little girl (2005) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49). The Fifth Hour, Harmonien (Harmonies), is a solo in three versions for flute, bass clarinet, and trumpet (2006) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49); the bass clarinet and flute versions were premièred in Kürten on 11 July 2007 and 13 July 2007, respectively (Stockhausen 2007b and Stockhausen 2007c), and the trumpet version was premièred on 2 August 2008 in London at a BBC Proms concert (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 7). The Sixth through Twelfth hours are chamber-music works based on the material from the Fifth Hour (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49). Of these, the Seventh (Balance, for flute, English horn, and bass clarinet), Ninth (Hoffnung, for string trio), and Tenth, Glanz (commission of the Asko Ensemble and the Holland Festival), were premièred on 22 August (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 9), 31 August (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 10), and 19 June (Beer 2008; Voermans 2008), respectively. The première of the Sixth (Schönheit, for flute, trumpet, and bass clarinet) took place on 5 October 2009 at the Grande Auditório of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon
, and that of the Twelfth, Erwachen, on 13 October 2009 in Brussels
. The Thirteenth Hour, Cosmic Pulses
—an electronic work made by superimposing 24 layers of sound, each having its own spatial motion, among eight loudspeakers placed around the concert hall—was premièred in Rome on 7 May 2007 at Auditorium Parco della Musica
, (Sala Sinopoli) (Stockhausen 2007a). Hours 14 through 21 are solo pieces for bass voice, baritone voice, basset-horn, horn, tenor voice, soprano voice, soprano saxophone, and flute, respectively, each with electronic accompaniment of a different set of three layers from Cosmic Pulses
(Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 50). Of these, the Twentieth (Edentia for soprano saxophone and electronic music) was premièred on 6 August 2008 (Mischke 2008), the Nineteenth (Urantia for soprano and electronic music) on 8 November 2008 in London, the Fourteenth (Havona for bass voice and electronic music) on 10 January 2009 in Paris (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 15 and 13), and the Twenty-first (Paradies, for flute and electronic music) at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
, at the Laeiszhalle
in Hamburg on 24 August 2009. All of the remaining pieces were first performed in the context of the collective premiere of the cycle, at the Festival MusikTriennale Köln on 8–9 May 2010, in 176 individual concerts (Gimpel 2010).
, Debussy
, Bartók
, Stravinsky
, Goeyvaerts
, Boulez
, Nono
, Johannes Fritsch
, Michael von Biel
, and, especially, Webern
(Texte 1:24–31, 39–44, 75–85, 86–98; Texte 2:136–39, 149–66, 170–206; Texte 3:236–38; Texte 4:662–63), the items on compositional theory directly related to his own work are regarded as the most important generally. "Indeed, the Texte come closer than anything else currently available to providing a general compositional theory for the postwar period" (Morgan 1975, 16). His most celebrated article is "... wie die Zeit vergeht ..." (". . . How Time Passes . . ."), first published in the third volume of Die Reihe
(1957). In it, he expounds a number of temporal conceptions underlying his instrumental compositions Zeitmaße, Gruppen
, and Klavierstück XI
. In particular, this article develops (1) a scale of twelve tempo
s analogous to the chromatic pitch scale, (2) a technique of building progressively smaller, integral subdivisions over a basic (fundamental) duration, analogous to the overtone series
, (3) musical application of the concept of the partial field (time fields and field sizes) in both successive and simultaneous proportions, (4) methods of projecting large-scale form from a series of proportions, (5) the concept of "statistical" composition, (6) the concept of "action duration" and the associated "variable form", and (7) the notion of the "directionless temporal field" and with it, "polyvalent form" (Stockhausen Texte 1:99–139).
Other important articles from this period include "Musik im Raum" ("Music in Space", 1958, Texte 1:152–75), "Musik und Graphik" ("Music and Graphics", 1959, Texte 1:176–88), "Momentform" (1960, Texte 1:189–210), "Die Einheit der musikalischen Zeit" ("The Unity of Musical Time", 1961, Texte 1:211–21; Stockhausen 1962), and "Erfindung und Entdeckung" ("Invention and Discovery", 1961, Texte 1:222–58), the last summing up the ideas developed up to 1961. Taken together, these temporal theories
Through the 1960s, although he taught and lectured publicly (Texte 3:196–211), Stockhausen published little of an analytical or theoretical nature. Only in 1970 did he again begin publishing theoretical articles, with "Kriterien", his six seminar lectures for the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Texte 3:222–29).
and the Poles Andrzej Dobrowolski
and Włodzimierz Kotoński (Skowron 1981, 39). The influence of his Kontra-Punkte, Zeitmasse and Gruppen
may be seen in the work of many composers, including Igor Stravinsky
's Threni
(1957–58) and Movements for piano and orchestra (1958–59) and other works up to the Variations: Aldous Huxley In Memoriam (1963–64), whose rhythms "are likely to have been inspired, at least in part, by certain passages from Stockhausen's Gruppen" (Neidhöffer 2005, 340). Though music of Stockhausen's generation may seem an unlikely influence, Stravinsky said in a 1957 conversation:
Amongst British composers, Sir Harrison Birtwistle
readily acknowledges the influence of Stockhausen's Zeitmaße (especially on his two wind quintets, Refrains and Choruses and Five Distances) and Gruppen on his work more generally (Cross 2000, 48; Cross 2001; Hall 1984, 3 and 7–8; Hall 1998, 99 and 108; Pace 1996, 27). Brian Ferneyhough
says that, although the "technical and speculative innovations" of Klavierstücke I–IV, Kreuzspiel and Kontra-Punkte escaped him on first encounter (Ferneyhough 1988), they nevertheless produced a "sharp emotion, the result of a beneficial shock engendered by their boldness" (Ferneyhough 1988) and provided "an important source of motivation (rather than of imitation) for my own investigations" (Ferneyhough 1988). While still in school, he became fascinated upon hearing the British première of Gruppen, and
concludes that "Stockhausen remains the composer whose next work I look forward most to hearing, apart from myself of course" and names as works that have had particular impact on his musical thinking Mantra, Gruppen, Carré, Klavierstück X, Inori, and Jubiläum (Barrett 1998).
French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez once declared, "Stockhausen is the greatest living composer, and the only one whom I recognize as my peer" (Anon. 1967; Anon. 1971). Boulez also acknowledged the influence of performing Stockhausen's Zeitmaße on his subsequent development as a conductor (Boulez 1976, 79–80). Another French composer, Jean-Claude Éloy
, regards Stockhausen as the most important composer of the second half of the 20th century, and cites virtually "all his catalog of works" as "a powerful discoveration [sic], and a true revelation" (Éloy 2008).
Dutch composer Louis Andriessen
acknowledged the influence of Stockhausen's Momente
in his pivotal work Contra tempus of 1968 (Schönberger 2001). German composer Wolfgang Rihm
, who studied with Stockhausen, was influenced by Momente, Hymnen, and Inori (Williams 2006, 382).
At the Cologne ISCM Festival in 1960, the Danish composer Per Nørgård
heard Stockhausen's Kontakte as well as pieces by Kagel, Boulez, and Berio. He was profoundly affected by what he heard and his music suddenly changed into "a far more discontinuous and disjunct style, involving elements of strict organization in all parameters, some degree of aleatoricism and controlled improvisation, together with an interest in collage from other musics" (Anderson 2001).
Jazz musicians such as Miles Davis
(Bergstein 1992), Cecil Taylor
, Charles Mingus
, Herbie Hancock
, Yusef Lateef
(Feather 1964; Tsahar 2006), and Anthony Braxton
(Radano 1993, 110) cite Stockhausen as an influence.
Stockhausen was influential within pop and rock music as well. Frank Zappa
acknowledges Stockhausen in the liner notes of Freak Out!
, his 1966 debut with The Mothers of Invention
. On the back of The Who
's second LP released in the US, "Happy Jack
", their primary composer and guitarist Pete Townshend
, is said to have "an interest in Stockhausen". Rick Wright
and Roger Waters
of Pink Floyd
also acknowledge Stockhausen as an influence (Macon 1997, 141; Bayles 1996, 222). San Francisco psychedelic groups Jefferson Airplane
and the Grateful Dead
are said to have done the same (Prendergast 2000, 54); Stockhausen himself says the former band included students of Luciano Berio
, and the Grateful Dead were "well orientated toward new music" (Texte 4, 505). Founding members of Cologne-based experimental band Can
, Irmin Schmidt
and Holger Czukay
, both claim they studied with Stockhausen (Irmin Schmidt biography; Holger Czukay biography), and Schmidt is confirmed to have attended the 1965–66 Cologne Courses for New Music, though Czukay's name does not appear anywhere in the list of registrants (Texte 3, 196, 198, 200). German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk
also say they studied with Stockhausen (Flur 2003, 228), and Icelandic vocalist Björk
has acknowledged Stockhausen's influence (Heuger 1998, 15; Björk 1996; Ross 2004, 53 & 55).
, is one of the few avant-garde composers to have succeeded in penetrating the popular consciousness (Anon. 2007b; Broyles 2004; Hewett 2007). The Beatles
included his face on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
(Guy and Llewelyn-Jones 2004, 111). This reflects his influence on the band's own avant-garde experiments as well as the general fame and notoriety he had achieved by that time (1967). In particular, "A Day in the Life
" (1967) and "Revolution 9
" (1968) were influenced by Stockhausen's electronic music (Aldgate, Chapman, and Marwick 2000, 146; MacDonald 1995, 233–34). Stockhausen's name, and the perceived strangeness and supposed unlistenability of his music, was even a punchline in cartoons, as documented on a page on the official Stockhausen web site (Stockhausen Cartoons). Perhaps the most caustic remark about Stockhausen was attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham
. Asked "Have you heard any Stockhausen?", he is alleged to have replied, "No, but I believe I have trodden in some" (Lebrecht 1983, 334, annotated on 366: "Apocryphal; source unknown").
Stockhausen's fame is also reflected in works of literature. For example, he is mentioned in Philip K. Dick
's 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
(Dick 1993, 101) and in Thomas Pynchon
's 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49
. The Pynchon novel features "The Scope", a bar with "a strict electronic music policy". Protagonist Oedipa Maas asks "a hip graybeard" about a "sudden chorus of whoops and yibbles" coming out of "a kind of jukebox." He replies, "That's by Stockhausen... the early crowd tends to dig your Radio Cologne sound. Later on we really swing" (Pynchon 1999, 34).
Later in his life, Stockhausen was portrayed by at least one journalist, John O'Mahony of the Guardian newspaper, as an eccentric, for example being alleged to live an effectively polygamous lifestyle with two women, to whom O'Mahoney referred as his "wives", while at the same time stating he was not married to either of them (O'Mahoney 2001). In the same article, O'Mahony claims Stockhausen said he was born on a planet orbiting the star Sirius. In the German newspaper Die Zeit
, Stockhausen unmistakably stated that he was educated at Sirius (see Controversy below).
: "If a genius is someone whose ideas survive all attempts at explanation, then by that definition Stockhausen is the nearest thing to Beethoven this century has produced. Reason? His music lasts" (Maconie 1988), and "As Stravinsky said, one never thinks of Beethoven as a superb orchestrator because the quality of invention transcends mere craftsmanship. It is the same with Stockhausen: the intensity of imagination gives rise to musical impressions of an elemental and seemingly unfathomable beauty, arising from necessity rather than conscious design" (Maconie 1989, 178).
Christopher Ballantine, while comparing and contrasting the categories of experimental
and avant-garde music
, concludes that
Igor Stravinsky
expressed great, but not uncritical, enthusiasm for Stockhausen's music in the conversation books with Robert Craft
(e.g., Craft and Stravinsky 1960, 118) and for years organised private listening sessions with friends in his home where he played tapes of Stockhausen's latest works (Stravinsky 1984, 356; Craft 2002, 141). In an interview published in March 1968, however, he says of an unidentified person,
Early in 1995, BBC Radio 3
sent Stockhausen a package of recordings from contemporary artists Aphex Twin
, Richie Hawtin
(Plastikman), Scanner
and Daniel Pemberton
, and asked him for his opinion on the music. In August of that year, Radio 3 reporter Dick Witts interviewed Stockhausen about these pieces for a broadcast in October, subsequently published in the November issue of the British publication The Wire
asking what advice he would give these young musicians. Stockhausen made suggestions to each of the musicians, who were then invited to respond. All but Plastikman obliged (Witts 1995).
, the première
(and only performance to date) on 15 November 1969 of Stockhausen's work Fresco
for four orchestral groups (playing in four different locations) was the scene of a scandal. The rehearsals were already marked by objections from the orchestral musicians questioning such directions as "glissandos no faster than one octave per minute" and others phoning the artists union to clarify whether they really had to perform the Stockhausen work as part of the orchestra. In the backstage warm-up room at the premiere a hand-lettered sign could be seen saying: "We're playing, otherwise we would be fired". During the première the parts on some music stands suddenly were replaced by placards reading things like "Stockhausen-Zoo. Please don't feed", that someone had planted. Some musicians, fed up with the monkeyshines, already left after an hour, though the performance was planned for four to five hours. Stockhausen fans protested, while Stockhausen foes were needling the musicians asking: "How can you possibly participate in such crap?" ("Wie könnt ihr bloß so eine Scheiße machen!"). At one point someone managed to switch off the stand lights, leaving the musicians in the dark. After 260 minutes the performance ended with nobody participating any more (Anon. 1969).
, Karlheinz Stockhausen stated that:
The first sentence regarding his education also appears in a slightly different form in Reier 2007. On hearing about this, conductor Michael Gielen
stated: "When he said he knew what was happening at Sirius, I turned away from him in horror. I haven't listened to a note since", and called Stockhausen's statements "hubris" and "nonsense", while at the same time defending his own belief in astrology: "Why should these large celestial bodies exist if they do not stand for something? I cannot imagine that there is anything senseless in the universe. There is much we do not understand" (Hagedorn 2010).
on 16 September 2001, Stockhausen was asked by a journalist whether the characters in Licht were for him "merely some figures out of a common cultural history" or rather "material appearances". The composer replied, "I pray daily to Michael, but not to Lucifer. I have renounced him. But he is very much present, like in New York recently" (Stockhausen 2002, 76). The same journalist then asked how the events of 11 September had affected him, and how he viewed reports of the attack in connection with the harmony of humanity represented in Hymnen
. He answered:
(To see how the excerpt appeared out of its context, and in English translation, see Tommasini 2001.)
