Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen (August 22, 1928 – December 5, 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged 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 century. He is known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music and aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music" (Hewett 2007).

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).

He grew up in Altenberg from the age of 7, 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 Karlheinz decided to become a boarder at the teachers' training college in Xanten, where he continued his piano training, and also studied oboe and violin (Kurtz 1992, 18). As a young teenager, he worked as a cobbler.^{[citation needed]} 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 had 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.) 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 told his son he would not be coming back from the Eastern Front (Kurtz 1992, 19).

Education

From 1947 to 1951 Stockhausen studied music pedagogy and piano at the Cologne Musikhochschule, and musicology, philosophy, and Germanics at the University of Cologne. Although he had the usual training in harmony and counterpoint, the latter with Hermann Schroeder, it was only in 1950 that he developed a real 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 (Kurtz 1992, 28). 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. He arrived in Paris on 8 January 1952, and began attending Messiaen's courses and Milhaud's classes (Kurtz 1992, 45–46). 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.

Career and adult life

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 (Kramer 1998). He founded and directed the Cologne Courses for New Music from 1963 to 1968, and in 1971 was appointed Professor of Composition at the National Conservatory of Music, where he taught until 1977 (Kurtz 1992, 126–28 & 194).

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 resided since its completion in the autumn of 1965 (Kurtz 1992, 116–17, 137–38). 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).

September 11, 2001 statement controversy

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 have renounced him. But he is very much present, like in New York recently". A 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.

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, 75–76.)

(To see how the excerpt appeared out of its context, and in English translation, see Tommasini 2001.)

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 2001)

As a result of the reaction to 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).

Death

According to an announcement of the Stockhausen Foundation on December 7, 2007, Stockhausen died on 5 December in Kürten, North Rhine-Westphalia. The cause of death, according to his surroundings, was said to be a sudden heart failure, on the morning of 5 December. He had just finished two works that had been recently commissioned from him for performances in Bologna and the Holland Festival, with performance scheduled in June 2008 in Amsterdam.

Works

See also: List of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen

Stockhausen wrote over 350 individual works. He often departs radically from musical tradition and his work is influenced by 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.

1950s

Stockhausen began to compose in earnest only during his third year at the conservatory (Kurtz 1992, 26–27). He has published only four of his early student compositions, Chöre für Doris, Drei Lieder for alto voice and chamber orchestra, Choral for a capella choir (all three from 1950), and a Sonatina for Violin and Piano (1951).

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 characterizes 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 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 ground-breaking contribution to the theory and practice of composition, that of "group composition", 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. 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 calls 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 calls 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).

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.

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. Two years later he began 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). He also composed two electronic works for tape, Telemusik (1966) and Hymnen (1966-67). The latter also exists in a version with soloists, and the third of its four "regions" in a version with orchestra. At this time, Stockhausen also began to incorporate pre-existent music from world traditions into his compositions (Texte 4, 468–76). Telemusik was the first overt example of this trend (Kohl 2002). 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), Ylem (1972), and the first three parts of Herbstmusik (1974). 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-, double, or triple melodic-line formula (Kohl 1983; Kohl 1990; Kohl 2004). Sometimes (as in Mantra and Inori), the simple formula is stated at the outset as an introduction. 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—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), 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), 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 whose orchestral composition Sub-Kontur (1974-75) quotes the formula of Stockhausen's Inori (1973–74).

1977–2003

Between 1977 and 2003 he composed a cycle of seven operas called Licht: Die sieben Tage der Woche ("Light: The Seven Days of the Week"). 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; Lucifer, Michael, and Eve. Stockhausen's conception of opera is 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 departs from traditional usage: characters are as likely to be portrayed by instrumentalists or dancers as by singers, and a few parts of Licht (e.g., Luzifers Traum from Samstag, the "real scenes" throughout Freitag, and Welt-Parlament and Michaelion from Mittwoch) use written or improvised texts in simulated or invented languages.

