Karlheinz Stockhausen Quotes

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Karlheinz Stockhausen

Profession : Composer

Birth : August 22, 1928

But I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Whenever I felt happy about having discovered something, the first encounter, not only with the public, with other musicians, with specialists, etc, was that they rejected it.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

In particular what is most important to me is the transformation of a sound by slowing it down, sometimes extremely, so that the inner of sound becomes a conceivable rhythm.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

I no longer limit myself.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

It is true that the eyes dominate the ears in our time.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

And when they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

And harmony means that the relationship between all the elements used in a composition is balanced, is good.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

And I'm always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

But since the middle of the century in particular, the music has become very irregular in rhythm.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

No, what is important is neither linearity or non-linearity, but the change, the degree of change from something that doesn't move to other events with different tempos in particular.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Or the other process that is important is that I compress longer sections of composed music, either found or made by myself, to such an extent that the rhythm becomes a timbre, and formal subdivisions become rhythm.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Schaeffer gave me permission to work in the studio with a technician, but I've never worked with him.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Or in other works I have also projected the sound in a cube of loudspeakers. The sound can move vertically and diagonally at all speeds around the public.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

And I'll never forget the first time I took the possibility to project sound every day for six or seven hours with special devices which were built for me.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

I have composed several pieces which are performed outdoors, not only in the auditoria.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

One experiments and has to choose always the best results.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

So there is a personal sense of style for a given work - I don't like a general style, but every work has its own style, and I want to create a style for every work.

Karlheinz Stockhausen