As a result of the reaction to the press report of Stockhausen's comments, a four-day festival of his work in Hamburg was canceled. In addition, his pianist daughter announced to the press that she would no longer appear under the name "Stockhausen" (Lentricchia and McAuliffe 2003, 7).
In a subsequent message, he stated that the press had published "false, defamatory reports" about his comments, and clarified as follows:
Listening
Obituaries
Interviews
Further reading
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, aleatory
Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer...
(controlled chance) in serial composition
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
, and musical spatialization
Spatial music
Spatial music, music in space, or space music uses the localization of sounds in physical space as a compositional element in music, in sound art, and in sound editing for audio recordings, film, and video...
.
He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln
Hochschule für Musik Köln
The Cologne University of Music is a music college in Cologne, and Germany's largest academy of music.-History:The academy was founded by Ferdinand Hiller in 1850 as Conservatorium der Musik in Coeln...
and the University of Cologne
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...
, and later studied with Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
in Paris, and with Werner Meyer-Eppler
Werner Meyer-Eppler
Werner Meyer-Eppler , was a German physicist, experimental acoustician, phoneticist, and information theorist....
at the University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...
. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School
Darmstadt School
Darmstadt School refers to a loose group of compositional styles created by composers who attended the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music from the early 1950s to the early 1960s.-History:...
, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music
Art music
Art music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
, but also on jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical box
Musical box
A music box is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century and called carillons à musique...
es through works for solo instruments, songs, chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
, choral
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
and orchestral music, to a cycle of seven full-length operas. His theoretical
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
and other writings comprise ten large volumes. He received numerous prizes and distinctions for his compositions, recordings, and for the scores produced by his publishing company.
Some of his notable compositions include the series of nineteen Klavierstücke
Klavierstücke (Stockhausen)
The Klavierstücke constitute a series of nineteen compositions by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.Stockhausen has said the Klavierstücke "are my drawings"...
(Piano Pieces), Kontra-Punkte for ten instruments, the electronic/musique-concrète
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
Gesang der Jünglinge
Gesang der Jünglinge
Gesang der Jünglinge is a noted electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog of works...
, Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
for three orchestras, the percussion solo Zyklus
Zyklus
Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, assigned Number 9 in the composer's catalog of works. It was composed in 1959 at the request of Wolfgang Steinecke as a test piece for a percussion competition at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, where it was premièred on 25...
, Kontakte
Kontakte (Stockhausen)
Kontakte is a celebrated electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen, realized in 1958–60 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk electronic-music studio in Cologne with the assistance of Gottfried Michael Koenig .-Work history:The title of the work “refers both to contacts between instrumental and...
, the cantata Momente
Momente
Momente is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969, scored for solo soprano, four mixed choirs, and thirteen instrumentalists...
, the live-electronic Mikrophonie I
Mikrophonie (Stockhausen)
Mikrophonie is the title given by Karlheinz Stockhausen to two of his compositions, written in 1964 and 1965, in which “normally inaudible vibrations . ....
, Hymnen
Hymnen
Hymnen is an electronic and concrete work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".-Musical form and content:...
, Stimmung
Stimmung
Stimmung, for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work number 24 in the composer's catalog...
for six vocalists, Aus den sieben Tagen
Aus den Sieben Tagen
Aus den sieben Tagen is a collection of 15 text compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in May 1968, in reaction to a personal crisis, and characterized as "Intuitive music"—music produced primarily from the intuition rather than the intellect of the performer...
, Mantra
Mantra (Stockhausen)
Mantra is a composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was composed in 1970 and premiered in autumn of the same year in Donaueschingen...
for two pianos and electronics, Tierkreis
Tierkreis (Stockhausen)
Tierkreis is a musical composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. The title is the German word for Zodiac, and the composition consists of twelve melodies, each representing one sign of the zodiac.-History:...
, Inori
Inori
Inori: Adorations for One or Two Soloists with Orchestra is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1973–74 ....
for soloists and orchestra, and the gigantic opera cycle Licht
Licht
Licht , subtitled "The Seven Days of the Week," is a cycle of seven operas composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen between 1977 and 2003. In total, the cycle contains over 29 hours of music.-Origin:...
.
He died of sudden heart failure at the age of 79, on 5 December 2007 at his home in Kürten
Kürten
Kürten is a village and a municipality in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.-Neighbouring places:Nearby cities include Bergisch Gladbach, Overath, Wermelskirchen, and Wipperfürth...
, Germany.
Childhood
Stockhausen was born in the Burg Mödrath, the so-called castle of the village of Mödrath, which served at the time as the maternity home of the Bergheim districtRhein-Erft-Kreis
The Rhein-Erft-Kreis is a district in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Neuss, district-free Cologne, Rhein-Sieg, Euskirchen, Düren.-History:...
. The village, located near Kerpen
Kerpen
Kerpen is a town in the Rhein-Erft-Kreis, North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany. It is located about 30 kilometers southwest from Cologne.-Division of the town:...
in the vicinity of Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, was displaced in 1956 by the strip mining of lignite
Lignite
Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, or Rosebud coal by Northern Pacific Railroad,is a soft brown fuel with characteristics that put it somewhere between coal and peat...
in the region, although the castle itself still exists. His father, Simon Stockhausen, was a schoolteacher, and his mother Gertrud (née Stupp) was the daughter of a prosperous family of farmers in Neurath in the Cologne Bight
Cologne Bight
-Bibliography:* Brune, Bert, and Hans Bender. 1990. Kölner Bucht: Natur und Unnatur—ein Lesebuch, edited by Bert Brune and Frieder Döring, with drawings by Karl Peters. Cologne: Wolkenstein-Verlag. ISBN 3927861081...
. A daughter, Katherina, was born the year after Karlheinz, and a second son, Hermann-Josef ("Hermännchen") followed in 1932. Gertrud played the piano and accompanied her own singing but, after three pregnancies in as many years, experienced a mental breakdown and was institutionalized
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
in December 1932, followed a few months later by the death of her younger son, Hermann (Kurtz 1992, 8, 11, & 13).
From the age of seven, Stockhausen grew up in Altenberg
Altenberg (Bergisches Land)
Altenberg is an Ortsteil in the municipality of Odenthal in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and was formerly the seat of the Counts of Berg...
, where he received his first piano lessons from the Protestant organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
of the Altenberg Cathedral, Franz-Josef Kloth (Kurtz 1992, 14). In 1938 his father remarried. His new wife, Luzia, had been the family's housekeeper. The couple had two daughters (Kurtz 1992, 18). Because his relationship with his new stepmother was less than happy, in January 1942 Karlheinz became a boarder at the teachers' training college in Xanten
Xanten
Xanten is a historic town in the North Rhine-Westphalia state of Germany, located in the district of Wesel.Xanten is known for the Archaeological Park or archaeological open air museum , its medieval picturesque city centre with Xanten Cathedral and many museums, its large man-made lake for...
, where he continued his piano training and also studied oboe and violin (Kurtz 1992, 18). In the first half of 1942, he learned that his mother had died, ostensibly from leukemia, although everyone at the same hospital had supposedly died of the same disease. It was generally understood that she had been a victim of the Nazi policy of killing "useless eaters" (Stockhausen 1989a, 20–21; Kurtz 1992, 19). Stockhausen later dramatized his mother's death in hospital by lethal injection, in Act 1 scene 2 ("Mondeva") of the opera Donnerstag aus Licht
Donnerstag aus Licht
Donnerstag aus Licht is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting, three acts, and a farewell, and was the first of seven to be composed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche...
(Kurtz 1992, 213). According to one source, as a young teenager he worked as a cobbler (Prendergast 2000, 52). In the autumn of 1944, he was conscripted to serve as a stretcher bearer in Bedburg
Bedburg
Bedburg is a town in the Rhein-Erft-Kreis, North Rhine-Westphalia of Germany with 25,000 residents. The town is documented as existing as early as 893.-External links:*...
(Kurtz 1992, 18). In February 1945, he met his father for the last time in Altenberg. Simon, who was on leave from the front, told his son, "I'm not coming back. Look after things". By the end of the war, his father was regarded as missing in action, and may have been killed in Hungary (Kurtz 1992, 19). A comrade later reported to Karlheinz that he saw his father wounded in action (Maconie 2005, 19). Fifty-five years after the fact, a journalist writing for the Guardian newspaper stated unequivocally, though without offering any fresh evidence, that Simon Stockhausen was killed in Hungary in 1945 (O'Mahony 2001).
Education
From 1947 to 1951, Stockhausen studied music pedagogyPedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
and piano at the Hochschule für Musik Köln
Hochschule für Musik Köln
The Cologne University of Music is a music college in Cologne, and Germany's largest academy of music.-History:The academy was founded by Ferdinand Hiller in 1850 as Conservatorium der Musik in Coeln...
(Cologne Conservatory of Music) and musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
, philosophy, and Germanics
German studies
German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents, and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German history, and German politics in addition to the...
at the University of Cologne
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...
. He had training in harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
, the latter with Hermann Schroeder
Hermann Schroeder
Hermann Schroeder was a German composer and a Catholic church musician.He spent the greatest part of his life’s work in the Rheinland...
, but he did not develop a real interest in composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
until 1950. He was admitted at the end of that year to the class of Swiss composer Frank Martin
Frank Martin (composer)
Frank Martin was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands.-Childhood and youth:...
, who had just begun a seven-year tenure in Cologne (Kurtz 1992, 28). At the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1951, Stockhausen met Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts
Karel Goeyvaerts
Karel Goeyvaerts was a Belgian composer.-Life:After studies at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp, Goeyvaerts studied composition in Paris with Darius Milhaud and analysis with Olivier Messiaen...
, who had just completed studies with Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
(analysis) and Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
(composition) in Paris, and Stockhausen resolved to do likewise (Kurtz 1992, 34–36). He arrived in Paris on 8 January 1952 and began attending Messiaen's courses in aesthetics and analysis, as well as Milhaud's composition classes. He continued with Messiaen for a year, but he was disappointed with Milhaud and abandoned his lessons after a few weeks (Kurtz 1992, 45–48). In March 1953, he left Paris to take up a position as assistant to Herbert Eimert
Herbert Eimert
Herbert Eimert was a German music theorist, musicologist, journalist, music critic, editor, radio producer, and composer.-Life:...
at the newly established Electronic Music Studio of Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk was the organization responsible for public broadcasting in the German Länder of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia from 22 September 1945 until 31 December 1955. Until 1954, it was also responsible for broadcasting in West Berlin...
(NWDR) (from 1 January 1955, Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Westdeutscher Rundfunk is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the consortium of German public-broadcasting institutions, ARD...
, or WDR) in Cologne (Kurtz 1992, 56–57). In 1962, he succeeded Eimert as director of the studio (Morawska-Büngeler 1988, 19). From 1954 to 1956, he studied phonetics, acoustics, and information theory with Werner Meyer-Eppler
Werner Meyer-Eppler
Werner Meyer-Eppler , was a German physicist, experimental acoustician, phoneticist, and information theorist....
at the University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...
(Kurtz 1992, 68–72). Together with Eimert, Stockhausen edited the journal Die Reihe
Die Reihe
Die Reihe was a German-language music journal, edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen and published by Universal Edition between 1955 and 1962 . An English edition was published, under the original German title, between 1957 and 1968 by the Theodore Presser Company , in association...
from 1955 to 1962 (Grant 2001, 1–2).
Family and home
On 29 December 1951, in Hamburg, he married Doris Andreae (Kurtz 1992, 45; Maconie 2005, 47). Together they had four children: Suja (b. 1953), Christel (b. 1956), MarkusMarkus Stockhausen
Markus Pirol Stockhausen is a German trumpeter and composer.-Biography:Born in Cologne, he is the son of composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. At age four he appeared as "child at play" in his father's theatre piece Originals. He received his first piano lessons at age six, and at age twelve he began to...
(b. 1957), and Majella (b. 1961) (Kurtz 1992, 90; Tannenbaum 1987, 94). On 3 April 1967, in San Francisco, he married Mary Bauermeister
Mary Bauermeister
Mary Hilde Ruth Bauermeister is a German artist.-Early life and family:Mary Bauermeister was artistically influenced in secondary school by her drawing teacher, Günter Ott. She studied in 1954–55 at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm and in 1955–56 at the Staatlichen Schule für Kunst und...
, with whom he had two children: Julika (b. 22 January 1966) and Simon (b. 1967) (Kurtz 1992, 141 & 149; Tannenbaum 1987, 95).
Four of Stockhausen's children became professional musicians (Kurtz 1992, 202), and he composed some of his works specifically for them. A large number of pieces for the trumpet—from Sirius (1975–77) to the trumpet version of In Freundschaft (1997)—were composed for and premièred by his son Markus (Kurtz 1992, 208; Markus Stockhausen 1998, 13–16; Tannenbaum 1987, 61). Markus, at the age of 4 years, had performed the part of The Child in the Cologne première of Originale, alternating performances with his sister Christel (Maconie 2005, 220). Klavierstück XII and Klavierstück XIII (and their versions as scenes from the operas Donnerstag aus Licht and Samstag aus Licht
Samstag aus Licht
Samstag aus Licht is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting and four scenes, and was the second of seven to be composed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche...
) were written for his daughter Majella, and were first performed by her at the ages of 16 and 20, respectively (Maconie 2005, 430 & 443; Stockhausen Texte 5:190, 255, 274; Stockhausen Texte 6:64, 373). The saxophone duet in the second act of Donnerstag aus Licht, and a number of synthesizer parts in the Licht operas, including Klavierstück XV ("Synthi-Fou") from Dienstag
Dienstag aus Licht
Dienstag aus Licht is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting and two acts, with a farewell, and was the fourth of seven to be completed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche...
, were composed for his son Simon (Kurtz 1992, 222; Maconie 2005, 480 & 489; Stockhausen Texte 5:186, 529), who also assisted his father in the production of the electronic music from Freitag aus Licht. His daughter Christel is a flautist who performed and gave a course on interpretation of Tierkreis in 1977 (Stockhausen Texte 5:105), later published as an article (C. Stockhausen 1978).
