Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen ([kaɐ̯lˈhaɪnts ˈʃtɔkhaʊzn̩] Mödrath, August 22, 1928-Kürten-Kettenberg, December 5, 2007) was a German composer widely recognized, both by critics and by the most enlightened musical opinion, as one of the most prominent and controversial composers of classical music of the 20th century. For many, he is not only an important figure, but also one of the greatest musical visionaries of the XX century .

He is known for his contemporary music works and his innovations in electroacoustic music, random music, and serial composition.

He was first educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln before attending the University of Cologne. Later, Stockhausen would study with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn.

As one of the main figures of the Darmstadt School, his theories and compositions continue to be, even today, of great influence for composers of all types and styles (also in popular music and in jazz).

His works, composed over almost sixty years, refrain from being part of the more traditional musical forms. Apart from electronic music works, his works range from making miniatures for music boxes to works for solo instruments, songs, chamber music, choral and orchestral music and even a cycle of seven full-length operas.

His writings, both theoretical and on various topics, occupy more than ten imposing volumes. Stockhausen received numerous awards and honors for his compositions, recordings, and scores published by his own publishing house.

Among his most notable compositions we find the series of nineteen Klavierstücke (pieces for piano), Kontra-Punkte for ten instruments, his electronic/music concrete Gesang der Jünglinge, Gruppen for three orchestras, the work for solo percussion Zyklus, Kontakte, the cantata Momente i>, his live electronic work Mikrophonie I, Hymnen, Stimmung for six vocalists, Aus den sieben Tagen, Mantra for two pianos and electronics, Tierkreis, Inori for soloists and orchestra, and his gigantic circle of operas Licht.

Stockhausen died suddenly of a heart attack on December 5, 2007, at the age of 79, at his residence in Kürten, Germany.

Biography

Childhood

Karlheinz Stockhausen was born in the castle of the city of Mödrath, which at that time served as a maternity hospital for the district of Rhein-Erft-Kreis, in the west of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a German state bordering Belgium. (The town of Mödrath, located near Kerpen and Cologne, was displaced in 1956 to open-cast lignite mining, but the castle still stands.)

His father was a schoolteacher and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous farming family from Neurath, near Cologne. She played the piano and sang, but after becoming pregnant three times in a row, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a mental hospital in December 1932. A few months later her younger brother Hermann died.

Stockhausen moved to Altenberg at age 7, where he received piano lessons from Altenberg Cathedral organist Franz-Josef Kloth. His father, Simon Stockhausen, remarried in 1938 to another woman, Luzia, with whom he had two daughters.

Tragedy in World War II

Like many, he lived through a family tragedy when World War II broke out when he was only 11 years old.

In 1941 or 1942, he found out that his mother had died, apparently of leukemia, like all those admitted to that hospital, who had supposedly died of the same disease. It is assumed that she was a victim of the Nazi policy of "euthanasia for non-productive individuals". Later, Stockhausen will stage the execution of his mother in hospital by lethal injection, in Act 1 scene 2 (“Mondeva”) of the opera Donnerstag aus Licht .

Partly because of his poor relationship with his stepmother, in January 1942 Karlheinz entered a boarding school in Xanten where he continued to learn piano and also studied oboe and violin and did farm work.

In the fall of 1944, he was enlisted to serve as an orderly carrying the wounded in Bedburg. In February 1945 he met his father for the last time in Altenberg, who said goodbye to Stockhausen presciently, before being sent to fight on the eastern front, from which he would not return.

Youth and studies

From 1947 to 1951 he studied piano and music pedagogy at the Cologne Higher Conservatory (the prestigious Hochschule für Musik Köln). He also studied musicology, philosophy and the Germanic language at the University of Cologne. He completed his studies in harmony and counterpoint with the composer Hermann Schroeder.

In 1950 he became interested in composition and was admitted at the end of the year to the class of the Swiss composer Frank Martin, who was beginning a 7-year contract as a teacher in Cologne. He combined his studies with various jobs, as a worker in a factory, as a guard in a parking lot, and as a home guard for the occupation troops.

In 1951 he enrolled in the summer courses in Darmstadt, the center of dissemination of serialism and related avant-garde trends, where he came into contact with the music of Anton Webern and with the new generation of serialist composers. There he met Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts, who had studied musical analysis with Olivier Messiaen and composition with Darius Milhaud in Paris, and who influenced Stockhausen's decision to pursue the same studies.

