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Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22 1928) is a German composer, one of the most important and controversial composers of the 20th century. Biography Stockhausen was born in (Alt-)Mödrath (near Kerpen, in the vicinity of Cologne), a village that was later dislocated by the strip-mining of lignite in the region. He grew up from the age of 7 in Altenberg, where he received his first piano lessons from the Protestant organist of the Altenberg Cathedral, Franz-Josef Kloth. He studied music pedagogy and piano at the Cologne Musikhochschule, and musicology, philosophy, and Germanics at the University of Cologne (1947-51). It was only in 1950 that he developed an interest in composition, and was admitted at the end of the year to the class of the Swiss composer Frank Martin, who had just begun a seven-year tenure in Cologne. At the Darmstadt Summer Courses in 1951 he 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 (1952-53). In March 1953 he left Paris to take up a position as assistant to Herbert Eimert, at the newly established Electronic Music Studio of NWDR (from 1 January 1955, WDR) in Cologne. (In 1962 he succeeded Eimert as director of the studio.) From 1954 to 1956 he studied phonetics, acoustics, and information theory with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. Together with Eimert, he edited the influential journal Die Reihe from 1955 to 1962. 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. He was guest professor of composition at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965, and at the University of California, Davis, in 1966-67. He founded and directed the Cologne Courses for New Music from 1963 to 1968, and was appointed Professor of Composition at the National Conservatory of Music, Cologne, in 1971, where he taught until 1977. In 1961 he 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, designed to his specifications by the architect Erich Schneider-Wessling, where he has resided since its completion in the autumn of 1965. In 1998, he founded the Stockhausen Courses, held annually in Kürten. In 1951 he married Doris Andreae, with whom he had four children: Suja (b. 1953), Christel (b. 1956), Markus (b. 1957), and Majella (b. 1961). In 1967 he married Mary Bauermeister, with whom he had two children: Julika (b. 1966) and Simon (b. 1967). 1950s From 1951, Stockhausen worked with a form of serial composition that rejected the twelve-tone technique of Schoenberg. He characterizes many of these earliest serial 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 is specifically cited by Stockhausen as an example of "punctual music"), and the first (unpublished) versions of Punkte and Kontra-Punkte (1952). Starting in 1953, he turned to electronic procedures, first producing two Electronic Studies (1953 and 1954), and then introducing spatial placements of sound sources with his noted work Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–56). His position as the leading composer of his generation was established with this work and three concurrently composed pieces in different media: Zeitmasze for five woodwinds, Gruppen for three orchestras, and Klavierstück XI. In instrumental music he began using graphical notation in 1959 with Zyklus). Stockhausen sometimes departs radically from musical tradition and his work is influenced by Messiaen, Edgar Varèse, and Anton Webern, as well as by film (Stockhausen 1996) and by painters such as Mondrian and Klee. 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 calls this "variable form." In other cases, a work may be presented from a number of different perspectives. In Zyklus for example, 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. Still other works permit different routes through the constituent parts. Stockhausen calls both of these possibilities "polyvalent form," 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). In many of his works, elements are played off against one another, simultaneously and successively: in Kontra-Punkte ("Against Points", 1952-53), 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. 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. 1960s In 1962 Stockhausen returned to the composition of vocal music (for the first time since Gesang der Jünglinge), with an expansive cantata titled Momente (1962-64/69), for solo soprano, four choir groups and thirteen instrumentalists. He pioneered live electronics in Mixtur (1964/67/2003) for orchestra and electronics, Mikrophonie I (1964) for tam-tam, two microphones, two filters with potentiometers (6 players), Mikrophonie II (1965) for choir, Hammond organ, and four ring modulators, and Solo for a melody instrument with feedback (1966), and composed two electronic works for tape, Telemusik (1966) and Hymnen (1966-67), though the latter also exists in a version with soloists, and the third of its four "regions" in a version with with orchestra. Through the 1960s, Stockhausen explored the 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), Für kommende Zeiten (1968-70), and Ylem (1972). 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. 1970s Beginning with Mantra (1970), Stockhausen turned to formula composition, a technique which involves the projection and multiplication of a single melody, double- or triple-line formula, sometimes stated at the outset as an introduction (Mantra, Inori). He continued to use this technique through the completion of the opera-cycle Licht in 2003. Some works from the 1970s did not employ formula technique, but nevertheless share its simpler, melodically oriented style. Tierkreis ("Zodiac", 1974-75) and In Freundschaft ("In Friendship", 1977) are amongst these, and have become Stockhausen's most widely performed and recorded compositions. 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, and in his orchestral composition Sub-Kontur (1974-75) quoted the formula of Stockhausen's Inori (1973-74). 