In 1961, Stockhausen acquired a parcel of land in the vicinity of Kürten
Kürten
Kürten is a village and a municipality in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.-Neighbouring places:Nearby cities include Bergisch Gladbach, Overath, Wermelskirchen, and Wipperfürth...
, a village east of Cologne, near Bergisch Gladbach
Bergisch Gladbach
' is a city in the Cologne/Bonn Region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany and capital of the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis .-Geography:Bergisch Gladbach is located east of the river Rhine, approx...
in the Bergisches Land
Bergisches Land
The Bergisches Land is a low mountain range region within the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, east of Rhine river, south of the Ruhr. The landscape is shaped by woods, meadows, rivers and creeks and contains over 20 artificial lakes...
. He had a house built there, which was designed to his specifications by the architect Erich Schneider-Wessling, and he resided there since its completion in the autumn of 1965 (Kurtz 1992, 116–17, 137–38).
Teaching
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1965 and at the University of California, Davis
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
in 1966–67 (Kramer 1998; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 2–3). He founded and directed the Cologne Courses for New Music from 1963 to 1968, and was appointed Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln
Hochschule für Musik Köln
The Cologne University of Music is a music college in Cologne, and Germany's largest academy of music.-History:The academy was founded by Ferdinand Hiller in 1850 as Conservatorium der Musik in Coeln...
in 1971, where he taught until 1977 (Kurtz 1992, 126–28 & 194; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 3). In 1998, he founded the Stockhausen Courses, which are held annually in Kürten (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 6–9, 15).
Publishing activities
From the mid-1950s onward, Stockhausen designed (and in some cases had had printed) his own musical scores for his publisher, Universal EditionUniversal Edition
Universal Edition is a classical music publishing firm. Founded in 1901 in Vienna, and originally intended to provide the core classical works and educational works to the Austrian market...
, which often involved unconventional devices. The score for his piece Refrain, for instance, includes a rotatable (refrain
Refrain
A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
) on a transparent plastic strip. Early in the 1970s, he ended his agreement with Universal Edition and began publishing his own scores under the Stockhausen-Verlag imprint (Kurtz 1992, 184). This arrangement allowed him to extend his notational innovations (for example, dynamics in Weltparlament [the first scene of Mittwoch aus Licht
Mittwoch aus Licht
Mittwoch aus Licht is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting, four scenes, and a farewell. It was the sixth of seven to be composed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche . It was written between 1995 and 1997.-History:Mittwoch has not yet been given its staged premiere...
] are coded in colour) and resulted in eight German Music Publishers Society Awards between 1992 (Luzifers Tanz) and 2005 (Hoch-Zeiten, from Sonntag aus Licht) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 12–13). The score of Momente, published just before the composer's death in 2007, won this prize for the ninth time (Deutscher Musikeditionspreis 2009)
In the early 1990s, Stockhausen reacquired the licenses to most of the recordings of his music he had made to that point, and started his own record company to make this music permanently available on Compact Disc (Maconie 2005, 477–78).
Death
Stockhausen died of sudden heart failure on the morning of 5 December 2007 in KürtenKürten
Kürten is a village and a municipality in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.-Neighbouring places:Nearby cities include Bergisch Gladbach, Overath, Wermelskirchen, and Wipperfürth...
, North Rhine-Westphalia. He had just the night before finished a work recently commissioned for performance by the Mozart Orchestra of Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
(Bäumer 2007).
Compositions
Stockhausen wrote 370 individual works. He often departs radically from musical tradition and his work is influenced by Olivier MessiaenOlivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
, Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
, and Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
, as well as by film (Stockhausen 1996b) and by painters such as Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
(Stockhausen 1996a, 94; Texte 3, 92–93; Toop 1998) and Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
(Maconie 2005, 187).
1950s
Stockhausen began to compose in earnest only during his third year at the conservatory (Kurtz 1992, 26–27). His early student compositions remained out of the public eye until, in 1971, he published Chöre für Doris, Drei Lieder for alto voice and chamber orchestra, Choral for a capella choir (all three from 1950), and a Sonatine for Violin and Piano (1951) (Maconie 1990, 5–6 and 11).In August 1951, just after his first Darmstadt visit, Stockhausen began working with a form of athematic
Theme (music)
In music, a theme is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based.-Characteristics:A theme may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found . In contrast to an idea or motif, a theme is...
serial
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
composition that rejected the twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
of Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
(Felder 1977, 92). He characterized many of these earliest compositions (together with the music of other, like-minded composers of the period) as punktuelle
Punctualism
Punctualism is a style of musical composition prevalent in Europe between 1949 and 1955 "whose structures are predominantly effected from tone to tone, without superordinate formal conceptions coming to bear"...
("punctual" or "pointist" music, commonly mistranslated as "pointillist") Musik, though one critic concluded after analysing several of these early works that Stockhausen "never really composed punctually" (Sabbe 1981). Compositions from this phase include Kreuzspiel
Kreuzspiel
Kreuzspiel is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen written for oboe, bass clarinet, piano and four percussionists in 1951 ....
(1951), the Klavierstücke I–IV
Klavierstücke (Stockhausen)
The Klavierstücke constitute a series of nineteen compositions by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.Stockhausen has said the Klavierstücke "are my drawings"...
(1952—the fourth of this first set of four Klavierstücke, titled Klavierstück IV, is specifically cited by Stockhausen as an example of "punctual music" in Texte 2, 19), and the first (unpublished) versions of Punkte
Punkte
Punkte is an orchestral composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, given the work number ½ in his catalogue of works.-History:Punkte originated as a punctual orchestral work which was begun in September in Hamburg and had reached a first-draft stage by 30 September...
and Kontra-Punkte (1952) (Texte 2, 20). However, several works from these same years show Stockhausen formulating his "first really ground-breaking contribution to the theory and, above all, practice of composition" (Toop 2005, 3), that of "group composition" (Toop 2005, 3), found in Stockhausen's works as early as 1952 and continuing to the present time (Toop 2005, 3). This principle was first publicly described by Stockhausen in a radio talk from December 1955, titled "Gruppenkomposition: Klavierstück I
Klavierstücke (Stockhausen)
The Klavierstücke constitute a series of nineteen compositions by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.Stockhausen has said the Klavierstücke "are my drawings"...
" (Texte 1, 63–74).
In December 1952, he composed a Konkrete Etüde, realized in Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end...
's Paris musique concrète
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
studio. In March 1953, he moved to the NWDR studio in Cologne and turned to electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
with two Electronic Studies
Studie II
Studie II is an electronic music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen from the year 1954 and, together with his Studie I, comprises his work number 3...
(1953 and 1954), and then introducing spatial placements of sound sources with his mixed concrète and electronic work Gesang der Jünglinge
Gesang der Jünglinge
Gesang der Jünglinge is a noted electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog of works...
(1955–56). Experiences gained from the Studies made plain that it was an unacceptable oversimplification to regard timbres as stable entities (Texte 1, 56). Reinforced by his studies with Meyer-Eppler, beginning in 1955, Stockhausen formulated new "statistical" criteria for composition, focussing attention on the aleatoric
Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer...
, directional tendencies of sound movement, "the change from one state to another, with or without returning motion, as opposed to a fixed state" (Decroupet and Ungeheuer 1998, 98–99). Stockhausen later wrote, describing this period in his compositional work, "The first revolution occurred from 1952/53 as musique concrète, electronic tape music, and space music, entailing composition with transformers, generators, modulators, magnetophones, etc; the integration of all concrete and abstract (synthetic) sound possibilities (also all noises), and the controlled projection of sound in space" (Stockhausen 1989b, 127; reprinted in Schwartz & Childs 1998, 374). His position as "the leading German composer of his generation" (Toop 2001) was established with Gesang der Jünglinge and three concurrently composed pieces in different media: Zeitmaße
Zeitmaße
Zeitmaße for five woodwinds is a chamber-music work by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Number 5 in the composer's catalog...
for five woodwinds, Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
for three orchestras, and Klavierstück XI
Klavierstücke (Stockhausen)
The Klavierstücke constitute a series of nineteen compositions by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.Stockhausen has said the Klavierstücke "are my drawings"...
(Kohl 1998a, 61). The principles underlying the latter three compositions are presented in Stockhausen's best-known theoretical article, ". . . wie die Zeit vergeht . . ." (". . . How Time Passes . . ."), first published in 1957 in vol. 3 of Die Reihe
Die Reihe
Die Reihe was a German-language music journal, edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen and published by Universal Edition between 1955 and 1962 . An English edition was published, under the original German title, between 1957 and 1968 by the Theodore Presser Company , in association...
(Texte 1, 99–139).
His work with electronic music and its utter fixity led him to explore modes of instrumental and vocal music in which performers' individual capabilities and the circumstances of a particular performance (e.g., hall acoustics) may determine certain aspects of a composition. He called this "variable form" (Wörner 1973, 101–105). In other cases, a work may be presented from a number of different perspectives. In Zyklus
Zyklus
Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, assigned Number 9 in the composer's catalog of works. It was composed in 1959 at the request of Wolfgang Steinecke as a test piece for a percussion competition at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, where it was premièred on 25...
(1959), for example, he began using graphic notation
Graphic notation
Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation evolved in the 1950s, and it is often used in combination with traditional music notation...
for instrumental music. The score
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
is written so that the performance can start on any page, and it may be read upside down, or from right to left, as the performer chooses (Stockhausen, Texte 2, 73–100). Still other works permit different routes through the constituent parts. Stockhausen called both of these possibilities "polyvalent form" (Stockhausen, Texte 1, 241–51), which may be either open form (essentially incomplete, pointing beyond its frame), as with Klavierstück XI (1956), or "closed form" (complete and self-contained) as with Momente
Momente
Momente is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969, scored for solo soprano, four mixed choirs, and thirteen instrumentalists...
(1962–64/69) (Kaletha 2004, 97–98).
In many of his works, elements are played off against one another, simultaneously and successively: in Kontra-Punkte ("Against Points", 1952–53), which, in its revised form became his official "opus 1", a process leading from an initial "point" texture of isolated notes toward a florid, ornamental ending is opposed by a tendency from diversity (six timbres, dynamics, and durations) toward uniformity (timbre of solo piano, a nearly constant soft dynamic, and fairly even durations). In Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
(1955–57), fanfares and passages of varying speed (superimposed durations based on the harmonic series
Harmonic series (music)
Pitched musical instruments are often based on an approximate harmonic oscillator such as a string or a column of air, which oscillates at numerous frequencies simultaneously. At these resonant frequencies, waves travel in both directions along the string or air column, reinforcing and canceling...
) are occasionally flung between three full orchestras, giving the impression of movement in space (Maconie 2005, 486).
In his Kontakte
Kontakte (Stockhausen)
Kontakte is a celebrated electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen, realized in 1958–60 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk electronic-music studio in Cologne with the assistance of Gottfried Michael Koenig .-Work history:The title of the work “refers both to contacts between instrumental and...
for electronic sounds (optionally with piano and percussion) (1958–60), he achieved for the first time an isomorphism
Isomorphism
In abstract algebra, an isomorphism is a mapping between objects that shows a relationship between two properties or operations. If there exists an isomorphism between two structures, the two structures are said to be isomorphic. In a certain sense, isomorphic structures are...
of the four parameters of pitch, duration, dynamics, and timbre (Stockhausen 1962, 40).
1960s
In 1960, Stockhausen returned to the composition of vocal music (for the first time since Gesang der Jünglinge) with Carré for four choirs and four orchestras (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 18). Two years later, he began an expansive cantataCantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
titled Momente
Momente
Momente is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969, scored for solo soprano, four mixed choirs, and thirteen instrumentalists...
(1962–64/69), for solo soprano, four choir groups and thirteen instrumentalists (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 18). In 1963, Stockhausen created Plus-Minus, "2 × 7 pages for realisation" containing basic note materials and a complex system of transformations to which those materials are to be subjected in order to produce an unlimited number of different compositions (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 20; Toop 2005, 175–78). Through the rest of the 1960s, he continued to explore such possibilities of "process composition
Process music
Process music is music that arises from a process. It may make that process audible to the listener, or the process may be concealed. Primarily begun in the 1960s, diverse composers have employed divergent methods and styles of process...
" in works for live performance, such as Prozession (1967), Kurzwellen
Kurzwellen
Kurzwellen , for six players with shortwave receivers and live electronics, is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968. It is Number 25 in the catalog of the composer’s works.-Conception:...
, and Spiral
Spiral (Stockhausen)
Spiral , for a soloist with a shortwave receiver, is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968. It is Number 27 in the catalogue of the composer’s works.-Conception:...
(both 1968), culminating in the verbally described "intuitive music" compositions of Aus den sieben Tagen
Aus den Sieben Tagen
Aus den sieben Tagen is a collection of 15 text compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in May 1968, in reaction to a personal crisis, and characterized as "Intuitive music"—music produced primarily from the intuition rather than the intellect of the performer...
(1968) and Für kommende Zeiten (1968–70) (Fritsch 1979; Kohl 1981, 192–93, 227–51; Kohl 1998b, 7; Toop 2005, 191–92). Some of his later works, such as Ylem (1972) and the first three parts of Herbstmusik (1974), also fall under this rubric (Maconie 2005, 254 and 366–68). Several of these process compositions were featured in the all-day programmes presented at Expo 70, for which Stockhausen composed two more similar pieces, Pole for two players, and Expo for three (Kohl 1981, 192–93; Maconie 2005, 323–24). In other compositions, such as Stop for orchestra (1965), Adieu
Adieu (Stockhausen)
Adieu für Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer is a composition for wind quintet by Karlheinz Stockhausen composed in 1966. It is Number 21 in the composer's catalog of works, and the second of Stockhausen's three wind quintets.-History:...
for wind quintet (1966), and the Dr. K Sextett, which was written in 1968–69 in honour of Alfred Kalmus of Universal Edition, he presented his performers with more restricted improvisational possibilities (Maconie 2005, 262, 267–68, 319–20).
