Karlheinz Stockhausen Totally Explained

Everything about Karlheinz Stockhausen totally explained

Karlheinz Stockhausen (August 22 1928 – December 5 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 twentieth and early twenty-first 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 artists. 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 boxes 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.

Biography

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 Kreis. The village, located near Kerpen in the vicinity of Cologne, was displaced in 1956 by the strip-mining of lignite in the region, though the castle itself still exists. His father was a schoolteacher and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous family of farmers in Neurath in the Cologne Bight. She 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 & 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). His father, Simon Stockhausen, remarried in 1938 and with his new wife Luzia, had two daughters (Kurtz 1992, 18). Because his relationship with his new stepmother was less than happy, in January 1942 he 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). According to one source, as a young teenager he worked as a cobbler (Prendergast 2000, 52). In 1941 or 1942, he learned that his mother had died, ostensibly from leukemia, though everyone at the same hospital had supposedly died of the same disease. It was generally understood that she'd been a victim of the Nazi policy of euthanasia for "useless eaters" (Stockhausen 1989a, 20; Kurtz 1992, 19). Later, Stockhausen dramatised his mother's death in hospital by lethal injection, in Act 1 scene 2 ("Mondeva") of the opera Donnerstag aus Licht (Kurtz 1992, 213). 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" (Kurtz 1992, 19).

Education

From 1947 to 1951, Stockhausen studied music pedagogy and piano at the Hochschule für Musik Köln (Cologne Conservatory of Music) and musicology, philosophy, and Germanics at the University of Cologne. He had the usual training in harmony and counterpoint, the latter with Hermann Schroeder, but he didn't develop a real interest in composition until 1950. He was admitted at the end of that year to the class of the 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 the 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 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'd 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 influential journal Die Reihe from 1955 to 1962 (Grant 2001, 1–2).

Career and adult life

Family and home

On 29 December 1951, in Hamburg, he married Doris Andreae (Kurtz 1992, 45; Maconie 2005, 47). Together they'd four children: Suja (b. 1953), Christel (b. 1956), Markus (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'd 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).

Teaching

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 2008, 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 2008, 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 2008, 3). In 1998, he founded the Stockhausen Courses, which are held annually in Kürten (Stockhausen-Verlag 2008, 6–8, 15).

"Space music" and Expo 70

Ever 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 Jünglinge (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 choirs and orchestras (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 government invited Stockhausen to collaborate on the German Pavilion at the 1970 World Fair in Osaka, and with the artist Otto Piene to create a joint multimedia project for it. 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 the 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 only 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). Photos and architectural plans of the auditorium of the West German Pavilion and its sound system.

Though Stockhausen and Piene’s planned multimedia project, titled Hinab-Hinauf, was developed in considerable 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). More photos of the spherical auditorium at Expo 70

Publishing activities

From the mid-1950s onward, Stockhausen designed (and in some cases had had printed) his own musical scores for his publisher, Universal Edition, 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 [thefirst 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 2008, 12–13). In the early 1990s, Stockhausen reacquired the licenses to most of the recordings of his music he'd made to that point, and started his own record company to make this music permanently available on compact disc (Maconie 2005, 477–78).

Comments on the 9/11 attacks

In a press conference in Hamburg on September 16, 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've renounced him. But he's very much present, like in New York recently" (Stockhausen 2002, 76). The same journalist then asked how the recent September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks affected him, and how he viewed these reports in connection with the harmony of humanity represented in Hymnen. 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's 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're nothing, as composers. [...] It is a crime, you know of course, because the people didn't agree to it. They didn't 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'd 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've defined Lucifer as the cosmic spirit of rebellion, of anarchy. He uses his high degree of intelligence to destroy creation. He doesn't 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)

Death

Stockhausen died of sudden heart failure on the morning of 5 December 2007 in Kürten, North Rhine-Westphalia (Bäumer 2007). He had just the night before finished a work recently commissioned for performance by the Mozart Orchestra of Bologna (Bäumer 2007).

Compositions

Stockhausen wrote 370 individual works. He often departs radically from musical tradition and his work is influenced by Olivier Messiaen, 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).

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 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: Zeitmasze 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 (for example, 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 graphical 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 (1955-7), 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).

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 2008, 18). Two years later, he began an expansive cantata titled Momente (1962-64/69), for solo soprano, four choir groups and thirteen instrumentalists (Stockhausen-Verlag 2008, 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 2008, 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 potentiometers (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 2008, 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 2008, 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 overtones 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).

1970s

Beginning with Mantra 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 (for example, in the two related solo-clarinet pieces, Harlekin ["Harlequin"] and Der kleine Harlekin ["TheLittle 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 2008, 10). Some works from the 1970s didn't employ formula technique—for example, the vocal duet "Am Himmel wandre ich" ("In the Sky I'm 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's 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 2008, 23–25).

