Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, having been called the "father of electronic music", for introducing controlled chance into serial composition, and for musical spatialization.
Contemporary classical music is Western art music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included serial music, electronic music, experimental music, and minimalist music. Newer forms of music include spectral music, and post-minimalism.
Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser, and composition teacher.
Kontra-Punkte is a composition for ten instruments by Karlheinz Stockhausen which resolves contrasts among six instrumental timbres, as well as extremes of note values and dynamic levels, into a homogeneous ending texture. Stockhausen described it: "Counter-Points: a series of the most concealed and also the most conspicuous transformations and renewals—with no predictable end. The same thing is never heard twice. Yet there is a distinct feeling of never falling out of an unmistakable construction of the utmost homogeneity. An underlying force that holds things together—related proportions: a structure. Not the same Gestalten in a changing light. But rather this: various Gestalten in the same light, that permeates everything."
John Roger Smalley was an Anglo-Australian composer, pianist and conductor. Professor Smalley was a senior honorary research fellow at the School of Music, University of Western Australia in Perth and honorary research associate at the University of Sydney.
Aus den sieben Tagen is a collection of 15 text compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in May 1968, in reaction to a personal crisis, and characterized as "Intuitive music"—music produced primarily from the intuition rather than the intellect of the performer(s). It is Work Number 26 in the composer's catalog of works.
The Group for Contemporary Music is an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1962 by Joel Krosnick, Harvey Sollberger and Charles Wuorinen and gave its first concert on October 22, 1962 in Columbia University's MacMillin Theatre. Krosnik left the ensemble in 1963. It was the first contemporary music ensemble based at a university and run by composers.
Marc Ponthus pioneered the monographic solo piano recital of leading avant-garde composers from the second half of the 20th century, devoting entire programs to Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis and others. He has performed extensively in North America and abroad in London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing and featured in many contemporary music festivals. Ponthus has recorded for Neuma Records, Lorelt Records and Bridge Records. His recording of the complete piano music of Pierre Boulez released in 2016 was chosen Editor's Choice by Gramophone Magazine. Ponthus has conducted the LowerEastsideEnsemble, the IFCP Ensemble and the Project Webern Orchestra in addition to staging and directing contemporary chamber operas. Ponthus is the founder and director of the Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance in New York.
Live electronic music is a form of music that can include traditional electronic sound-generating devices, modified electric musical instruments, hacked sound generating technologies, and computers. Initially the practice developed in reaction to sound-based composition for fixed media such as musique concrète, electronic music and early computer music. Musical improvisation often plays a large role in the performance of this music. The timbres of various sounds may be transformed extensively using devices such as amplifiers, filters, ring modulators and other forms of circuitry. Real-time generation and manipulation of audio using live coding is now commonplace.
Marco Blaauw is a Dutch trumpet soloist known for his work in the field of new music and with Cologne-based contemporary music group Ensemble Musikfabrik. He plays a double bell trumpet, an invention that has allowed for numerous new compositions for trumpet, including those by Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winner, Rebecca Saunders. Blaauw is a consistent faculty member at the Darmstadt Summer Course, the Stockhausen Courses Kürten, the Lucerne Festival, and the Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar.
The trumpet repertoire consists of solo literature and orchestral or, more commonly, band parts written for the trumpet. Tracings its origins to 1500 BC, the trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family.
Aloys and AlfonsKontarsky were German duo-pianist brothers who were associated with a number of important world premieres of contemporary works. They had an international reputation for performing modern music for two pianists, although they also performed the standard repertoire and they sometimes played separately. They were occasionally joined by their younger brother Bernhard in performances of pieces for three pianos. After suffering a stroke in 1983, Aloys retired from performing.
Klang —Die 24 Stunden des Tages is a cycle of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, on which he worked from 2004 until his death in 2007. It was intended to consist of 24 chamber-music compositions, each representing one hour of the day, with a different colour systematically assigned to every hour. The cycle was unfinished when the composer died, so that the last three "hours" are lacking. The 21 completed pieces include solos, duos, trios, a septet, and Stockhausen's last entirely electronic composition, Cosmic Pulses. The fourth composition is a theatre piece for a solo percussionist, and there are also two auxiliary compositions which are not part of the main cycle. The completed works bear the work (opus) numbers 81–101.
NewMusicSA is a non-profit arts advocacy organisation that promotes the creation, performance, and enjoyment of South African new music. Founded in 1999 and operating formally since 2003, NewMusicSA is the South African section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM).
The Shiraz Festival of Arts was an annual international summer arts festival, held in Iran bringing about the encounter between the East and the West. It was held from 1967 to 1977 in the city of Shiraz and Persepolis in central Iran by the initiative of Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi.
The Karlheinz Company is a music ensemble based at the University of Auckland School of Music. The ensemble was founded by composer John Rimmer and the first programme included works by Berio, Stockhausen and Rimmer. A programming philosophy developed of combining new New Zealand music and music from the Asia-Pacific region with the works of established twentieth-century composers and those considered more adventurous in style. Particular attention is given to the performance of works by young composers and those associated with the school of music including in recent years Uwe Grodd, Elizabeth Holowell and Dean Sky-Lucas.
Zeitmaße is a chamber-music work for five woodwinds composed in 1955–1956 by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; it is Number 5 in the composer's catalog. It is the first of three wind quintets written by Stockhausen, followed by Adieu für Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer (1966) and the Rotary Wind Quintet (1997), but is scored with cor anglais instead of the usual French horn of the standard quintet. Its title refers to the different ways that musical time is treated in the composition.
Iron Composer is a music competition operated where five composers are given just five hours to write a piece of music. The competition is operated by Analog Arts, and it was first organized as part of the ARTSaha! festival. Iron Composer is currently held at the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music in Berea, Ohio. The competition is open to composers of all ages.
Cosmic Pulses is the last electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and it is number 93 in his catalog of works. Its duration is 32 minutes. The piece has been described as "a sonic roller coaster", "a Copernican asylum", and a "tornado watch".
Für kommende Zeiten is a collection of seventeen text compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed between August 1968 and July 1970. It is a successor to the similar collection titled Aus den sieben Tagen, written in 1968. These compositions are characterized as "Intuitive music"—music produced primarily from the intuition rather than the intellect of the performer(s). It is work number 33 in Stockhausen's catalog of works, and the collection is dedicated to the composer's son Markus.