In Darmstadt he made contact with the composers who made up the German musical avant-garde outside of twelve-tone —Paul Hindemith, Edgar Varèse...— and within twelve-tone —Arnold Schönberg, Ernst Krenek...— and also the aesthetics of Theodor W Adorno and Rene Leibowitz. Together with Bruno Maderna, György Ligeti and Luigi Nono, Stockhausen attended series of concerts in Darmstadt that would change his conception of music, such as the famous piano study Mode of values and intensities by Messiaen, which He decided to move to Paris, where he arrived on January 8, 1952, to enroll in the Conservatoire and attend Milhaud's composition classes and Messiaen's analysis and aesthetics course.

With Messiaen he became familiar with the technique of serialism, along with other important composers and also students of Messiaen, such as Iannis Xenakis or Pierre Boulez, who at the time was working on the Structures I for two pianos and with whom he would establish a great friendship, which begins a long correspondence between both composers.

Previously, in 1951, Stockhausen had married a fellow student, Doris Andreä, with whom he had four children, Suja (1953), Christel (1956), Markus (1957) and Majella (1961).

From 1953 he composed works of electroacoustic music, such as Gesang der Jünglinge [“The Song of Adolescents”], serving as a practical demonstration of the feasibility of composing using methods never tried in classical music, such as electronic devices or mathematical algorithms.

When he returned to Germany in March 1953, he began his collaboration with the Electronic Music Studio of Radio West Cologne —called NWDR and WDR from January 1, 1955—, with the position of assistant director Herbert Emert. The Cologne Electronic Music Studio was a key institution for other composers of electroacoustic music, such as John Cage. In 1962 Stockhausen succeeded Eimert as head of the studio.

He also began to disseminate his theories in courses at Darmstadt, an activity he continued until the mid-1970s.

From 1954 to 1956 Stockhausen studied phonetics, acoustics, and information theory with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn.

Together with Eimert he edited the influential magazine "Die Reihe" from 1955 to 1962.

Maturity

Stockhausen gave lectures and concerts in Europe, North America and Asia. He was visiting 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 New Music Courses from 1963 to 1968. In 1971 he was appointed composition professor at the National Conservatory of Music, remaining in the post until 1977.

In 1961 he bought a piece of land in the vicinity of Kürten, a town east of Cologne near Bergisch Gladbach in the Bergisches Land, where he had a house built designed by the architect Erich Schneider-Wessling, where he once lived completed in 1965.

In 1967, he married the German painter and sculptor Mary Bauermeister —born in 1934 and founder around 1960 of an avant-garde art movement in Cologne that would later give rise to the Fluxus movement— and with whom he had two children: Julika (1966) and Simon (1967).

In 1998 he created the Stockhausen Courses, held annually in Kürten.

Controversy over his statements on 9/11

In late 2001, Stockhausen was the subject of a bitter controversy over statements he made in connection with the September 11, 2001 attack in New York. Several media outlets published that he had described the terrorist attack as a "work of art". Stockhausen complained that some of his words had been taken out of context and misinterpreted.

The following is a detailed description of the controversy:

At a press conference in Hamburg on September 16, 2001, Stockhausen was asked by a journalist whether the characters in the play Licht were for him "figures outside a common cultural history." » or if they had «material representation». The composer replied: «I pray daily to Miguel, not to Lucifer. I have given up on him. But he is too present, like in New York recently ». Another journalist asked him about how the recent terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 affected him, and what vision he had of these events in relation to the harmony of humanity represented in the work Hymnen .

Well, what happened is, of course—you must correctly understand this—the greatest work of art ever done. The fact that the spirits have performed with a single act is something that we can never dream of in music. Those people practiced ten years hard, fanatically for a concert. And then they died. And that is the greatest work of art that exists throughout the cosmos. Now imagine that's happened here. There are people who are so focused on this one performance, and then five thousand people are led to the resurrection. In a moment. I can't do that. Compared to that, we are nothing, as composers [...] This is a crime, of course you know, because people hadn't agreed. They didn't come to this concert. This is obvious. And no one had told them, "you can be killed in the process."