He pioneered live electronics in Mixtur
Mixtur
Mixtur, for orchestra, 4 sine-wave generators, and 4 ring modulators, is an orchestral composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1964, and is Nr. 16 in his catalogue of works...
(1964/67/2003) for orchestra and electronics (Kohl 1981, 51–163), Mikrophonie I
Mikrophonie (Stockhausen)
Mikrophonie is the title given by Karlheinz Stockhausen to two of his compositions, written in 1964 and 1965, in which “normally inaudible vibrations . ....
(1964) for tam-tam, two microphones, two filters with potentiometer
Potentiometer
A potentiometer , informally, a pot, is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used , it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat. Potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on...
s (6 players) (Maconie 1972; Maconie 2005, 255–57), Mikrophonie II
Mikrophonie (Stockhausen)
Mikrophonie is the title given by Karlheinz Stockhausen to two of his compositions, written in 1964 and 1965, in which “normally inaudible vibrations . ....
(1965) for choir, Hammond organ
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
, and four ring modulators
Ring modulation
Ring modulation is a signal-processing effect in electronics, an implementation of amplitude modulation or frequency mixing, performed by multiplying two signals, where one is typically a sine-wave or another simple waveform. It is referred to as "ring" modulation because the analog circuit of...
(Peters 1992), and Solo for a melody instrument with feedback (1966) (Maconie 2005, 262–65). Improvisation also plays a part in all of these works, but especially in Solo (Maconie 2005, 264). He also composed two electronic works for tape
Tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, tape deck, reel-to-reel tape deck, cassette deck or tape machine is an audio storage device that records and plays back sounds, including articulated voices, usually using magnetic tape, either wound on a reel or in a cassette, for storage...
, Telemusik (1966) and Hymnen
Hymnen
Hymnen is an electronic and concrete work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".-Musical form and content:...
(1966–67) (Kohl 2002; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 21). The latter also exists in a version with partially improvising soloists, and the third of its four "regions" in a version with orchestra (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 21). At this time, Stockhausen also began to incorporate pre-existent music from world traditions into his compositions (Kohl 1981, 93–95; Texte 4, 468–76). Telemusik was the first overt example of this trend (Kohl 2002, 96).
In 1968, Stockhausen composed the vocal sextet Stimmung
Stimmung
Stimmung, for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work number 24 in the composer's catalog...
, for the Collegium Vocale Köln
Collegium Vocale Köln
Collegium Vocale Köln is a German vocal ensemble, founded in 1966 as a quintet when its members were still students at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne. It is directed by Wolfgang Fromme, who also sings tenor in the ensemble...
, an hour-long work based entirely on the overtone
Overtone
An overtone is any frequency higher than the fundamental frequency of a sound. The fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics are partials whose frequencies are whole number multiples of the fundamental These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the...
s of a low B-flat (Toop 2005, 39). In the following year, he created Fresco
Fresco (Stockhausen)
Fresco is an orchestral composition written in 1969 by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen as foyer music for an evening-long retrospective programme of his music presented simultaneously in three auditoriums of the Beethovenhalle in Bonn. It is Nr...
for four orchestral groups, a Wandelmusik ("foyer music") composition (Maconie 2005, 321). This was intended to be played for about five hours in the foyers and grounds of the Beethovenhalle auditorium complex in Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, before, after, and during a group of (in part simultaneous) concerts of his music in the auditoriums of the facility (Maconie 2005, 321–23). The overall project was given the title Musik für die Beethovenhalle (Maconie 2005, 296). This had precedents in two collective-composition seminar projects that Stockhausen gave at Darmstadt in 1967 and 1968: Ensemble and Musik für ein Haus (Gehlhaar 1968; Ritzel 1970; Iddon 2004; Maconie 2005, 321), and would have successors in the "park music" composition for five spatially separated groups, Sternklang ("Star Sounds") of 1971, the orchestral work Trans, composed in the same year and the thirteen simultaneous "musical scenes for soloists and duets" titled Alphabet für Liège
Alphabet für Liège
Alphabet für Liège, for soloists and duos, is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 36 in the composer's catalog of works. A performance of it lasts four hours....
(1972) (Maconie 2005, 334–36, 338, 341–43).
"Space music" and Expo 70
Since the mid-1950s, Stockhausen had been developing concepts of spatialization in his works, not only in electronic music, such as the 5-channel Gesang der JünglingeGesang der Jünglinge
Gesang der Jünglinge is a noted electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog of works...
(1955–56) and Telemusik
Telemusik
Telemusik is an electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is number 20 in his catalog of works.-History:Through his composition student, Makoto Shinohara, Stockhausen was invited by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation NHK to visit Tokyo, and to carry out two commissions in their...
(1966), and 4-channel Kontakte
Kontakte (Stockhausen)
Kontakte is a celebrated electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen, realized in 1958–60 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk electronic-music studio in Cologne with the assistance of Gottfried Michael Koenig .-Work history:The title of the work “refers both to contacts between instrumental and...
(1958–60) and Hymnen
Hymnen
Hymnen is an electronic and concrete work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".-Musical form and content:...
(1966–67). Instrumental/vocal works like Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
for three orchestras (1955–57) and Carré
Carré (Stockhausen)
Carré for four orchestras and four choirs is a composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 10 in the composer's catalog of works.-History:...
for four orchestras and choirs (1959–60) also exhibit this trait (Stockhausen Texte 2:71–72, 49–50, 102–103; Stockhausen 1989, 105–108; Cott 1973, 200–201). In lectures such as "Music in Space" from 1958 (Stockhausen Texte 1:152–75), he called for new kinds of concert halls to be built, "suited to the requirements of spatial music". His idea was
a spherical space which is fitted all around with loudspeakers. In the middle of this spherical space a sound-permeable, transparent platform would be suspended for the listeners. They could hear music composed for such standardized spaces coming from above, from below and from all points of the compass. (Stockhausen Texte 1:153)In 1968, the West German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
government invited Stockhausen to collaborate on the German Pavilion at the 1970 World Fair
Expo '70
was a World's Fair held in Suita, Osaka, Japan between March 15 and September 13, 1970. The theme of the Expo was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese Expo '70 is often referred to as Ōsaka Banpaku...
in Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
and to create a joint multimedia project for it with artist Otto Piene
Otto Piene
Otto Piene is a German artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Groton, Massachusetts.-Biography:...
. Other collaborators on the project included the pavilion's architect, Fritz Bornemann
Fritz Bornemann
Fritz Bornemann was a German architect.- Life and works :Bornemann studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin. After graduating in 1936, he was Assistant Scenic Designer at the Berlin Municipal Opera and, starting in 1945, Construction Supervisor with the city of Berlin...
, Fritz Winckel, director of the Electronic Music Studio at the Technical University of Berlin
Technical University of Berlin
The Technische Universität Berlin is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. Translating the name into English is discouraged by the university, however paraphrasing as Berlin Institute of Technology is recommended by the university if necessary .The TU Berlin was founded...
, and engineer Max Mengeringhausen. The pavilion theme was "gardens of music", in keeping with which Bornemann intended "planting" the exhibition halls beneath a broad lawn, with a connected auditorium "sprouting" above ground. Initially, Bornemann conceived this auditorium in the form of an amphitheatre
Amphitheatre
An amphitheatre is an open-air venue used for entertainment and performances.There are two similar, but distinct, types of structure for which the word "amphitheatre" is used: Ancient Roman amphitheatres were large central performance spaces surrounded by ascending seating, and were commonly used...
, with a central orchestra podium and surrounding audience space. In the summer of 1968, Stockhausen met with Bornemann and persuaded him to change this conception to a spherical space with the audience in the center, surrounded by loudspeaker groups in seven rings at different "latitudes" around the interior walls of the sphere (Kurtz 1992, 166; Föllmer 1996).
Although Stockhausen and Piene's planned multimedia project, titled Hinab-Hinauf, was developed in detail (Stockhausen, Texte 3:155–74), the World Fair committee rejected their concept as too extravagant and instead asked Stockhausen to present daily five-hour programs of his music (Kurtz 1992, 178). Stockhausen's works were performed for 5½ hours every day over a period of 183 days to a total audience of about a million listeners (Wörner 1973, 256). According to Stockhausen's biographer, Michael Kurtz, "Many visitors felt the spherical auditorium to be an oasis of calm amidst the general hubbub, and after a while it became one of the main attractions of Expo 1970" (Kurtz 1992, 179).
1970s
Beginning with MantraMantra (Stockhausen)
Mantra is a composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was composed in 1970 and premiered in autumn of the same year in Donaueschingen...
for two pianos and electronics (1970), Stockhausen turned to formula composition
Formula composition
Formula composition is a serially-derived technique encountered principally in the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, involving the projection, expansion, and Ausmultiplikation of either a single melody-formula, or a two- or three-voice contrapuntal construction .In contrast to serial music, where the...
, a technique which involves the projection and multiplication of a single, double, or triple melodic
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
-line formula (Kohl 1983–84a; Kohl 1990; Kohl 2004). Sometimes, as in Mantra and the large orchestral composition with mime soloists, Inori
Inori
Inori: Adorations for One or Two Soloists with Orchestra is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1973–74 ....
, the simple formula is stated at the outset as an introduction. He continued to use this technique (e.g., in the two related solo-clarinet pieces, Harlekin ["Harlequin"] and Der kleine Harlekin ["The Little Harlequin"] of 1975, and the orchestral Jubiläum
Jubiläum
Jubiläum is an orchestral composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, work-number 45 in the composer’s catalogue of works.-History:Jubiläum is a relatively short work of about 15 minutes duration, written in 1977 on commission for the 125th-anniversary celebration of the Hannover Opera House, and has...
["Jubilee"] of 1977) through the completion of the opera-cycle Licht in 2003 (Blumröder 1982; Conen 1991; Kohl 1983–84a; Kohl 1990; Kohl 1993; Kohl 2004; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 10). Some works from the 1970s did not employ formula technique—e.g., the vocal duet "Am Himmel wandre ich" ("In the Sky I am Walking", one of the 13 components of the multimedia Alphabet für Liège, 1972), "Laub und Regen" ("Leaves and Rain", from the theatre piece Herbstmusik (1974), the unaccompanied-clarinet composition Amour
Amour (Stockhausen)
Amour is a cycle of five pieces for clarinet by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1974–76. The composer thought of each piece as a gift for a close friend...
, and the choral opera Atmen gibt das Leben
Atmen gibt das Leben
Atmen gibt das Leben , is a choral opera with orchestra by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1974 and expanded in 1976–77. It is Number 39 in the catalogue of the composer's works, and lasts about 50 minutes in performance.-History:...
("Breathing Gives Life", 1974/77)—but nevertheless share its simpler, melodically oriented style (Conen 1991, 57). Two such pieces, Tierkreis
Tierkreis (Stockhausen)
Tierkreis is a musical composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. The title is the German word for Zodiac, and the composition consists of twelve melodies, each representing one sign of the zodiac.-History:...
("Zodiac", 1974–75) and In Freundschaft
In Freundschaft
In Freundschaft is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, number 46 in his catalogue of works, which is playable on a wide variety of solo instruments.-History:...
("In Friendship", 1977, a solo piece with versions for virtually every orchestral instrument), have become Stockhausen's most widely performed and recorded compositions (Anon. 2007a; Deruchie 2007; Nordin 2004).
This dramatic simplification of style provided a model for a new generation of German composers, loosely associated under the label neue Einfachheit or New Simplicity
New Simplicity
New Simplicity was a stylistic tendency amongst some of the younger generation of German composers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, reacting against not only the European avant garde of the 1950s and 1960s, but also against the broader tendency toward objectivity found from the beginning of the...
(Andraschke 1981). The best-known of these composers is Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
, who studied with Stockhausen in 1972–73. His orchestral composition Sub-Kontur (1974–75) quotes the formula of Stockhausen's Inori (1973–74), and he has also acknowledged the influence of Momente on this work (Frobenius 1981, 53 + note 59–60). Other large works from this decade include the orchestral Trans
Trans (Stockhausen)
Trans is a composition for orchestra and tape by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1971. It is Number 35 in the composer's catalog of works....
(1971) and two music-theatre compositions utilizing the Tierkreis melodies: Musik im Bauch
Musik im Bauch
Musik im Bauch is a piece of scenic music for six percussionists and music boxes composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1975, and is Number 41 in his catalog of works. The world premiere was presented on 28 March 1975 by the Royan Festival. The performance was given by Les Percussions de Strasbourg...
("Music in the Belly") for six percussionists (1975), and the science-fiction "opera" Sirius
Sirius (Stockhausen)
Sirius: eight-channel electronic music and trumpet, soprano, bass clarinet, and bass is a music-theatre composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen.-History:...
(1975–77) for eight-channel electronic music with soprano, bass, trumpet, and bass clarinet, which has four different versions for the four seasons, each lasting over an hour and a half (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 24–25).
1977–2003
Between 1977 and 2003, he composed seven operas in a cycle titled Licht: Die sieben Tage der WocheLicht
Licht , subtitled "The Seven Days of the Week," is a cycle of seven operas composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen between 1977 and 2003. In total, the cycle contains over 29 hours of music.-Origin:...
("Light: The Seven Days of the Week") (Maconie 2005, 403–544). The Licht cycle deals with the traits associated in various historical traditions with each weekday (Monday = birth and fertility, Tuesday = conflict and war, Wednesday = reconciliation and cooperation, Thursday = traveling and learning, etc.) and with the relationships between three archetypal characters: Michael
Michael (archangel)
Michael , Micha'el or Mîkhā'ēl; , Mikhaḗl; or Míchaël; , Mīkhā'īl) is an archangel in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic teachings. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans refer to him as Saint Michael the Archangel and also simply as Saint Michael...
, Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
, and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
(Kohl 1983–84b, 489; Stockhausen Texte 6:152–56, 175, 200–201). Each of these characters dominates one of the operas (Donnerstag [Thursday], Samstag [Saturday], and Montag [Monday], respectively), the three possible pairings are foregrounded in three others, and the equal combination of all three is featured in Mittwoch (Wednesday) (Kohl 1990, 274).
