Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22 1928) is a contemporary composer.

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Born in Burg M?drath, near Cologne (German: K?ln), he studied at the Cologne Musikhochschule and University (1947-51), at Darmstadt in 1951 and with Olivier Messiaen in Paris (1951-53). From 1954 to 1956, at the University of Bonn, he studied phonetics, acoustics, and information theory and composition. After lecturing at the contemporary music seminars at Darmstadt (1957), Stockhausen gave lectures and concerts in Europe and North America.

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Stockhausen has worked with serial and electronic procedures, with spatial placements of sound sources (for example in his noted work Gesang der J?nglinge), and with graphical notation. Stockhausen sometimes departs radically from musical tradition and his work is influenced by Messiaen and Anton Webern. He claims that he explores fundamental psychological and acoustic aspects of music. Despite his interest in electronic music he gives performers a large role in determining certain parameters of a composition. 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, or not, as the performer chooses.

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In most of his works, elements are played off against one another, simultaneously and successively: in Kontrapunkte (1953) pairs of instruments and extremes of note values "confront" one another; in Gruppen (1959) fanfares and passages of varying speed (based on the harmonic series) are flung between three full orchestras, giving the impression of movement in space.

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Stockhausen has written over 200 individual works. He completed on a single enormous opera in seven parts, entitled Licht (1977-2002). In the early 1990s he gained access to all 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. The score for his piece Refrain, for instance, is a circular (refrain).

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Stockhausen is one of the few major twentieth-century composers to write a large amount of music for the trumpet, owing to the fact that one of his sons, Markus Stockhausen is a trumpeter.

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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. With his studio technicians he discussed ways of positioning instrumentalists on chairs that could be swung through the room on ropes.

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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. Pictures of the performers are also transmitted back to the concert hall. The performers are kept in synchronicity 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.

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Stockhausen and his music have been extremely controversial and influential. The influence of his Kontra-Punkte may be seen in Igor Stravinsky's Movements for piano and orchestra. Disparate musicians such as Can, The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Coil, Sonic Youth, Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, and Herbie Hancock cite Stockhausen as an influence. It is also arguable 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 influence. Stockhausen, himself, has incorporated most recent musical innovations he did not originate himself, such as in the LaMonte Young influenced Stimmung.

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August 22: August 22 is the 234th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (235th in leap years), with 131 days remaining....

1928: 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar)....

Composer: A composer is a person who writes music. The term refers particularly to someone who writes music in some type of musical notation, thus allowing others to perform the music. This distinguishes the composer from a musician who improvises. However, a person may be called a composer without creating m...