1977–2003

Between 1977 and 2003, he composed seven operas in a cycle titled Licht: Die sieben Tage der Woche ("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 = travelling and learning, etc.) and with the relationships between and among 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). 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 (for example, 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 2008, 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 helicopters 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 June 26, 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 2008, 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.

2003–2007

After completing Licht, Stockhausen embarked on a new cycle of compositions, based on the hours of the day, entitled Klang ("Sound"). Twenty-one of these pieces were completed before the composer's death (Stockhausen-Verlag 2008, 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 2008, 49). The Fifth Hour, Harmonien (Harmonies), is a solo in three versions for flute, bass clarinet, and trumpet (2006) (Stockhausen-Verlag 2008, 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 première of the trumpet version is planned for 2 August 2008 in London on the BBC Proms series (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 7). The Sixth through Twelfth hours are chamber-music works based on the material from the Fifth Hour (Stockhausen-Verlag 2008, 49). Of these, the premières of the Sixth (Schönheit, for flute, trumpet, and bass clarinet), Seventh (Balance, for flute, English horn, and bass clarinet), Ninth (Hoffnung, for string trio), Tenth (Glanz, for nine instruments, commission of the Asko Ensemble and the Holland Festival), and Twentieth (Edentia for soprano saxophone and electronic music) have been announced for 23 August 2008, 31 August 2008, 19 June 2008, and 6 August 2008, respectively (Stockhausen-Stiftung 2008, 5–8). 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 three of the layers of Cosmic Pulses (Stockhausen-Verlag 2008, 50).

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 Mozart, 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 tempos 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

suggested that the entire compositional structure could be conceived as "timbre": since "the different experienced components such as color, harmony and melody, meter and rhythm, dynamics, and form correspond to the different segmental ranges of this unified time" [Texte1:120], the total musical result at any given compositional level is simply the "spectrum" of a more basic duration—for example, its "timbre," perceived as the overall effect of the overtone structure 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 "fundamental"—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)

Some 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).
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).

Reception

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 Evangelisti 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:

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're 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's makes the new generation new. (Stravinsky and Craft 1959, 133)

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

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's 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'd 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, didn't 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 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).
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). 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. 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 vaguely said to have done the same (Prendergast 2000, 54), though Stockhausen himself merely says the former band included students of Luciano Berio and both were "well orientated toward new music" (Texte 4, 505). Founding members of Cologne-based experimental band Can, Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, state they studied with Stockhausen (Irmin Schmidt biography

; Holger Czukay biography

, though Czukay at the time was known as Holger Schüring), and this is confirmed to have been from 1963 to 1966 at the Cologne Courses for New Music (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; Guðmundsdóttir 1996; Ross 2004, 53 & 55).

Wider cultural renown

Stockhausen, along with John Cage, is one of the few avant-garde composers to have succeeded in penetrating the popular consciousness (Anon. 2007b; Broyles 2004; Hewett 2007). The Beatles famously 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'd achieved by that time (1967). Stockhausen's name, and the perceived strangeness and unlistenability of his music, was even a punchline in cartoons, as documented on a page on the official Stockhausen web site ((External Link

)). Perhaps the most caustic remark about Stockhausen was attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham. Asked "Have you heard any Stockhausen?", he's alleged to have replied, "No, but I believe I've trodden in some" (Lebrecht 1983, 334).
Stockhausen's fame is also reflected in works of literature. For example, he's 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).

Criticism

Robin Maconie finds that, "Compared to the work of his contemporaries, Stockhausen’s music has a depth and rational integrity that's 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 Beethoven: "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). Igor Stravinsky expressed great, but not uncritical, enthusiasm for Stockhausen's music in the conversation books with Robert Craft (for example, 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 sent Stockhausen a package of recordings from contemporary artists Aphex Twin, 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'd give these young musicians. Stockhausen made suggestions to each of the musicians, who were then invited to respond. All but Plastikman obliged (Witts 1995).

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-Westfalia; Grand Prix du Disque (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 Music;
1973 Member of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin;
1974 Distinguished Service Cross, 1st class (Germany);
1977 Member of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome;
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 Lettres (France);
1986 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize;
1987 Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, London;
1988 Honorary Citizen of the Kuerten community (Gemeinde Kürten website);
1989 Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
1990 Prix Ars Electronica, 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-UNESCO Picasso Medal; Distinguished Service Medal of the German state North Rhine-Westfalia; 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 Berlin; 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 Brothers (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 Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of the Arts;
2002 Honorary Patron of the Sonic Arts Network, 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).

Notable students

Karl Gottfried Brunotte

Jennifer Helen McLeod

Atli Heimir Sveinsson

Further Information

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