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. 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 a solo in three versions for flute, bass clarinet, and trumpet (2006); the bass clarinet and flute versions were premièred in Kürten on 11 July 2007 and 13 July 2007, respectively. The Sixth through Twelfth hours are chamber-music works based on the material from the Fifth Hour. 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), and Tenth (Glanz, for nine instruments, commission of the Asko Ensemble and the Holland Festival) have been announced for 2008. The Thirteenth Hour, Cosmic Pulses—an electronic work made by superimposing 24 layers of sound, each having its own spatial motion, among 8 loudspeakers placed around the concert hall[1]—was premièred in Rome on 7 May 2007 at Auditorium Parco della Musica, (Sala Sinopoli). Hours 14 through 21 are solo pieces for bass voice, baritone voice, basset-horn, tenor, soprano, soprano saxophone, and flute, respectively, with electronic accompaniment of some of the layers of Cosmic Pulses.

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. He also designed and printed his own musical scores, which often involved 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.

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.

The first performance of the piece took place in Amsterdam on June 26, 1995, as part of the Holland Festival.[2] 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, and the German première on 17 June 2007 in Braunschweig as part of the Stadt der Wissenschaft 2007 Festival. The work has also been recorded by the Arditti Quartet.

Reception

Musical influence

Stockhausen and his music have been controversial and influential. The two early Electronic Studies (especially the second) already 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, in a 1957 conversation Stravinsky said:

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)

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 his 1966 debut with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!. 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, actually studied with Stockhausen (Irmin Schmidt biography; Holger Czukay biography), as did German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk (Flur 2003, 228). New York guitar experimentalists Sonic Youth also acknowledge Stockhausen's influence^{[citation needed]}, as do Icelandic vocalist Björk (Guðmundsdóttir 1996; Ross 2004, 53 & 55), and the British industrial group Coil^{[citation needed]}. Chris Cutler of experimental British group Henry Cow named Stockhausen's Carré as one of his four most listened-to recordings (in Melody Maker^{[citation needed]}February 1974).

Wider cultural reknown

Stockhausen, along with John Cage, is one of the few avant-garde composers to have succeeded in penetrating the popular consciousness. Many more people knew his name than had heard his music. The Beatles famously included his face on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; this reflects his influence on the band's own avant-garde experiments, but also reflects the general fame and notoriety he had 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 ([3]). 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).

Stockhausen's fame is also reflected in mentions in works of literature. For example, he is mentioned in Philip K. Dick's 1974 novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said 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."

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 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 (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).

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 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).

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 dans 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

References

• Andraschke, Peter. 1981. “Kompositorische Tendenzen bei Karlheinz Stockhausen seit 1965”. In Zur Neuen Einfachheit in der Musik (Studien zur Wertungsforschung 14), edited by Otto Kolleritsch, 126–43. Vienna and Graz: Universal Edition (for the Institut für Wertungsforschung an der Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz). ISBN 3-7024-0153-9.
• Anon. 1968. "Interv'iu so Stravinskim". Sovetskaia Muzyka (October): 141.
• Barrett, Richard. 1988. "First Performances: Montag aus LICHT at the Holland Festival". Tempo, new series, no. 166 (Sept.): 43–45.
• Bayles, Martha. 1996. Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226039595.
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Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Karlheinz Stockhausen

• Karlheinz Stockhausen official site
• Obituary in The Times, 10 December 2007
• Aspekte des Seriellen bei Karlheinz Stockhausen by Karlheinz Essl (1989)
• (pdf) Complete list of works by Stockhausen
• Comprehensive Stockhausen Discography
• Stockhausen at Expo 70 in Osaka
• Interview with Stockhausen
• Karlheinz Stockhausen: Both a rationalist and a mystic, the composer's influence stretched from Boulez to the Beatles Obituary in The Guardian by Ivan Hewett
• In Kürten zu Hause—und im Universum Obituary in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger by Rainer Nonnenmann (in German).

Listening

• Stockhausen website video and audio files
• Epitonic.com: Karlheinz Stockhausen featuring tracks from Mantra