Stockhausen's conception of opera was based significantly on ceremony and ritual, with influence from the Japanese Noh
Noh
, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...
theatre (Stockhausen, Conen, and Hennlich 1989, 282), as well as Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...
and Vedic
Vedic mythology
Vedic mythology refers to the mythological aspects of the historical Vedic religion and Vedic literature, most notably alluded to in the hymns of the Rigveda...
traditions (Bruno 1999, 134). In 1968, at the time of the composition of Aus den sieben Tagen, Stockhausen had read a biography by Satprem
Satprem
Satprem was a French author and an important disciple of The Mother.-Life and work:Satprem was born Bernard Enginger in Paris and had a seafaring childhood and youth in Brittany. During World War II he was a member of the French Resistance. He was arrested by the Gestapo in late 1943 and spent one...
about the Bengali guru Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo , born Aurobindo Ghosh or Ghose , was an Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet. He joined the Indian movement for freedom from British rule and for a duration became one of its most important leaders, before developing his own vision of human progress...
(Guerreri 2009), and subsequently he also read many of the published writings by Aurobindo himself. The title of Licht owes something to Aurobindo's theory of "Agni
Agni
Agni is a Hindu deity, one of the most important of the Vedic gods. He is the god of fire and the acceptor of sacrifices. The sacrifices made to Agni go to the deities because Agni is a messenger from and to the other gods...
" (the Hindu and Vedic fire deity), developed from two basic premises of nuclear physics; Stockhausen's definition of a formula and, especially, his conception of the Licht superformula, also owes a great deal to Sri Aurobindo's category of the "supramental" (Peters 2003, 227). Similarly, his approach to voice and text sometimes departed from traditional usage: Characters were as likely to be portrayed by instrumentalists or dancers as by singers, and a few parts of Licht (e.g., Luzifers Traum from Samstag, Welt-Parlament from Mittwoch, Lichter-Wasser and Hoch-Zeiten from Sonntag) use written or improvised texts in simulated or invented languages (Kohl 1983–84b, 499; Moritz 2005; Stockhausen 1999, 18–25; Stockhausen 2001b, 20; Stockhausen 2003, 20).
The seven operas were not composed in "weekday order" but rather starting (apart from Jahreslauf in 1977, which became the first act of Dienstag) with the "solo" operas and working toward the more complex ones: Donnerstag (1978–80), Samstag (1981–83), Montag (1984–88), Dienstag (1977/1987–91), Freitag (1991–94), Mittwoch (1995–97), and finally Sonntag (1998–2003) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 3–7, 26–48).
Stockhausen had dreams of flying throughout his life, and these dreams are reflected in the Helikopter-Streichquartett
Helikopter-Streichquartett
The Helikopter-Streichquartett is one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's best-known pieces, and one of the most complex to perform. It involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians. It was first performed and recorded in 1995...
(the third scene of Mittwoch aus Licht), completed in 1993. In it, the four members of a string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
perform in four helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
s flying independent flight paths over the countryside near the concert hall. The sounds they play are mixed together with the sounds of the helicopters and played through speakers to the audience in the hall. Videos of the performers are also transmitted back to the concert hall. The performers are synchronized with the aid of a click track
Click track
A click track is a series of audio cues used to synchronize sound recordings, sometimes for synchronization to a moving image. The click track originated in early sound movies, where marks were made on the film itself to indicate exact timings for musicians to accompany the film...
, transmitted to them and heard over headphones (Stockhausen 1996c, 215).
The first performance of the piece took place in Amsterdam on 26 June 1995, as part of the Holland Festival
Holland Festival
The Holland Festival is The Netherlands' oldest and largest performing arts festival, and takes place every June in Amsterdam. It comprises theater, music, opera and modern dance. In recent years, multimedia, visual arts, film and architecture were added to the festival roster...
(Stockhausen 1996c, 216). Despite its extremely unusual nature, the piece has been given several performances, including one on 22 August 2003 as part of the Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer within the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
to open the Hangar-7 venue (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 7), and the German première on 17 June 2007 in Braunschweig
Braunschweig
Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....
as part of the Stadt der Wissenschaft 2007 Festival (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2007). The work has also been recorded by the Arditti Quartet
Arditti Quartet
The Arditti Quartet is a string quartet founded in 1974. The quartet is associated particularly with contemporary music.-Early history:The quartet was founded in 1974 by violinist Irvine Arditti together with John Senter, Levine Andrade and Lenox Mackenzie...
.
In 1999 he was Invited by Walter Fink
Walter Fink
Walter Fink is a German retired executive and a patron of Contemporary music. He is mostly known for being a founding member, Executive Committee member and sponsor of the Rheingau Musik Festival.- Biography :...
to be the ninth composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival
Rheingau Musik Festival
The Rheingau Musik Festival is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres...
.
In 1999, BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
producer Rodney Wilson asked Stockhausen to collaborate with Stephen and Timothy Quay
Brothers Quay
Stephen and Timothy Quay are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators...
on a film for the fourth series of Sound on Film International. Although Stockhausen's music had been used for films previously (most notably, parts of Hymnen
Hymnen
Hymnen is an electronic and concrete work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".-Musical form and content:...
in Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg, CBE, BSC is an English film director and cinematographer.-Life and career:Roeg was born in London, the son of Mabel Gertrude and Jack Nicolas Roeg...
's Walkabout
Walkabout (film)
Walkabout is a 1971 film set in Australia, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall...
in 1971), this was the first time he had been asked to provide music specially for the purpose. He adapted 21 minutes of material taken from his electronic music for Freitag aus Licht, calling the result Zwei Paare (Two Couples), and the Brothers Quay created their animated film, which they titled In Absentia, based only on their reactions to the music and the simple suggestion that a window might be an idea to use (Anon. 2001). When, at a preview screening, Stockhausen saw the film, which shows a madwoman writing letters from a bleak asylum cell, he was moved to tears. The Brothers Quay were astonished to learn that his mother had been "imprisoned by the Nazis in an asylum, where she later died. … This was a very moving moment for us as well, especially because we had made the film without knowing any of this" (Aita 2001).
2003–2007
After completing Licht, Stockhausen embarked on a new cycle of compositions, based on the hours of the day, entitled KlangKlang (Stockhausen)
Klang —Die 24 Stunden des Tages is a cycle of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, on which he worked from 2004 until his death in 2007. It was intended to consist of 24 chamber-music compositions, each representing one hour of the day, with a different colour systematically assigned to every hour...
("Sound"). Twenty-one of these pieces were completed before the composer's death (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49–50). The works from this cycle performed to date are First Hour: Himmelfahrt (Ascension), for organ or synthesizer, soprano and tenor (2004–2005); Second Hour: Freude (Joy) for two harps (2005); Third Hour: Natürliche Dauern (Natural Durations) for piano (2005–2006); and Fourth Hour: Himmels-Tür (Heaven's Door) for a percussionist and a little girl (2005) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49). The Fifth Hour, Harmonien (Harmonies), is a solo in three versions for flute, bass clarinet, and trumpet (2006) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49); the bass clarinet and flute versions were premièred in Kürten on 11 July 2007 and 13 July 2007, respectively (Stockhausen 2007b and Stockhausen 2007c), and the trumpet version was premièred on 2 August 2008 in London at a BBC Proms concert (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 7). The Sixth through Twelfth hours are chamber-music works based on the material from the Fifth Hour (Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 49). Of these, the Seventh (Balance, for flute, English horn, and bass clarinet), Ninth (Hoffnung, for string trio), and Tenth, Glanz (commission of the Asko Ensemble and the Holland Festival), were premièred on 22 August (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 9), 31 August (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 10), and 19 June (Beer 2008; Voermans 2008), respectively. The première of the Sixth (Schönheit, for flute, trumpet, and bass clarinet) took place on 5 October 2009 at the Grande Auditório of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, and that of the Twelfth, Erwachen, on 13 October 2009 in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
. The Thirteenth Hour, Cosmic Pulses
Cosmic Pulses
Cosmic Pulses is the last electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and it is number 93 in his catalog of works. Its duration is 32 minutes. The piece has been described as "a sonic roller coaster", "a Copernican asylum", and a "tornado watch"....
—an electronic work made by superimposing 24 layers of sound, each having its own spatial motion, among eight loudspeakers placed around the concert hall—was premièred in Rome on 7 May 2007 at Auditorium Parco della Musica
Parco della Musica
Auditorium Parco della Musica is a large multi-functional public music complex in Rome, Italy. The complex is situated in the north of the city, in the area where the 1960 Summer Olympic Games were held....
, (Sala Sinopoli) (Stockhausen 2007a). Hours 14 through 21 are solo pieces for bass voice, baritone voice, basset-horn, horn, tenor voice, soprano voice, soprano saxophone, and flute, respectively, each with electronic accompaniment of a different set of three layers from Cosmic Pulses
Cosmic Pulses
Cosmic Pulses is the last electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and it is number 93 in his catalog of works. Its duration is 32 minutes. The piece has been described as "a sonic roller coaster", "a Copernican asylum", and a "tornado watch"....
(Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 50). Of these, the Twentieth (Edentia for soprano saxophone and electronic music) was premièred on 6 August 2008 (Mischke 2008), the Nineteenth (Urantia for soprano and electronic music) on 8 November 2008 in London, the Fourteenth (Havona for bass voice and electronic music) on 10 January 2009 in Paris (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 15 and 13), and the Twenty-first (Paradies, for flute and electronic music) at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
The Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival is a classical music festival held every year in summer time all over the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany....
, at the Laeiszhalle
Laeiszhalle
The Laeiszhalle is a concert hall in Hamburg, Germany and home to the Hamburger Symphoniker.The hall is named after the German shipowning company F. Laeisz, founder of the concert venue and was planned by the architect Martin Haller.-External links:...
in Hamburg on 24 August 2009. All of the remaining pieces were first performed in the context of the collective premiere of the cycle, at the Festival MusikTriennale Köln on 8–9 May 2010, in 176 individual concerts (Gimpel 2010).
Theories
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Stockhausen published a series of articles that established his importance in the area of music theory. Although these include analyses of music by MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Goeyvaerts
Karel Goeyvaerts
Karel Goeyvaerts was a Belgian composer.-Life:After studies at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp, Goeyvaerts studied composition in Paris with Darius Milhaud and analysis with Olivier Messiaen...
, Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, Johannes Fritsch
Johannes Fritsch
Johannes G. Fritsch was a German composer.At the age of seven, Fritsch found a violin in the attic of his uncle's house in Bensheim-Auerbach, Germany, and began lessons with a village music teacher named Knapp...
, Michael von Biel
Michael von Biel
Michael von Biel is a German composer, cellist, and graphic artist.Von Biel studied piano, theory, and composition in Toronto , Vienna , New York , London , and Cologne...
, and, especially, Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
(Texte 1:24–31, 39–44, 75–85, 86–98; Texte 2:136–39, 149–66, 170–206; Texte 3:236–38; Texte 4:662–63), the items on compositional theory directly related to his own work are regarded as the most important generally. "Indeed, the Texte come closer than anything else currently available to providing a general compositional theory for the postwar period" (Morgan 1975, 16). His most celebrated article is "... wie die Zeit vergeht ..." (". . . How Time Passes . . ."), first published in the third volume of Die Reihe
Die Reihe
Die Reihe was a German-language music journal, edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen and published by Universal Edition between 1955 and 1962 . An English edition was published, under the original German title, between 1957 and 1968 by the Theodore Presser Company , in association...
(1957). In it, he expounds a number of temporal conceptions underlying his instrumental compositions Zeitmaße, Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
, and Klavierstück XI
Klavierstücke (Stockhausen)
The Klavierstücke constitute a series of nineteen compositions by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.Stockhausen has said the Klavierstücke "are my drawings"...
. In particular, this article develops (1) a scale of twelve tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
s analogous to the chromatic pitch scale, (2) a technique of building progressively smaller, integral subdivisions over a basic (fundamental) duration, analogous to the overtone series
Overtone
An overtone is any frequency higher than the fundamental frequency of a sound. The fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics are partials whose frequencies are whole number multiples of the fundamental These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the...
, (3) musical application of the concept of the partial field (time fields and field sizes) in both successive and simultaneous proportions, (4) methods of projecting large-scale form from a series of proportions, (5) the concept of "statistical" composition, (6) the concept of "action duration" and the associated "variable form", and (7) the notion of the "directionless temporal field" and with it, "polyvalent form" (Stockhausen Texte 1:99–139).
Other important articles from this period include "Musik im Raum" ("Music in Space", 1958, Texte 1:152–75), "Musik und Graphik" ("Music and Graphics", 1959, Texte 1:176–88), "Momentform" (1960, Texte 1:189–210), "Die Einheit der musikalischen Zeit" ("The Unity of Musical Time", 1961, Texte 1:211–21; Stockhausen 1962), and "Erfindung und Entdeckung" ("Invention and Discovery", 1961, Texte 1:222–58), the last summing up the ideas developed up to 1961. Taken together, these temporal theories
suggested that the entire compositional structure could be conceived as "timbreSome of these ideas, considered from a purely theoretical point of view (divorced from their context as explanations of particular compositions) drew significant critical fire (Backus 1962, Fokker 1968, Perle 1960). For this reason, Stockhausen ceased publishing such articles for a number of years, as he felt that "many useless polemics" about these texts had arisen, and he preferred to concentrate his attention on composing (Texte 4:13).TimbreIn music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
": since "the different experienced components such as color, harmonyHarmonyIn music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and melodyMelodyA melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
, meterMeter (music)Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...
and rhythm, dynamicsDynamics (music)In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...
, and form correspond to the different segmental ranges of this unified time" [Texte 1:120], the total musical result at any given compositional level is simply the "spectrumSpectral musicSpectral music is a musical composition practice where compositional decisions are often informed by the analysis of sound spectra. Computer-based sound spectrum analysis using tools like DFT, FFT, and spectrograms...
" of a more basic duration—i.e., its "timbre," perceived as the overall effect of the overtone structureOvertoneAn overtone is any frequency higher than the fundamental frequency of a sound. The fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics are partials whose frequencies are whole number multiples of the fundamental These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the...
of that duration, now taken to include not only the "rhythmic" subdivisions of the duration but also their relative "dynamic" strength, "envelope," etc.
