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Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer who is widely regarded as one among, if not the most influential figure of the world of music in the 20th century.
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In 1935, with 7 years, in Altenberg, Stockhausen received his first piano lessons from the Protestant organist of the Altenberg Cathedral, Franz-Josef Kloth.
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Stockhausen became a boarder at teachers training college in Xanten,where he continued his piano training and also studied oboe and violin.
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From 1947 to 1951 Stockhausen studied, simultaneously, music pedagogy and piano at the Hochschule für Musik Köln (Cologne Conservatory of Music) and musicology, philosophy, and Germanics at the University of Cologne.
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 resolved to do likewise. -
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.
In December 1952, he composed a Konkrete Etüde, realized in Pierre Schaeffer's Paris musique concrète studio. -
Left Paris and back do Germany to take up a position as assistant to Herbert Eimert at the newly established Electronic Music Studio of Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, in Cologne.
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Composed at Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio, was significant in that it seamlessly integrates electronic sounds with the human voice by means of matching voice resonances with pitch and creating sounds of phonemes electronically. In this way, for the first time ever it successfully brought together the two opposing worlds, electronic German with French concrete music, which transforms recordings of acoustical events also noted for its early use of spatiality; it was originally in five-channel.
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He received a commission from WDR for a new orchestral composition, but his ongoing work on Gesang der Jünglinge prevented him from starting right away. He took the opportunity to retreat to an rented room of a parsonage in Paspels, Switzerland. He created the entire plan of Gruppen, "with a completely new conception of musical time". 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.
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IN PROGRESS...
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There are seven operas, each named for a day of the week, whose subject matter reflects attributes associated in traditional mythologies with each day:
Montag/Monday - The Moon (1984-88)
Dienstag/Tuesday - Mars (1977/1987-91)
Mittwoch/Wednesday - Mercury (1995 - 97)
Donnerstag/Thrusday - Jupiter (1978 - 80)
Freitag/Friday - Venus (1991 - 94)
Samstag/Saturday - Saturn (1981-83)
Sonntag/Sunday - The Sun (1998 - 03) -
Stockhausen had dreams of flying, and these dreams are reflected in the Helikopter-Streichquartett. 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 with the videos of the performers also. The performers are synchronized with a click track, transmitted by headphones.
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He died of sudden heart failure at his home, aged 79 years. Just the night before, he had finished a work (then recently commissioned) for performance by the Mozart Orchestra of Bologna (Bäumer 2007). Stockhausen, along with John Cage, is one of the few vanguard composers to have succeeded in penetrating the popular consciousness.
