Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen, composer (born August 22nd 1928 in Mödrath, near Cologne, died December 5th 2007 in Kuerten).

Stockhausen composed 370 individually performable works, published 10 volumes of Texte zur Musik / Texts sbout Music, and a series of booklets comprising sketches and explanations about his own works (Stockhausen-Verlag). His first 36 scores were published by Universal Edition in Vienna and, since its establishment in 1975, the Stockhausen-Verlag has published the rest of his works. In 1991, the Stockhausen-Verlag also began to release compact discs in the Stockhausen Complete Edition which comprises 139 compact discs to date.

Since 1998, the Stockhausen Courses Kürten for composers, interpreters, musicologists and auditors take place annually. In 1977, Stockhausen began to compose the music-scenic work Licht (Light) The Seven Days of the Week. Licht with its Seven Days of the Week comprises about 29 hours of music: Thursday from Light 240 minutes; Saturday from Light 185 minutes; Monday from Light, 278 minutes; Tuesday from Light 156 minutes; Friday from Light 290 minutes; Wednesday from Light 267 minutes; Sunday from Light 298 minutes.

Following the world première on October 16th 2004 of Licht-Bilder (Light Pictures), the last scene Stockhausen composed of his work Licht (Light), Stockhausen began the work Klang (Sound), The 24 Hours of the Day. Until 2007, he composed the 1st Hour Himmelfahrt (Ascension) to the 21st Hour Paradies (Paradise).

Already the first compositions of “Point Music” such as Kreuzspiel (Cross-Play) in 1951, Spiel (Play) for orchestra in 1952, and Kontra-Punkte (Counter-Points) in 1952/53, brought Stockhausen international fame. Since then, his works have been opposed to the extreme by some and admired by others. Fundamental achievements in music since 1950 are indelibly imprinted through his compositions: The “Serial Music”, the“Point Music”, the “Electronic Music”, the “New Percussion Music”, the “Variable Music”, the “New Piano Music”, the “Space Music”, “Statistical Music”, “Aleatoric Music”, “Live Electronic Music”; new syntheses of “Music and Speech”, of a “Musical Theatre”, of a “Ritual Music”, “Scenic Music”; the “Group Composition”, polyphonic “Process Composition”, “Moment Composition”, “Formula Composition” to the present “Multi-Formula Composition”; the integration of “found objects” (national anthems, folklore of all countries, short-wave events, “sound scenes”, etc.) into a “World Music” and a “Universal Music”; the synthesis of European, African, Latin American and Asian music into a “Telemusic”; the vertical “Octophonic Music”.

From the beginning until now, his work can be classified as “Spiritual Music”; this becomes more and more evident not only in the compositions with spiritual texts, but also in the other works via “Overtone Music”, “Intuitive Music”, “Mantric Music”, reaching “Cosmic Music” in Stimmung (Tuning), Aus Den Sieben Tagen (From The Seven Days), Mantra, Sternklang (Star Sound), Inori, Atmen Gibt Das Leben (Breathing Gives Life), Sirius, Licht (Light), Klang (Sound).

In a spherical auditorium conceived by the Stockhausen, most of his works composed until 1970 were performed at the Expo ’70 world fair in Osaka, Japan for 5 hours daily for 183 days by twenty instrumentalists and singers, thereby reaching an audience of over a million listeners.

Stockhausen is the perfect example of the composer who – at nearly all world premières and in innumerable exemplary performances and recordings of his works world-wide – either personally conducted, or performed in or directed the performance as sound projectionist.

In addition to numerous guest professorships in Switzerland, the United States, Finland, Holland, and Denmark, Stockhausen was appointed Professor for Composition at the State Conservatory in Cologne in 1971. In 1996 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Free University in Berlin, and in 2004 received an honorary doctorate from the Queen’s University in Belfast. He is a member of 12 international Academies for the Arts and Sciences, was named Honorary Citizen of Kürten in 1988, became Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, received many gramophone prizes and, among other honours, the Federal Medal of Merit, 1st class, the Siemens Music Prize, the UNESCO Picasso Medal, the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine Westfalia, 8 awards from the German Music Publisher’s Society for his score publications, the Hamburg BACH Prize, the Cologne Culture Prize and, in 2001, the Polar Music Prize with the laudation: Karlheinz Stockhausen was awarded the Polar Music Prize for 2001 for a career as a composer that has been characterized by impeccable integrity and never-ceasing creativity, and for having stood at the forefront of musical development for fifty years.