…
Compositionally considered, this produced a change of focus from the individual tone to a whole complex of tones related to one another by virtue of their relation to a "fundamentalFundamental frequencyThe fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the fundamental and abbreviated f0, is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In terms of a superposition of sinusoids The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the fundamental and abbreviated f0, is defined as the...
"—a change that was probably the most important compositional development of the latter part of the 1950s, not only for Stockhausen's music but for "advanced" music in general. (Morgan 1975, 6)
Through the 1960s, although he taught and lectured publicly (Texte 3:196–211), Stockhausen published little of an analytical or theoretical nature. Only in 1970 did he again begin publishing theoretical articles, with "Kriterien", his six seminar lectures for the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Texte 3:222–29).
Musical influence
Stockhausen's two early Electronic Studies (especially the second) had a powerful influence on the subsequent development of electronic music in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the work of the Italian Franco EvangelistiFranco Evangelisti
Franco Evangelisti , was an Italian composer specifically interested in the scientific theories behind sound.-Biography:...
and the Poles Andrzej Dobrowolski
Andrzej Dobrowolski
Andrzej Dobrowolski was a Polish composer and teacher....
and Włodzimierz Kotoński (Skowron 1981, 39). The influence of his Kontra-Punkte, Zeitmasse and Gruppen
Gruppen (Stockhausen)
Gruppen for three orchestras is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. Gruppen is "a landmark in 20th-century music . ....
may be seen in the work of many composers, including Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's Threni
Threni (Stravinsky)
Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae, usually referred to simply as Threni, is a setting by Igor Stravinsky of verses from the Book of Lamentations in the Latin of the Vulgate, for solo singers, chorus and orchestra. It is important in Stravinsky's output as his first and longest...
(1957–58) and Movements for piano and orchestra (1958–59) and other works up to the Variations: Aldous Huxley In Memoriam (1963–64), whose rhythms "are likely to have been inspired, at least in part, by certain passages from Stockhausen's Gruppen" (Neidhöffer 2005, 340). Though music of Stockhausen's generation may seem an unlikely influence, Stravinsky said in a 1957 conversation:
I have all around me the spectacle of composers who, after their generation has had its decade of influence and fashion, seal themselves off from further development and from the next generation (as I say this, exceptions come to mind, Krenek, for instance). Of course, it requires greater effort to learn from one's juniors, and their manners are not invariably good. But when you are seventy-five and your generation has overlapped with four younger ones, it behooves you not to decide in advance "how far composers can go," but to try to discover whatever new thing it is makes the new generation new. (Stravinsky and Craft 1959, 133)
Amongst British composers, Sir Harrison Birtwistle
Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...
readily acknowledges the influence of Stockhausen's Zeitmaße (especially on his two wind quintets, Refrains and Choruses and Five Distances) and Gruppen on his work more generally (Cross 2000, 48; Cross 2001; Hall 1984, 3 and 7–8; Hall 1998, 99 and 108; Pace 1996, 27). Brian Ferneyhough
Brian Ferneyhough
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...
says that, although the "technical and speculative innovations" of Klavierstücke I–IV, Kreuzspiel and Kontra-Punkte escaped him on first encounter (Ferneyhough 1988), they nevertheless produced a "sharp emotion, the result of a beneficial shock engendered by their boldness" (Ferneyhough 1988) and provided "an important source of motivation (rather than of imitation) for my own investigations" (Ferneyhough 1988). While still in school, he became fascinated upon hearing the British première of Gruppen, and
listened many times to the recording of this performance, while trying to penetrate its secrets—how it always seemed to be about to explode, but managed nevertheless to escape unscathed in its core—but scarcely managed to grasp it. Retrospectively, it is clear that from this confusion was born my interest for the formal questions which remain until today. (Ferneyhough 1988)With respect to Stockhausen's later work, he said,
I have never subscribed (whatever the inevitable personal distance) to the thesis according to which the many transformations of vocabulary characterizing Stockhausen's development are the obvious sign of his inability to carry out the early vision of strict order that he had in his youth. On the contrary, it seems to me that the constant reconsideration of his premises has led to the maintenance of a remarkably tough thread of historical consciousness which will become clearer with time. . . . I doubt that there has been a single composer of the intervening generation who, even if for a short time, did not see the world of music differently thanks to the work of Stockhausen. (Ferneyhough 1988)In a short essay describing Stockhausen's influence on his own work, Richard Barrett
Richard Barrett (composer)
Richard Barrett is a British composer.-Biography:Barrett began to study music seriously only after graduating in genetics and microbiology at University College London in 1980 . From then until 1983 he took private lessons with Peter Wiegold...
concludes that "Stockhausen remains the composer whose next work I look forward most to hearing, apart from myself of course" and names as works that have had particular impact on his musical thinking Mantra, Gruppen, Carré, Klavierstück X, Inori, and Jubiläum (Barrett 1998).
French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez once declared, "Stockhausen is the greatest living composer, and the only one whom I recognize as my peer" (Anon. 1967; Anon. 1971). Boulez also acknowledged the influence of performing Stockhausen's Zeitmaße on his subsequent development as a conductor (Boulez 1976, 79–80). Another French composer, Jean-Claude Éloy
Jean-Claude Éloy
Jean-Claude Éloy is a French composer of instrumental, vocal and electroacoustic music.In his work Éloy realized one of the most significant syntheses of 20th-century music: between electronic and acoustic music, between Western and non-Western traditions...
, regards Stockhausen as the most important composer of the second half of the 20th century, and cites virtually "all his catalog of works" as "a powerful discoveration [sic], and a true revelation" (Éloy 2008).
Dutch composer Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
acknowledged the influence of Stockhausen's Momente
Momente
Momente is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969, scored for solo soprano, four mixed choirs, and thirteen instrumentalists...
in his pivotal work Contra tempus of 1968 (Schönberger 2001). German composer Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
, who studied with Stockhausen, was influenced by Momente, Hymnen, and Inori (Williams 2006, 382).
At the Cologne ISCM Festival in 1960, the Danish composer Per Nørgård
Per Nørgård
Per Nørgård is a Danish composer.-Biography:Nørgård studied with Vagn Holmboe at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and subsequently with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. To begin with, he was strongly influenced by the Nordic styles of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen and Vagn Holmboe...
heard Stockhausen's Kontakte as well as pieces by Kagel, Boulez, and Berio. He was profoundly affected by what he heard and his music suddenly changed into "a far more discontinuous and disjunct style, involving elements of strict organization in all parameters, some degree of aleatoricism and controlled improvisation, together with an interest in collage from other musics" (Anderson 2001).
Jazz musicians such as Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
(Bergstein 1992), Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...
, Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
, Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
, Yusef Lateef
Yusef Lateef
Dr. Yusef Lateef is an American Grammy Award-winning jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator and a spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after his conversion to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam in 1950.Although Lateef's main instruments are the tenor saxophone and flute, he is known for...
(Feather 1964; Tsahar 2006), and Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
(Radano 1993, 110) cite Stockhausen as an influence.
Stockhausen was influential within pop and rock music as well. Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
acknowledges Stockhausen in the liner notes of Freak Out!
Freak Out!
Freak Out! is the debut album by American band The Mothers of Invention, released June 27, 1966 on Verve Records. Often cited as one of rock music's first concept albums, the album is a satirical expression of frontman Frank Zappa's perception of American pop culture...
, his 1966 debut with The Mothers of Invention
The Mothers of Invention
The Mothers of Invention were an American band active from 1964 to 1969, and again from 1970 to 1975.They mainly performed works by, and were the original recording group of, US composer and guitarist Frank Zappa , although other members have had the occasional writing credit...
. On the back of The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
's second LP released in the US, "Happy Jack
Happy Jack (song)
"Happy Jack" is a rock song from British rock band, The Who, released in December 1966 in the UK and peaking at #3. It was their first top forty hit in the USA, released in March 1967 and peaking at #24. It was included on the USA version of their second album...
", their primary composer and guitarist Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career...
, is said to have "an interest in Stockhausen". Rick Wright
Richard Wright (musician)
Richard William Wright was an English pianist, keyboardist and songwriter, best known for his career with Pink Floyd. Wright's richly textured keyboard layers were a vital ingredient and a distinctive characteristic of Pink Floyd's sound...
and Roger Waters
Roger Waters
George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter...
of Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
also acknowledge Stockhausen as an influence (Macon 1997, 141; Bayles 1996, 222). San Francisco psychedelic groups Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
and the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
are said to have done the same (Prendergast 2000, 54); Stockhausen himself says the former band included students of Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
, and the Grateful Dead were "well orientated toward new music" (Texte 4, 505). Founding members of Cologne-based experimental band Can
Can (band)
Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.Can constructed their music largely...
, Irmin Schmidt
Irmin Schmidt
Irmin Schmidt is a German keyboard player and composer, probably best known as a founding member of the band Can.-Biography:...
and Holger Czukay
Holger Czukay
Holger Czukay is a German musician, probably best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. Described by critic Jason Ankeny as "successfully bridg[ing] the gap between pop and the avant-garde," Czukay is also notable for creating early important examples of ambient music, for exploring...
, both claim they studied with Stockhausen (Irmin Schmidt biography; Holger Czukay biography), and Schmidt is confirmed to have attended the 1965–66 Cologne Courses for New Music, though Czukay's name does not appear anywhere in the list of registrants (Texte 3, 196, 198, 200). German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
also say they studied with Stockhausen (Flur 2003, 228), and Icelandic vocalist Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
has acknowledged Stockhausen's influence (Heuger 1998, 15; Björk 1996; Ross 2004, 53 & 55).
Wider cultural renown
Stockhausen, along with John CageJohn Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, is one of the few avant-garde composers to have succeeded in penetrating the popular consciousness (Anon. 2007b; Broyles 2004; Hewett 2007). The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
included his face on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
(Guy and Llewelyn-Jones 2004, 111). This reflects his influence on the band's own avant-garde experiments as well as the general fame and notoriety he had achieved by that time (1967). In particular, "A Day in the Life
A Day in the Life
"A Day in the Life" is a song by The Beatles, the final track on the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with orchestral additions...
" (1967) and "Revolution 9
Revolution 9
"Revolution 9" is a recorded composition that appeared on The Beatles' 1968 self-titled LP release . The sound collage, credited to Lennon–McCartney, was created primarily by John Lennon with assistance from George Harrison and Yoko Ono. Lennon said he was trying to paint a picture of a revolution...
" (1968) were influenced by Stockhausen's electronic music (Aldgate, Chapman, and Marwick 2000, 146; MacDonald 1995, 233–34). Stockhausen's name, and the perceived strangeness and supposed unlistenability of his music, was even a punchline in cartoons, as documented on a page on the official Stockhausen web site (Stockhausen Cartoons). Perhaps the most caustic remark about Stockhausen was attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
. Asked "Have you heard any Stockhausen?", he is alleged to have replied, "No, but I believe I have trodden in some" (Lebrecht 1983, 334, annotated on 366: "Apocryphal; source unknown").
Stockhausen's fame is also reflected in works of literature. For example, he is mentioned in Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
's 1974 novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is a 1974 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick about a genetically enhanced pop singer and television star who loses his identity overnight. The story is set in a futuristic dystopia, where America has become a police state after a Second Civil War. The novel...
(Dick 1993, 101) and in Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero...
. The Pynchon novel features "The Scope", a bar with "a strict electronic music policy". Protagonist Oedipa Maas asks "a hip graybeard" about a "sudden chorus of whoops and yibbles" coming out of "a kind of jukebox." He replies, "That's by Stockhausen... the early crowd tends to dig your Radio Cologne sound. Later on we really swing" (Pynchon 1999, 34).
Later in his life, Stockhausen was portrayed by at least one journalist, John O'Mahony of the Guardian newspaper, as an eccentric, for example being alleged to live an effectively polygamous lifestyle with two women, to whom O'Mahoney referred as his "wives", while at the same time stating he was not married to either of them (O'Mahoney 2001). In the same article, O'Mahony claims Stockhausen said he was born on a planet orbiting the star Sirius. In the German newspaper Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, Stockhausen unmistakably stated that he was educated at Sirius (see Controversy below).
Criticism
Robin Maconie finds that, "Compared to the work of his contemporaries, Stockhausen's music has a depth and rational integrity that is quite outstanding... His researches, initially guided by Meyer-Eppler, have a coherence unlike any other composer then or since" (Maconie 1989, 177–78). Maconie also compares Stockhausen to BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
: "If a genius is someone whose ideas survive all attempts at explanation, then by that definition Stockhausen is the nearest thing to Beethoven this century has produced. Reason? His music lasts" (Maconie 1988), and "As Stravinsky said, one never thinks of Beethoven as a superb orchestrator because the quality of invention transcends mere craftsmanship. It is the same with Stockhausen: the intensity of imagination gives rise to musical impressions of an elemental and seemingly unfathomable beauty, arising from necessity rather than conscious design" (Maconie 1989, 178).
Christopher Ballantine, while comparing and contrasting the categories of experimental
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
and avant-garde music
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
, concludes that
Perhaps more than any other contemporary composer, Stockhausen exists at the point where the dialectic between experimental and avant-garde music becomes manifest; it is in him, more obviously than anywhere else, that these diverse approaches converge. This alone would seem to suggest his remarkable significance. (Ballantine 1977, 244)
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
expressed great, but not uncritical, enthusiasm for Stockhausen's music in the conversation books with Robert Craft
Robert Craft
Robert Lawson Craft is an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate working friendship with Igor Stravinsky, a relationship which resulted in a number of recordings and books.-Life:...
(e.g., Craft and Stravinsky 1960, 118) and for years organised private listening sessions with friends in his home where he played tapes of Stockhausen's latest works (Stravinsky 1984, 356; Craft 2002, 141). In an interview published in March 1968, however, he says of an unidentified person,
I have been listening all week to the piano music of a composer now greatly esteemed for his ability to stay an hour or so ahead of his time, but I find the alternation of note-clumps and silences of which it consists more monotonous than the foursquares of the dullest eighteenth-century music. ([Craft] 1968, 4)The following October, a report in Sovetskaia Muzyka (Anon. 1968) translated this sentence (and a few others from the same article) into Russian, substituting for the conjunction "but" the phrase "Ia imeiu v vidu Karlkheintsa Shtokkhauzena" ("I am referring to Karlheinz Stockhausen"). When this translation was quoted in Druskin's Stravinsky biography, the field was widened to all of Stockhausen's compositions and Druskin adds for good measure, "indeed, works he calls unnecessary, useless and uninteresting", again quoting from the same Sovetskaia Muzyka article, even though it had made plain that the characterization was of American "university composers" (Druskin 1974, 207).