1977-2003 Stockhausen has written over 300 individual works. Between 1977 to 2003 he composed a cycle of seven operas called Licht ("Light"). The Licht cycle deals with the relationships between three characters; Lucifer, Michael and Eve. Stockhausen's conception of opera is based significantly on ceremony and ritual and his approach to characterisation shows the influence of Artaud in its rejection of psychological perspective. Similarly, his approach to voice and text suggests a change from the traditional emphasis: a few parts of Licht are written in simulated languages. After 2003 Since completing Licht, Stockhausen has embarked on a new cycle of compositions, based on the hours of the day, titled Klang ("Sound"). The works from this cycle performed to date are First Hour: Himmelfahrt (Ascension), for organ or synthesizer, soprano and tenor (2004-5); Second Hour: Freude (Joy) for two harps (2005); Third Hour: Natürliche Dauern (Natural Durations) for piano (2005-6); and Fourth Hour: Himmels-Tür (Heaven's Door) for a percussionist and a little girl (2005). The Fifth Hour, Harmonien (Harmonies) is for flute, bass clarinet, and trumpet (2006); the flute and bass clarinet solos from this piece will be premièred in Kürten in July 2007. The Sixth Hour, Cosmic Pulses, an electronic work, is to be premiered in Rome on 7 May 2007. In the early 1990s Stockhausen reacquired the licenses to most the recordings of his music he had made to that point, and began his own record company to make this music permanently available on compact disc. He also designs and prints his own musical scores, which often involve unconventional devices. The score for his piece Refrain, for instance, includes a rotatable (refrain) on a transparent plastic strip, and dynamics in Weltparlament (the first scene of Mittwoch aus Licht) are coded in colour. Stockhausen is one of the few major twentieth-century composers to write a large amount of music for the trumpet, inspired by his son Markus Stockhausen, a trumpeter. The dream of flying has accompanied Karlheinz Stockhausen's career since the very beginning. Back in the early 1950s, when he was enthralling some and infuriating others in the avant-garde community around the Darmstadt Summer Courses in New Music with his first works Punkte, Kontra-Punkte and Kreuzspiel, he was already developing his first ideas for liberating musicians from the constraints of gravity. This interest came to a head with the Helikopter-Streichquartett, completed in 1993. In this, the four members of a string quartet each perform from their own helicopter flying above 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. Despite its extremely unusual nature, the piece has been given several performances, including one on 22nd August 2003 as part of the Salzburg Festival to open the Hangar-7 venue. The work has also been recorded by the Arditti Quartet. Reception Stockhausen and his music have been controversial and influential. 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). Popular and jazz musicians such as Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton (Radano 1993, 110), Can, The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Coil, Björk, Sonic Youth, Miles Davis (Bergstein 1992), Frank Zappa, Yusef Lateef (Feather 1964; Tsahar 2006), and Herbie Hancock cite Stockhausen as an influence. It has been argued that various movements in electronic music such as the development of techno or even hip hop (in the use of sampling) could not have happened without Stockhausen's work. September 11, 2001 terrorist attack statement controversy After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Stockhausen was alleged to have made the statement that the attacks were works of art. In a subsequent message, he stated that the press had hideously misinterpreted his meaning, 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. (http://www.stockhausen.org/message_from_karlheinz.html) Stockhausen in literature Stockhausen in popular culture Stockhausen is among the figures on the cover of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Stockhausen is cited as an influence in the liner notes of Frank Zappa's first album, Freak Out!. In the 1978 Italian movie "Dove vai in vacanza?" ("Where are you going on holiday?"), in the episode "Le vacanze intelligenti" ("The smart vacations") directed by Alberto Sordi, a group of intellectuals confuse the snoring of the two main characters (a couple, the actors are Alberto Sordi and Anna Longhi) with music by Stockhausen. In the television sitcom Man about the House, series 2, episode 5 ("Two Foot Two, Eyes of Blue"), Jo's new boyfriend Philip takes her to a Stockhausen concert. She is not amused, but Philip is undaunted, explaining that she just doesn't yet appreciate his "exploration of the spatial possibilities of the twelve-note idiom, and his use of variant states patterned together." In a 1985 episode of the satirical puppet-show Spitting Image a sketch speculates about sequels to the hit film Amadeus. The suggestions are (1) "Seb", about Johann Sebastian Bach, (2) "Van", about Ludwig van Beethoven, (3) "Stocky", about Karlheinz Stockhausen, and (4) "Lloydy", about Andrew Lloyd Webber. In the first three, the title character is pronounced as being (like Mozart in Amadeus) "a composer who farts a lot", but for Lloyd Webber "a fart who composes a lot." In episode 5 of the second (1991) series of Lovejoy, apprentice Eric protests when Tinker offers 300 pounds to an old gent for a battered square piano. Tinker mildly responds that the young have no appreciation for the finer aspects of music, and strikes what might have been a C-major chord, had the instrument not been used as a potting table in a steamy greenhouse for the better part of a century. Upon hearing the resulting percussive racket, Tink looks up at Eric, smiles brightly, and says: "Stockhausen." Track Richard Wright, keyboardist for the band Pink Floyd, studied with Stockhausen. A Sound collage artist goes by the pseudonym Stock, Hausen & Walkman (clearly a parody of Stock, Aitken and Waterman). The album Lover, the Lord Has Left Us... by the musical group The Sound of Animals Fighting was heavily influenced by Stockhausen and has a song entitled "Stockhausen, Es Ist Ihr Gehrin, Das (sic) Ich Suche." Also, in the last song "There Can Be No Dispute That Monsters Live Among Us", the lyrics in that song are quotes from Stockhausen's views on modern music. Stockhausen is namechecked in the track "I Am Damo Suzuki" by The Fall. Stockhausen is Honorary Patron of the UK sound art and experimental electronic music organisation Sonic Arts Network. Criticism Perhaps the most caustic remark about Stockhausen was made by Sir Thomas Beecham. Asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen, he said, "No, but I once trod in some."** 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, 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 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). Listening | |||||||
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