Karlheinz Stockhausen

In a subsequent message, he stated that the press had published a "false and defamatory report" about his comments and clarified the following:

At the press conference in Hamburg, I was asked if Michael, Eve and Lucifer were historical figures of the past and I replied that they now exist, for example, Lucifer in New York. In my work I have defined Lucifer as the cosmic spirit of rebellion, anarchy. He uses his high degree of intelligence to destroy creation. He can't love. After some questions about the events in America, I said that as a plan seems to be Lucifer's greatest work of art. Of course, I used the expression "work of art" to describe the destruction work personified in Lucifer. In the context of my other comments this was unequivocal.

Message from Professor Karlheinz Stockhausen

As a result of the reaction to his comments, a four-day festival of his work in Hamburg was cancelled. In addition, his pianist's daughter announced to the press that she would not perform again with the surname Stockhausen.

Death

According to the announcement made by the Stockhausen Foundation on December 7, 2007, he died on the morning of December 5, 2007, due to sudden heart failure, in the city of Kürten-Kettenberg near Cologne in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He had just finished two commissioned works for shows in Bologna and the Holland Festival scheduled for June 2008 in Amsterdam.

Works

Stockhausen composed 363 works, all of them recorded and collected on 139 CDs. He frequently departed radically from the classical music tradition influenced by Messiaen, Edgard Varèse and Anton Webern. He was also influenced by other artistic disciplines such as cinema (Stockhausen 1996b) or painters such as Piet Mondrian (Stockhausen 1996a, 94; Texte 3, 92–93; Toop 1998) and Paul Klee. Along with his work as a composer, he also highlighted his task as conductor.

1950s

Stockhausen began composing during his third year at the conservatory, but has only published four of his first student compositions: Chöre für Doris, Drei Lieder, for voice alto and chamber orchestra, Choral, for a cappella choir (all three from 1950), and a Sonatina for violin and piano (1951).

In August 1951, just after his first visit to Darmstadt, Stockhausen began working with a serially composed form of athematic music that rejected Schoenberg's 12-tone technique.

He characterized many of these early compositions as "punctual music", although some critics conclude after analyzing these scores in depth that Stockhausen "never composed punctual". Compositions from this period include works such as the Kreuzspiel (1951), the Klavierstücke I–IV (1952)—the fourth piece is especially cited by Stockhausen as an example of "music punctual»), and the first (unpublished) version of Punkte and Kontra-Punkte (1952).

What is certain is that some works from those years show Stockhausen formulating his first groundbreaking and revolutionary contributions to the theory and practice of composition, such as "group composition", a technique used in his compositions since 1952 and throughout his work. This principle was first described publicly by him in a December 1955 radio announcement entitled "Gruppenkomposition: Klavierstücke I".

In December 1952, he composed a Konkrete Etüde, in Pierre Schaeffer's studio for concrete music in Paris. In March 1953 he moved to the studio of the Cologne radio NWDR and switched to electronic music with two Electronic Studies (1953 and 1954).

In the work Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56) he introduced for the first time the spatial placement of sound sources, with his mixture of concrete music and electronic music.

The experience gained from the Studies convinced him that it was an unacceptable simplification to treat timbres as stable entities.

Reinforced by his studies with Meyer-Eppler, in early 1955 Stockhausen formulated new «statistical» criteria for composition, focusing his attention on random music, a trend in which sound movement moved, «the change of a state to another, with or without return movement, as opposed to the static state".

Describing that period in his composition work, Stockhausen later wrote: «The first musical revolution that occurred since 1952/53, called concrete music, electronic music with tape recording, and spatial music, required composing with transformers, generators, modulators, tape recorders, etc, integrating all concrete and abstract (synthetic) sound possibilities including all noise, and achieve the controlled projection of sound in space".

His position as "the leading German composer of his generation" was achieved with Gesang der Jünglinge and three pieces composed concurrently in different media: Zeitmasze for four wind instruments in wood, Gruppen for three orchestras, and Klavierstücke XI. The principles underlying these three compositions were presented in Stockhausen's best-known theoretical article: «...wie die Zeit vergeht...» [«...As time flies...»], first published in 1957 in vol. 3 of the magazine "Die Reihe".

