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Very few artists in any genre are as brilliantly innovative and collossally influential as German-born Avant-Garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has been an integral part of virtually every important progressive musical movement of the last century, including total serialism, electronic music, spatial music, chance music and even world music. He spent his early career studying the serial techniques of Schoenberg and Webern, taking them to unexplored extremes in works such as Kontra-Punkte and Kreuzspiel. These represent the pinnacle of total serial technique, and thrust Stockhausen's name onto the international scene. The composer went on to immerse himself in electronic music during the mid-'50s. Pieces from this period (the haunting Kontakte and Gesang Der Junglinge) had a nearly immeasurable influence on the Avant-Garde and represent perhaps his best-known contributions to the musical canon. Stockhausen's perspective widened exponentially with each work as he began to experiment with spatial compositions written for three or four orchestras spread throughout the concert hall. By the late 1960s Stockhausen's vision had exploded into the cosmos. His compositions became increasingly expansive; he incorporated world music elements as he... Read More ... struggled to find sonic material worthy of his extraordinary ambitions. Elaborate staging and choreography became an integral part of works such as Inori and Sirius, but these were just warm-ups for what has become his life's work: the seven-part Opera cycle entitled Licht. The piece, over twenty-five years in the making, spans the birth of the universe to the final stages of man's evolution -- something no other composer in history (except perhaps Richard Wagner) would've have the nerve to attempt. As a testament to his genius, the music world awaits its completion with baited breath.
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