KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN: COSMIC PULSES (2006)
COSMIC PULSES is the thirteenth hour of Stockhausen’s work KLANG (SOUND), based on the twenty-four-hour cycle of one day and originally planned to have twenty-four parts. The electronic piece is made up of a 24-layer melody generated by a synthesiser, with each layer having a different tempo and pitch range. The layers come on one by one, starting with the lowest/slowest layer and progressing towards the highest/fastest layers of the sequences. The 24 layers are activised for a period of a few minutes duration and then they disappear one by one, again starting with the lowest/slowest layer and progressing upwards (gradually leaving their higher/faster layers behind). This kind of “recessing” is roughly twice as fast as the “building up”.
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) German composer.
He was born in Mödrath by Cologne. He studied at the music academy of Cologne until 1947-1950, where his master from 1950 to 1951 was Frank Martin and from 1952 to 1953 Milhaud and Messiaen. During his study trip to Paris he met the head of the electronic music studio of French Radio, Pierre Schaeffer. For some time he studied physics and acoustics at the University of Bonn and then he joined the electronic music studio of Radio Cologne. He is a regular speaker at modern music courses in Darmstadt and Cologne.