1960s

In 1960 Stockhausen returned to composing vocal music (for the first time since Gesang der Jünglinge) with Carré for four choirs and four orchestras. Two years later he begins an expandable cantata entitled Momente, for solo soprano, four choir groups and thirteen instrumentalists (1962-64/69).

He was a pioneer in live electronic performance, with works such as Mixtur, for electronics and orchestra (1964/67/2003), Mikrophonie I, for tam-tam, two microphones and two filters with potentiometers (6 players) (1964), Mikrophonie II, for choir, Hammond organ and four ring modulators (1965) and Solo for instrument melodic with feedback (1966).

He also composed two electronic works for tape, Telemusik (1966) and Hymnen (1966-67), of which there is also a version with soloists and 3. th of these four "regions" in a version with orchestra.

At this time, Stockhausen began incorporating traditional music from around the world into his compositions, the Telemusik being the first known example of this trend.

During the 1960s, Stockhausen explored the possibilities of "processed music" in works for live performances, such as Prozession (1967), Kurzwellen, and Spiral (both 1968), culminating in the verbally described instinctive 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 harmonics of a low B flat. Six vocalists sit around a luminous sphere and for an hour and a quarter maintain the same note in which, with a complex system of variations, they alternate magical acronyms and poetic fragments, determining a slow, almost imperceptible mutation of vocalic color. and a progressive displacement of the tonal center of the chord formed by the fixed notes

1970 to 1976

Beginning with Mantra (1970), Stockhausen experimented with mathematical composition, a technique that uses the projection and multiplication of a single, double, or triple melody by means of a linear mathematical formula (Kohl 1983; Kohl 1990; Kohl 2004). This formula is for Stockhausen a seed or mother-cell that maintains the main quality of the series of the duration or the scale chosen in the values of tempo. Mantra in the context of Stockhausen's music is a tool to trigger a kind of meditation that allows us to understand the nature and technique of music, aiming for an implantation that can achieve a transformation in our lives in the long run. In all of his work, as in Mantra, however incredible it may seem, there is an attempt to prepare humanity for this transformation (psychological or spiritual).

Sometimes, (as in Mantra and Inori), the formula is placed at the beginning as an introduction. He continues to use this technique to complete his opera cycle Licht in 2003.

Other works from this period are not created using the technique of mathematical formulas and share a simple melody-oriented style such as: The vocal duet “Am Himmel wandre ich” [“I am walking in the sky”], one of the 13 components of the multimedia work Alphabet für Liège, 1972), "Laub und Regen&# 3. 4; ("Leaves and Rain", for the play Herbstmusik (1974), and the choral opera Atmen gibt das Leben ("Breathing gives life", 1974/77),

The pieces Tierkreis ("Zodiac", 1974-75) and In Freundschaft ("In comradeship", 1977) have been Stockhausen's most widely performed compositions and recorded.

This dramatic simplification of style became the model for a new generation of German composers, commonly known under the label "Neue Einfachheit" or "New Simplicity". The best known of these composers is Wolfgang Rihm, who studied with Stockhausen in 1972-73, and whose orchestral composition Sub-Kontur (1974-75) reuses Stockhausen's formula from Inori (1973–74).

1977 to 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”]), which deals with the customs associated with each day of the week in various historical traditions—Monday, birth and fertility; Tuesday, conflict and war; Wednesday, reconciliation and cooperation; Thursday, travel and learning; etc.— together with the relationship and interaction between three archetypal characters: Lucifer, Miguel and Eva.

Stockhausen's conception of opera is based on ceremony and ritual, with influences from the Japanese Noh style of theater (Stockhausen, Conen, & Hennlich 1989, 282), as well as from Judeo-Christian and Christian traditions. Vedas.

Along with this, the treatment given to voices and texts sometimes strays from traditional usage: the characters are schematized to be represented by instruments, dancers or singers, and in some parts of Licht (such as Luzifers Traum from Samstag, the "actual scenes" during Freitag or Welt -Parlament and Michaelion of Mittwoch) used written or improvised texts in simulated or invented languages.

Stockhausen had its heyday in the 1970s, but later continued to produce significant works such as Stimmung (1968), in which six voices explore for seventy minutes the various possibilities of a solo chord.

2003 to 2007

After completing Licht, Stockhausen embarked on a new cycle of compositions based on the hours of the day, titled Klang [“Sounds”], of which he completed twenty-one pieces before his death.