Early in 1995, BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
sent Stockhausen a package of recordings from contemporary artists Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin
Richard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
, Richie Hawtin
Richie Hawtin
Richard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
(Plastikman), Scanner
Robin Rimbaud
Robin Rimbaud is an electronic musician who works under the name Scanner due to his use of cell phone and police scanners in live performance...
and Daniel Pemberton
Daniel Pemberton
Daniel Pemberton is an Ivor Novello winning and multi BAFTA-nominated English composer.He has composed title tunes and incidental music for countless award winning television series including Peep Show, Desperate Romantics, Occupation, Suburban Shootout, Hell's Kitchen, Great British Menu,...
, and asked him for his opinion on the music. In August of that year, Radio 3 reporter Dick Witts interviewed Stockhausen about these pieces for a broadcast in October, subsequently published in the November issue of the British publication The Wire
The Wire (magazine)
The Wire is a British avant garde music magazine, founded in 1982 by jazz promoter Anthony Wood and journalist Chrissie Murray. The magazine initially concentrated on contemporary jazz and improvised music, but branched out in the early 1990s to various types of experimental music...
asking what advice he would give these young musicians. Stockhausen made suggestions to each of the musicians, who were then invited to respond. All but Plastikman obliged (Witts 1995).
Scandal at the Fresco premiere
As reported in the German magazine Der SpiegelDer Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
, the première
Premiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...
(and only performance to date) on 15 November 1969 of Stockhausen's work Fresco
Fresco (Stockhausen)
Fresco is an orchestral composition written in 1969 by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen as foyer music for an evening-long retrospective programme of his music presented simultaneously in three auditoriums of the Beethovenhalle in Bonn. It is Nr...
for four orchestral groups (playing in four different locations) was the scene of a scandal. The rehearsals were already marked by objections from the orchestral musicians questioning such directions as "glissandos no faster than one octave per minute" and others phoning the artists union to clarify whether they really had to perform the Stockhausen work as part of the orchestra. In the backstage warm-up room at the premiere a hand-lettered sign could be seen saying: "We're playing, otherwise we would be fired". During the première the parts on some music stands suddenly were replaced by placards reading things like "Stockhausen-Zoo. Please don't feed", that someone had planted. Some musicians, fed up with the monkeyshines, already left after an hour, though the performance was planned for four to five hours. Stockhausen fans protested, while Stockhausen foes were needling the musicians asking: "How can you possibly participate in such crap?" ("Wie könnt ihr bloß so eine Scheiße machen!"). At one point someone managed to switch off the stand lights, leaving the musicians in the dark. After 260 minutes the performance ended with nobody participating any more (Anon. 1969).
Sirius star system
In the German newspaper Die ZeitDie Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen stated that:
I was educated at SiriusSiriusSirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek: Seirios . The star has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris...
and want to return to there, although I am currently still living in Kürten near Cologne. At Sirius, it is very intellectual. Almost no time passes between conception and realization. What is known here as the audience, passive bystanders, does not exist there. There everyone is creative. (Grauel 1998)
The first sentence regarding his education also appears in a slightly different form in Reier 2007. On hearing about this, conductor Michael Gielen
Michael Gielen
-Professional career:Gielen was born in Dresden, Germany, to opera director Josef Gielen. Through his mother, Rose, he is the nephew of Eduard Steuermann and Salka Steuermann Viertel. He began his career as a pianist in Buenos Aires, where he studied with Erwin Leuchter and gave an early...
stated: "When he said he knew what was happening at Sirius, I turned away from him in horror. I haven't listened to a note since", and called Stockhausen's statements "hubris" and "nonsense", while at the same time defending his own belief in astrology: "Why should these large celestial bodies exist if they do not stand for something? I cannot imagine that there is anything senseless in the universe. There is much we do not understand" (Hagedorn 2010).
11 September attacks
In a press conference in HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
on 16 September 2001, Stockhausen was asked by a journalist whether the characters in Licht were for him "merely some figures out of a common cultural history" or rather "material appearances". The composer replied, "I pray daily to Michael, but not to Lucifer. I have renounced him. But he is very much present, like in New York recently" (Stockhausen 2002, 76). The same journalist then asked how the events of 11 September had affected him, and how he viewed reports of the attack in connection with the harmony of humanity represented in Hymnen
Hymnen
Hymnen is an electronic and concrete work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is "Nr. 22".-Musical form and content:...
. He answered:
Well, what happened there is, of course—now all of you must adjust your brains—the biggest work of art there has ever been. The fact that spirits achieve with one act something which we in music could never dream of, that people practise ten years madly, fanatically for a concert. And then die. [Hesitantly.] And that is the greatest work of art that exists for the whole Cosmos. Just imagine what happened there. There are people who are so concentrated on this single performance, and then five thousand people are driven to Resurrection. In one moment. I couldn't do that. Compared to that, we are nothing, as composers. [...] It is a crime, you know of course, because the people did not agree to it. They did not come to the "concert". That is obvious. And nobody had told them: "You could be killed in the process." (Stockhausen 2002, 76–77.)
(To see how the excerpt appeared out of its context, and in English translation, see Tommasini 2001.)
As a result of the reaction to the press report of Stockhausen's comments, a four-day festival of his work in Hamburg was canceled. In addition, his pianist daughter announced to the press that she would no longer appear under the name "Stockhausen" (Lentricchia and McAuliffe 2003, 7).
In a subsequent message, he stated that the press had published "false, defamatory reports" about his comments, and clarified as follows:
At the press conference in Hamburg, I was asked if Michael, Eve and Lucifer were historical figures of the past and I answered that they exist now, for example Lucifer in New York. In my work, I have defined Lucifer as the cosmic spirit of rebellion, of anarchy. He uses his high degree of intelligence to destroy creation. He does not know love. After further questions about the events in America, I said that such a plan appeared to be Lucifer's greatest work of art. Of course I used the designation "work of art" to mean the work of destruction personified in Lucifer. In the context of my other comments this was unequivocal. (Stockhausen 2001a)
Honours
Amongst the numerous honors and distinctions that were bestowed upon Stockhausen are:- 1964 German gramophone critics award;
- 1966 and 1972 SIMC award for orchestral works (Italy);
- 1968 Grand Art Prize for Music of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia; Grand Prix du DisqueGrand Prix du DisqueThe Grand Prix du Disque is the premier French award for musical recordings. The award was inaugurated by l'Académie Charles Cros in 1948 and offers prizes in various categories. The categories vary from year to year, and multiple awards are often made in any one category in the same year...
(France); Member of the Free Academy of the Arts, Hamburg; - 1968, 1969, and 1971 Edison Prize (Holland);
- 1970 Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of MusicRoyal Swedish Academy of MusicThe Royal Swedish Academy of Music or Kungl. Musikaliska Akademien, founded in 1771 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies in Sweden...
; - 1973 Member of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin;
- 1974 Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class (Germany);
- 1977 Member of the Philharmonic Academy of RomeAccademia Filarmonica RomanaThe Accademia Filarmonica Romana is an orchestra based in Rome, Italy. It was established in 1821....
; - 1979 Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters;
- 1980 Member of the European Academy of Science, Arts and Letters;
- 1981 Prize of the Italian music critics for Donnerstag aus Licht;
- 1982 German gramophone prize (German Phonograph Academy);
- 1983 Diapason d'or (France) for Donnerstag aus Licht;
- 1985 Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des LettresOrdre des Arts et des LettresThe Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, and confirmed as part of the Ordre national du Mérite by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963...
(France); - 1986 Ernst von Siemens Music PrizeErnst von Siemens Music PrizeThe international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is an annual music prize given by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste on behalf of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung , established in 1972. The foundation was established by Ernst von Siemens...
; - 1987 Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of MusicRoyal Academy of MusicThe Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
, London; - 1988 Honorary Citizen of the Kuerten community (Gemeinde Kürten website);
- 1989 Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
; - 1990 Prix Ars ElectronicaPrix Ars ElectronicaThe Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
, Linz, Austria; - 1991 Honorary Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy of Music; Accademico Onorario of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Caecilia, Rome; Honorary Patron of Sound Projects Weimar;
- 1992 IMC-UNESCOInternational Music CouncilThe International Music Council was created in 1949 as UNESCO's advisory body on matters of music. It is based at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, France, where it functions as an independent international non-governmental organization...
Picasso Medal; Distinguished Service Medal of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia; German Music Publishers Society Award for the score of Luzifers Tanz (3rd scene of Saturday from Light); - 1993 Patron of the European Flute Festival; Diapason d'or for Klavierstücke I–XI and Mikrophonie I and II;
- 1994 German Music Publishers Society Award for the score Jahreslauf (Act 1 of Tuesday from Light);
- 1995 Honorary Member of the German Society for Electro-Acoustic Music; Bach Award of the city of Hamburg;
- 1996 Honorary doctorate (Dr. phil. h. c.) of the Free University of BerlinFree University of BerlinFreie Universität Berlin is one of the leading and most prestigious research universities in Germany and continental Europe. It distinguishes itself through its modern and international character. It is the largest of the four universities in Berlin. Research at the university is focused on the...
; Composer of the European Cultural Capital Copenhagen; Edison Prize (Holland) for Mantra; Member of the Free Academy of the Arts Leipzig; Honorary Member of the Leipzig Opera; Cologne Culture Prize; - 1997 German Music Publishers Society Award for the score of Weltparlament (1st scene of Wednesday from Light); Honorary member of the music ensemble LIM (Laboratorio de Interpretación Musical), Madrid;
- 1999 Entry in the Golden Book of the city of Cologne;
- 2000 German Music Publishers Society Award for the score of Evas Erstgeburt (Act 1 of Monday from Light);
- 2000–2001 The film In Absentia made by the Quay BrothersBrothers QuayStephen and Timothy Quay are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators...
(England) to concrete and electronic music by Karlheinz Stockhausen won the Golden Dove (first prize) at the International Festival for Animated Film in Leipzig. More awards: Special Jury Mention, Montreal, FCMM 2000; Special Jury Award, Tampere 2000; Special Mention, Golden Prague Awards 2001; Honorary Diploma Award, Cracow 2001; Best Animated Short Film, 50th Melbourne International Film Festival 2001; Grand Prix, Turku Finland 2001; - 2001 German Music Publishers Society Award for the score Helicopter String Quartet (3rd scene of Wednesday from Light); Polar Music PrizePolar Music PrizeThe Polar Music Prize is a Swedish international music award founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, possibly best known to be the manager of the Swedish pop group ABBA, with a donation to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music....
of the Royal Swedish Academy of the Arts; - 2002 Honorary Patron of the Sonic Arts NetworkSonic Arts NetworkSonic Arts Network was a UK-based organisation, established in 1979, that aimed to enable both audiences and practitioners to engage with the art of sound through a programme of festivals, events, commissions and education projects...
, England; - 2003 German Music Publishers Society Award for the score of Michaelion (4th scene of Wednesday from Light);
- 2004 Associated member of the Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres & des Beaux-arts (Belgium); Honorary doctorate (Dr. phil. h. c.) of the Queen's University in Belfast; German Music Publishers Society Award for the score of Stop and Start for 6 instrumental groups;
- 2005 German Music Publishers Society Award for the score of Hoch-Zeiten for choir (5th scene of Sunday from Light).
- 2006 Honorary member of the Accademia Filarmonica di BolognaPhilharmonic Academy of BolognaThe Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna is a music education institution in Bologna, Italy.It was established in 1666. Saint Anthony of Padua was chosen as its patron saint and the image of an organ bearing the motto Unitate melos was chosen as its coat of arms...
- 2008 On 22 August, Stockhausen's birthday, the Rathausplatz in his home town of Kürten was renamed Karlheinz-Stockhausen-Platz in his honour (Bäumer 2008).
- 2009 German Music Publishers Society Award for the score of Momente for solo soprano, four choral groups, and 13 instrumentalists.
- 2010 The municipality of Kürten adopts the designation "Stockhausengemeinde" in honour of the late composer (Landschoof 2010).
Notable students
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- Holger SchüringHolger CzukayHolger Czukay is a German musician, probably best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. Described by critic Jason Ankeny as "successfully bridg[ing] the gap between pop and the avant-garde," Czukay is also notable for creating early important examples of ambient music, for exploring...
- Kurt SchwertsikKurt SchwertsikKurt Schwertsik is an Austrian contemporary composer. He is famous for creating the “Third Viennese School” and spreading contemporary classical music....
- Gerald ShapiroGerald Shapiro (composer)Gerald M. Shapiro is an American composer of acoustic and electronic music.Shapiro studied first at the Eastman School of Music, where he received a Bachelor of Music degree with distinction in 1964. He then did graduate work at Mills College, where he received an M.A...
- Makoto ShinoharaMakoto Shinoharais a Japanese composer.- Biography :Shinohara studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts from 1952 to 1954, studying composition with Tomojiro Ikenouchi, piano with Kazuko Yasukawa, and conducting with Akeo Watanabe and Kurt Woess. From 1954 to 1960, he studied in Paris with Tony Aubin, Olivier...
- Roger SmalleyRoger SmalleyRoger Smalley AM is a British-Australian composer, pianist and conductor. Professor Smalley is currently a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia in Perth and Honorary Research Associate at the University of Sydney.-Biography:Smalley was born in Swinton, Lancashire,...
- Avo SõmerAvo SõmerAvo Somer is an American musicologist music theorist, and composer, of Estonian birth.Avo Sõmer emigrated from Estonia with his parents in 1944, when he was ten years old, first to Germany and then to the United States. He had already begun playing the piano as a child in Pärnu...
- Tim SousterTim SousterTim Souster was a British composer best known for his electronic music output.- Background :Born Timothy Andrew James Souster in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, Souster was educated at Bedford Modern School and New College, Oxford...
- Atli Heimir SveinssonAtli Heimir SveinssonAtli Heimir Sveinsson is an Icelandic composer.Atli Heimir was born in Reykjavík, Iceland and started piano lessons at the age of 10. He studied piano with Rögnvaldur Sigurjónsson at the Reykjavík College of Music and took his diploma in 1957...
