Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen, (1928- ). German composer, a leading figure of the post-war avantgarde. Stockhausen studied music in Cologne and Paris, where his teachers included Messiaen. In 1953 he co-founded the electronic music studios of the West German state radio, the first of their kind. His works of the 1950s show him experimenting with electronic and synthesized sounds, serial techniques, and unusual spatial arrangements (as in Gruppen, 1957, for three orchestras). In the 1960s he dispensed with conventional musical notation and allowed chance to dictate some elements of his works in performance. His ideas about music and its power to unify the human race becarrie increasingly mystical and grandiose during this period. Since 1977 he has been working on a huge opera sequence called Licht; when complete this will consist of seven works named after the days of the week. So far Donnerstag (1980), Samstag (1984), and Montag (1988) have been performed.