The works performed in this cycle are First hour: Himmelfahrt [«Ascensión»], for organ or synthesizer, soprano and tenor (2004-05); Second hour: Freude [“Happiness”] for two harps (2005); Third hour: Natürliche Dauern [“Natural Durations”] for piano (2005-06); and Fourth Hour: Himmels-Tür [“Heaven's Gate”] for percussionist and little girl (2005).

The Fifth Hour, Harmonien {«Harmonyes»], is a solo in three versions for flute, bass clarinet, and trumpet (2006); the bass clarinet and flute versions were premiered in Kürten on July 11 and July 13, 2007, respectively. The Sixth Hour and the following ones up to the Twelfth Hour are chamber music works based on the Fifth Hour score.

The premieres 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, commissioned by the Asko Ensemble and the Netherlands Festival) have been announced for 2008.

The Thirteenth Hour Cosmic Pulses (an electronic work created by superimposing 24 layers of sound, each with its own spatial movement, using eight speakers positioned around the concert hall) was premiered in Rome on May 7, 2007 at the Parco della Musica Auditorium, (Sala Sinopoli). Hours 14 to 21 are solo pieces for bass, baritone, bassetto horn, tenor, soprano, soprano saxophone and flute, respectively, with electronic accompaniment of some of the sound layers of Cosmic Pulses.

In the early 1990s, Stockhausen licensed many of the recordings of his music he had made up to that point, and founded his own record company to make all his music permanently available on compact disc.

He also designed and printed his musical scores, which often incorporate unconventional notation. The score of his piece Refrain, for example, includes a refrain written on a transparent plastic endless tape that must be rotated for reading, and the volume in Weltparlament (the first scene of Mittwoch aus Licht) is color coded.

Stockhausen was one of the few great composers of the 20th century to have written a great deal of music for trumpet, inspired by his son Markus Stockhausen, trumpeter.

One of Stockhausen's most spectacular and unconventional works is the Helikopter-Streichquartett [“Quartet for Strings and Helicopter”] (the third scene of Mittwoch aus Licht), completed in 1993. In it, the four members of a string quartet play in four helicopters that fly independently over the vicinity of the concert hall. The music of the performers is mixed with the sound of the helicopters and played through loudspeakers to the audience in the room. Videos of the performance are also broadcast to the concert hall. The performers are synchronized with the help of an electronic metronome.

The first performance of the piece was held in Amsterdam on June 26, 1995, as part of the Holland Festival. Due to its extremely unusual nature, the piece has only been performed on a few occasions, including one on August 22, 2003 as part of the Salzburg Festival to inaugurate the Hangar-7 facility, and its German premiere on June 17, 2003. 2007 in Braunschweig within the Festival Stadt der Wissenschaft 2007. The piece has been recorded by the «Arditti Quartet».

Legacy

Influence on music

Stockhausen and his music have been controversial and influential. The two early Electronic Studies (especially the second) had a powerful influence on the further development of electronic music in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly the work of the Italian Franco Evangelisti and the Poles Andrzej Dobrowolski and Włodzimierz Kotoński.

The influence of his Kontrapunkte, Zeitmasse and Gruppen can be seen in the work of many composers, including some works by Igor Stravinsky, such as Threni (1957-58), Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1958-59) and Variations: Homage to Aldous Huxley (1963-64), whose rhythms "have probably been inspired, at least in part, by certain passages from Stockhausen's Gruppen".

In any case, musicians of Stockhausen's generation may consider him an unlikely influence. In a 1957 conversation Stravinsky said:

I have around me the spectacle of composers who, after their generation has had their decade of influence and fame, enclose themselves away from subsequent developments and the next generation (i.e., exceptions come to mind, Krenek, for example). Of course, more effort is required to learn from young people, whose methods are not invariably good. But when you are seventy-five and your generation has been surpassed by some young people, the correct position is that you are determined not to limit yourself to saying "how far we can come the composers," and try to discover all the new things that the new generation is doing.

Stravinsky, quoted in Stravinsky and Craft 1959, 133.

Jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, Charles Mingus, Herbie Hancock, Yusef Lateef, and Anthony Braxton cite Stockhausen as an influence.