- Zsigmond SzathmáryZsigmond SzathmáryZsigmond Szathmáry is a Hungarian organist, pianist, composer, and conductor.-Life:Szathmáry studied composition with Ferenc Szabó and organ with Ferenc Gergely at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest from 1958 to 1963...
- Ivan TcherepninIvan TcherepninIvan Tcherepnin was an experimental, then later modernist/postmodernist, composer. He was born into a highly musical family, his father and grandfather, Alexander and Nikolai, being distinguished Russian composers, and his mother Ming a well-known pianist...
- Serge TcherepninSerge TcherepninSerge Tcherepnin is an American composer and electronic-instrument builder of Russian-Chinese origin. He created the Serge Modular synthesizer.-Biography:...
- Gilles TremblayGilles TremblayGilles Tremblay, is a Canadian composer. He studied at the Conservatories of Montreal and Paris , where his teachers including Olivier Messiaen , Yvonne Loriod , and Maurice Martenot . He also attended Stockhausen's summer courses at Darmstadt, where he became interested in electro-acoustic...
- Stephen TrueloveStephen TrueloveStephen Nathan Truelove is an American composer, teacher, and pianist.-Life:Truelove was born in Hobart, Oklahoma, and studied composition at Tulsa University, where he received an M.M. in 1970...
- Claude VivierClaude Vivier-Biography:Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of...
- Kevin VolansKevin VolansKevin Volans is a composer associated with the post-minimalist movement in contemporary composition. He was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa on July 6, 1949, and even though he has spent most of his life outside his native country, is the best known South African composer active today.In...
- Thomas WellsThomas Wells (composer)Thomas Wells is an American composer, pianist, organist, and arts-organization administrator.-Biography:...
- La Monte YoungLa Monte YoungLa Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
- Hans ZenderHans ZenderJohannes Wolfgang Zender is a German conductor and composer.-Life:From 1956 to 1959 Zender studied piano, conducting, and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Frankfurt and at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.From 1959 to 1963 he was Kapellmeister of the Municipal Theatres in Freiburg im...
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- Éloy, Jean-ClaudeJean-Claude ÉloyJean-Claude Éloy is a French composer of instrumental, vocal and electroacoustic music.In his work Éloy realized one of the most significant syntheses of 20th-century music: between electronic and acoustic music, between Western and non-Western traditions...
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and Kathinka PasveerKathinka Pasveer-Biography:Kathinka Pasveer was born in Zaandam, North Holland, the daughter of a conductor who also taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory . She studied with Frans Vester at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where she received her performer's diploma, with the distinction of the Nicolai Prize in...
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- Kohl, Jerome. 2008. Programme notes in the programme booklet for the Klang Festival, (1–9 November), Southbank Centre, London: 12–13, 16–17, 20–21, 24–25.
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- Kohl, Jerome. 2010. "A Child of the Radio Age". In Cut & Splice: Transmission, edited by Daniela Cascella and Lucia Farinati, 135–39. London: Sound and Music. ISBN 978-1-907378-03-4
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- Kurtz, Michael. 1992. Stockhausen: A Biography, translated by Richard Toop. London and Boston: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0571143237 (cloth) ISBN 0-571-17146-X (pbk)
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- Lebrecht, Norman. 1985. The Book of Musical Anecdotes. New York: Simon and Schuster; London: Sphere Books. ISBN 0029187109.
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- Roads, CurtisCurtis RoadsCurtis Roads is a composer of electronic and electroacoustic music specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis, author, and computer programmer....
. 2001. Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0262182157. - Romney, Jonathan. 2001. "The Barbican's Musical Jellyfish: Sound on Film Live". The Guardian (3 March).
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- Rudi, Jøran (editor), Flø, Asbjørn BlokkumAsbjørn Blokkum FløAsbjørn Blokkum Flø is a Norwegian composer, musician and sound artist.He studied composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo with Lasse Thoresen, Asbjørn Schaathun and Ivar Frounberg...
, Schaathun, Asbjørn. 2008. Karlheinz Stockhausen – A Pioneer in Utopia. Oslo: Notam. ISBN 978-82-996867-2-3. - Sabbe, Herman. 1981. "Die Einheit der Stockhausen-Zeit ...: Neue Erkenntnismöglichkeiten der seriellen Entwicklung anhand des frühen Wirkens von Stockhausen und Goeyvaerts. Dargestellt aufgrund der Briefe Stockhausens an Goevaerts". In Musik-Konzepte 19: Karlheinz Stockhausen: ... wie die Zeit verging ..., edited by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, 5–96. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik.
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- Skowron, Zbigniew. 1981. "Muzyka elektroniczna Karlheinza Stockhausena. Okres prób i doswiadczen" [Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic music. A period of trials and experiences]. Muzyka: Kwartalnik Instytutu Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk 26, nos. 3–4:17–40.
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- Stephens, Suzanne, and Kathinka Pasveer (eds.). 2008. Gedenkschrift für Stockhausen. Kürten: Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik. ISBN 978-3-00-023528-3.
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- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. Texte zur Musik. 10 vols. Vols. 1–3 edited by Dieter Schnebel; vols. 4–10 edited by Christoph von Blumröder. Vols. 1–3, Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg (1963, 1964, 1971); vols. 4–6 DuMont Buchverlag (1978, 1989, 1989). Vols. 7–10 Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag (1998). English edition, as Texts on Music, edited by Jerome Kohl, with translations by Jerome Kohl, Richard Toop, Tim Nevill, Suzanne Stephens, et al. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag, in preparation.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1962. "The Concept of Unity in Electronic Music". Translated by Elaine Barkin. Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1 (Autumn): 39–48.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1989a. Stockhausen on Music: Lectures and Interviews, edited by Robin Maconie. London and New York: Marion Boyars. ISBN 0-7145-2887-0 (cloth) ISBN 0-7145-2918-4 (pbk).
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1989b. Towards a Cosmic Music. Texts selected and translated by Tim Nevill. Shaftsbury: Element Books. ISBN 1852300841.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1996a. "Electroacoustic Performance Practice". Perspectives of New Music 34, no. 1 (Fall): 74–105.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1996b. "Kino-Bilder". In Bilder vom Kino: Literarische Kabinettstücke, edited by Wolfram Schütte, 138–40. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1996c. "Helikopter-Streichquartett". Grand Street 14, no. 4 (Spring, "Grand Street 56: Dreams"):213–25. ISBN 1-885490-07-0. Online Variant of this text (some omissions, some supplements, different illustrations).
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1998. "Bildung ist große Arbeit: Karlheinz Stockhausen im Gespräch mit Studierenden des Musikwissenschaftlichen Instituts der Universität zu Köln am 5. Februar 1997." In Stockhausen 70: Das Programmbuch Köln 1998. Signale aus Köln: Musik der Zeit 1, edited by Imke Misch and Christoph von Blumröder, 1–36. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1999. Stockhausen-Kurse Kürten 1999: Kompositions-Kurs: Skizzen von Welt-Parlament (1995) für Chor a capella (mit singenden Dirigenten/Klangregisseur (1. Szene vom Mittwoch aus Licht). Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2001a. "Message from Professor Karlheinz Stockhausen" (Accessed 27 December 2007).
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2001b. Stockhausen Courses Kürten 2001: Composition Course on Lights-Waters (Sunday Greeting) for Soprano, Tenor, and orchestra with synthesizer (1999). Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2002. "„Huuuh!“ Das Pressegespräch am 16. September 2001 im Senatszimmer des Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg". MusikTexte no. 91:69–77.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2003. Stockhausen Courses Kürten 2003: Composition Course on Hoch-Zeiten (of Sunday from Light) for Choir (2001/02). Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2007a. "http://www.stockhausen.org/cosmic_pulses_prog.pdfCosmic PulsesCosmic PulsesCosmic Pulses is the last electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and it is number 93 in his catalog of works. Its duration is 32 minutes. The piece has been described as "a sonic roller coaster", "a Copernican asylum", and a "tornado watch"....
: Electronic Music]." (Accessed 30 March 2008) In programme book for the world première. Rome (8 May). Slightly expanded version in 2007 Stockhausen-Kurse Kürten: Programm zu den Interpretations- und Kompositionskursen und Konzerten der Musik von / Programme for the Interpretation and Composition Courses and Concerts of the Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 7. Juli bis 15. Juli 2007 in Kürten / from July 7th to 15th 2007 in Kuerten, notes for the German première on 13 July 2007, pp. 22 (German text) and 40 (English text), with illustrations divided between those pages and the programme cover. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag. - Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2007b. "Harmonien/Harmonies for Bass Clarinet (2006)". In 2007 Stockhausen-Kurse Kürten: Programm zu den Interpretations- und Kompositionskursen und Konzerten der Musik von / Programme for the Interpretation and Composition Courses and Concerts of the Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 7. Juli bis 15. Juli 2007 in Kürten / from July 7th to 15th 2007 in Kuerten, notes for the German première on 11 July 2007, pp. 33–34. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
- Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 2007c. "Harmonien/Harmonies for Flute (2006): 5th Hour of Klang / Sound, The 24 Hours of the Day". In 2007 Stockhausen-Kurse Kürten: Programm zu den Interpretations- und Kompositionskursen und Konzerten der Musik von / Programme for the Interpretation and Composition Courses and Concerts of the Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 7. Juli bis 15. Juli 2007 in Kürten / from July 7th to 15th 2007 in Kuerten, notes for the German première on 13 July 2007, p. 36. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
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- Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Hermann Conen, and Jochen Hennlich. 1989. "Before and After Samstag aus Licht: Conversation of 24 May 1984, in Milan." Translated by Karin von Abrams. Contemporary Music Review 5, no. 1:267–97.
- Stockhausen, Markus. 1998. "Markus Stockhausen plays Karlheinz Stockhausen", notes on pp. 13–17 of booklet to CD recording, Markus Stockhausen plays Karlheinz Stockhausen: Aries, In Freundschaft, Halt, Pietà. EMI Classics 7243 5 56645 2 5.
- Stockhausen-Stiftung. 2007. Stockhausen Aufführungen/Performances 2007. Kürten: Stockhausen-Stiftung.
- Stockhausen-Stiftung. 2008. Stockhausen Aufführungen/Performances 2008. Kürten: Stockhausen-Stiftung.
- Stockhausen-Verlag. 2010. Stockhausen August 22nd 1928 – 5 December 5th 2007, English edition of brochure with official worklist and list of CDs. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
- Straus, Joseph N. 1997. "Babbitt and Stravinsky under the Serial 'Regime'" Perspectives of New Music 35, no. 2 (Summer): 17–32.
- Straus, Joseph N. 2001. Stravinsky's Late Music. Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis 16. New York: Cambridge University Press 33–35. ISBN 0521802202
- Stravinsky, Igor. 1984. Selected Correspondence, vol. 2. Edited and with commentaries by Robert Craft. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. 1960. Memories and Commentaries. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
- Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. 1980. Conversations with Stravinsky. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0520040406 (Reprint of the 1959 Doubleday edition).
- Tannenbaum, Mya. 1987. Conversations with Stockhausen, translated from the Italian by David Butchart. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-315467-6.
- Tommasini, AnthonyAnthony Tommasini-Early years:Tommasini was born in Brooklyn around 1948 and raised on Long Island. He was admitted to Oberlin College's Conservatory of Music, but chose to matriculate at Yale University in order to obtain a broader liberal arts education...
. 2001. "The Devil Made Him Do It". New York Times (30 September). - Tilbury, John. 2008. Cornelius Cardew (1936–1981) – A Life Unfinished. Harlow: Copula.
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[Tel Aviv] (17 March). - Ulrich, Thomas. 2006. Neue Musik aus religiösem Geist: theologisches Denken im Werk von Karlheinz Stockhausen und John Cage. Saarbrücken: Pfau. ISBN 9783897273283
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External links
- Karlheinz Stockhausen official site
- official site for the Stockhausen CD Edition
- The Stockhausen Society (International)
- Catalogues of works by Stockhausen (Stockhausen Verlag)
- Comprehensive Stockhausen Discography
- Ingvar Loco Nordin’s Stockhausen pages
Listening
- Stockhausen website video and audio files
- Epitonic.com: Karlheinz Stockhausen featuring tracks from Mantra
- Excerpts from sound archives of Stockhausen's works
Obituaries
- [Editor]. 2007. "Karlheinz Stockhausen". The Times (8 December).
- Ircam-Centre Pompidou, and François Decarsin. 2007. Karlheinz Stockhausen: Compositeur allemand né le 22 août 1928 à Mödrath, près de Cologne, et décédé le 5 décembre 2007, à Kürten, où il vivait. (10 December).
- Nonnenmann, Rainer. 2007. "In Kürten zu Hause—und im Universum". Kölner Stadt-AnzeigerKölner Stadt-AnzeigerThe Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger is a daily newspaper published in Cologne, Germany, and has the largest circulation in the Cologne/Bonn Metropolitan Region...
(7 December).
Interviews
- Weasel, Gary. 2007. "Looping the Loop: Karlheinz Stockhausen". Dazed Digital (31 May).
Further reading
- Austin, Kevin. 2010. "Kontakte by Karlheinz Stockhausen in Four Channels". eContact! 12.4—Perspectives on the Electroacoustic Work / Perspectives sur l’œuvre électroacoustique (August). Montréal: CECCanadian Electroacoustic CommunityFounded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
. - Betsill, Daniel Joseph. 2007. The construction of Stockhausen’s Heaven’s Door.
- Covell, Grant Chu. 2000. "Stockhausen Is Invisible". La Folia 3/1 (November).
- Covell, Grant Chu. 2007. "Ferneyhough & Stockhausen: Grubby and Gruppen". La Folia (April).
- Essl, Karlheinz 1989. "Aspekte des Seriellen bei Karlheinz Stockhausen". First appeared in Lothar Knessl (Ed.) WIEN MODERN '89, pp. 90–97. Vienna.
- Föllmer, Golo. [n.d.] "Karlheinz Stockhausen: «Spherical Concert Hall»" (Osaka World Expo, 1970). Medien Kunst Net / Media Art Net.