Stockhausen zum 90.

On August 22, 2018, Karlheinz Stockhausen would have been 90 years old. To mark this occasion, the ZKM | Music and Acoustics Institute is honoring the composer with a four-day event series in which the visitors will be presented with concerts, presentations and films.

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) composed 375 individually performable works, including the opera cycle »LICHT« [LIGHT] – »The Seven Days of the Week«, which was produced between 1977 and 2003 and comprises a total of about 29 hours of music.

Stockhausen, whose goal was, after the week, to put the hours of the day, the minute and the second into musical form as well, continued his work following »LICHT« with the cycle «KLANG« [SOUND] – »The 24 Hours of the Day«. Up to his death in December 2007, he composed 21 hours, starting with the 1st hour, »Himmelfahrt« [Ascension], and ending with the 21st hour, »Paradies« [Paradise].

Karlheinz Stockhausen began his compositional career at the start of the 1950s. Even with his first works, he attained international fame. Since then, many of his compositions have shaped key musical achievements after 1950. Inherent to Stockhausen’s entire work is an identification as »religious music«, which becomes clear not just in compositions with religious texts, but also in »overtone music«, »intuitive music«, »mantric« and »cosmic music«, among others. 
Stockhausen directed or played in nearly all the premières of his works himself or led them as sound director, thus performing numerous model premières and recordings around the world.

During the global exhibition Expo’70 in Osaka, Japan, most of Stockhausen’s works composed up to 1970 were performed every day for 183 days and 5 ½ hours with 20 instrumentalists and singers for more than a million listeners, in a spherical auditorium designed by Stockhausen.