He was also influential in pop and rock music. Frank Zappa acknowledges Stockhausen on the cover of Freak Out!, the 1966 album with which he debuted with the Mothers of Invention. Rick Wright and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters also credit him as an influence (Macon 1997, 141; Bayles 1996, 222).

San Francisco psychedelic bands Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead have loosely claimed to be following the same path of musical experimentation. Stockhausen deserves to be credited with founding the band Grateful Dead, some of whose members studied with Luciano Berio and "guided" them correctly through the new music".

Founding members of the Cologne experimental band Can, Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, have recently studied with Stockhausen, as have the German Kraftwerk musicians. New York guitar sound experimenters Sonic Youth also acknowledge the influence of Stockhausen ^{[citation needed]}, as well as the Icelandic vocal Björk (Guðmundsdóttir 1996; Ross 2004, 53 & 55), and the British industrial music group Coil ^{[citation required]}. Chris Cutler of the British experimental group Henry Cow named Stockhausen's work Carré as one of their four favorite recordings (in Melody Maker ^{[citation needed]}, February 1974).

Wide cultural recognition

Stockhausen, along with John Cage, is one of the few avant-garde composers to have made it into the popular consciousness, and far more people know his name than have heard his music.

Paul McCartney decided to include him among the characters featured on the album cover Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, as mentioned by Hunter Davies in the authorized biography of The Beatles. This reflects his influence on the band's avant-garde experiments, but also the general fame and notoriety he gained after 1967.

Stockhausen's name, and the perception of his music as strange and unlistenable, have been the subject of jokes in cartoons and cartoons, as documented on a page on Stockhausen's official website. Probably the most caustic quote about Stockhausen is the one attributed to sir Thomas Beecham. To the question: "Have you heard of Stockhausen?", he responded by saying: "No, but I think I have ever stepped foot in it."

His fame is also reflected in mentions in literary works. For example, he is mentioned in a 1974 Philip K. Dick novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said , and in Thomas Pynchon's 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49 . Pynchon's novel takes place in The Scope, a bar with "a strict electronic music policy." The protagonist Oedipa Maas asks a regular at the bar about a "frantic chorus of screams and moans" that comes from "some kind of musical device". He replies: "This is from Stockhausen... the first popular trend to rave about your Radio Cologne sound. Later we managed to understand its rhythm."

Criticism

Robin Maconie, one of Stockhausen's specialist composers and critics, wrote that, "Compared to the work of his contemporaries, Stockhausen's music has a remarkable depth and rational integrity... His investigations, initially guided by Meyer -Eppler, have a greater coherence than any other contemporary or later composer". Maconie compared Stockhausen to Beethoven: "If a genius is someone whose ideas resist all attempts at explanation, then by definition Stockhausen is the closest thing to Beethoven this century has produced. Reason? The continuous musical production of him ». (Maconie 1988), and “As Stravinsky said, one never thinks of Beethoven as an exceptional composer because the quality of his inventiveness transcends mere professional competence. It is the same with Stockhausen: the intensity of his imagination elevates musical impressions of an elemental and perceptible inscrutable beauty, exceeding the limits of conscious design ».

Igor Stravinsky expressed great enthusiasm, not uncritically, for Stockhausen's music in books about his conversations with Robert Craft, and for years he arranged private auditions with friends at his home where they listened to tapes of his latest work. In an interview published in March 1968 he said:

I have been listening all week to the piano music of a composer currently highly esteemed for his ability to compose an hour and even more time, but I find the alternation of groups of notes and silences that characterizes him more monotonous than the most boring and quadrilled music of the eighteenth century.

Stravinsky.

The following October, a report in Sovetskaia Muzyka (Anon. 1968) translated this sentence —and some others from the same article— into Russian, substituting the conjunction “but” for the phrase “Ia imeiu v vidu Karlkheintsa Shtokkhauzena" ("I am referring to Karlheinz Stockhausen"). When this translation was annotated in Druskin's biography of Stravinsky, the interpretation was extended to all of Stockhausen's compositions and he adds for good understanding, "in fact, works that he calls unnecessary, useless and uninteresting", quoting again from the same Sovetskaia Muzyka article, although it has become clear that the reference was to American "university composers".

In early 1995, BBC Radio 3 sent Stockhausen recordings of contemporary artists—Aphex Twin, Plastikman, Scanner, and Daniel Pemberton—and asked him what he thought of that music. In August of that year, Radio 3 journalist Dick Witts interviewed Stockhausen about these pieces for a program broadcast in October—and later published in the November issue of the British publication The Wire—asking him what advice he would give to those young musicians. Stockhausen made individual suggestions to each of them, who were then invited to respond. Everyone except Plastikman thanked him.

In an interview conducted by a journalist who asked him "What is music?", the teacher Stockhausen responded as follows: "the sound emitted by a housewife while cooking is not music, but if I I record it, that's already music.”^{[citation needed]}

Awards and distinctions

Some of the numerous awards and distinctions awarded to Stockhausen are:

• 1964 - Award of German record criticism;
• 1966 and 1972 - SIMC, award for orchestral works (Italy);
• 1968 - Grand Competition of Musical Art of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia; Grand Prize of Disco (France); Member of the Free Academy of Arts, Hamburg;
• 1968, 1969, and 1971 Edison Award (Hellonda);
• 1970 - Member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Music;
• 1973 - Member of the Berlin Academy of Arts;
• 1974 - Cross of Distinguished Services, first 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 - Italian Music Criticism Award for Donnerstag aus Licht;
• 1982 - German Phonograph Academy;
• 1983 - Diamond of gold (France) by Donnerstag aus Licht;
• 1985 - Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (France);
• 1986 - Ernst von Siemens Music Prize;
• 1987 - Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, London;
• 1988 - Honorary Citizen of the Kuerten Community.
• 1989 Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
• 1990 - Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria;
• 1991 - Honorary Partner of the Royal Irish Academy of Music; Honorary Academic of the National Academy of Saint Cecilia, Rome; Honorary President of Sound Projects Weimar;
• 1992 - IMC-UNESCO Picasso Medal; Distinguished Service Medal of the German State of North Rhine-Westfalia; German Society of Music Editors Award for the Score Luzifers Tanz (3rd scene Saturday from Light);
• 1993 - President of the European Flaut Festival; Gold Diapers by Klavierstücke I-XI and Mikrophonie I and Mikrophonie II (France);
• 1994 - German Society of Music Editors Award for the Score Jahreslauf (Act 1 Tuesday from Light);
• 1995 - Honorary Member of the German Society of Electro-Accustic Music; Bach Award of the City of Hamburg;
• 1996 - Doctor honoris causa (Dr. phil. h. c.) of the Free University of Berlin; Composer of the European Cultural Capital of Copenhagen; Edison (Holland) Award for MantraMember of the Leipzig Arts Free Academy; Honorary Member of the Leipzig Opera; Cologne Culture Award;
• 1997 - German Society of Music Editors Award for the Score Weltparlament (first scene of Wednesday from Light); Honorary member of the musical assembly LIM (Laboratorio de Interpretación Musical), Madrid;
• 1999 - Signature in the gold book of the city of Cologne;
• 2000 - German Society of Music Editors Award for the Score Evas Erstgeburt (Act 1 Monday from Light);
• 2000–01 - The film In Absentia performed by the Quay Brothers (England) with electronic and concrete music by Karlheinz Stockhausen wins the Golden Dove (1.o prize) at the International Film Festival in Leipzig. More Awards: Special Jury Mention in Montreal, FCMM 2000; Special Jury Award, Tampere 2000; Special Mention, Golden Prague Awards 2001; Honorary Diploma, Cracow 2001; Best Animated Short, 50.a Melbourne International Film Festival 2001; Grand Prize, Turku Finland 2001;
• 2001 - German Society of Music Editors Award for the Score Helicopter and rope quartet (3rd scene Wednesday from LightPolar Music Prize of the Swedish Royal Academy of Arts;
• 2002 - Honorary President of the Sonic Arts Network, England;
• 2003 - German Society of Music Editors Award for the Score Michaelion (4th scene) Wednesday from Light);
• 2004 - Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts (Belgium); Doctor Honoris Causa (Dr. phil. h. c.) of the University of the Queen in Belfast; Award of the German Society of Music Editors for the Score Stop and Start for 6 instrumental groups;
• 2005 - German Society of Music Editors Award for the Score Hoch-Zeiten for choir (5th scene) Sunday from Light).

Featured students

Catalog of works