Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen (born in Mödrath, Germany in 1928) is name-checked on the cover of "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them". He is also mentioned in "The Real Frank Zappa Book" (1989). German avant-garde composers of the mid-20th century. He has written orchestral, choral, and instrumental works, including some which combine electronic and normal sonorities, such as Kontakte (1960), and parts of a huge operatic cycle, "Licht" ("Light").

He studied at Cologne and Bonn, joined the musique concrète group in Paris, and experimented with compositions based on electronic sounds. In 1953 Stockhausen helped found Cologne's important Electronic Music Studio, and became director in 1963. His works include the wind quintet Time Measure (1956); Gruppen (1955-1957), written for three orchestras; Zyklus (1961), for solo percussionist; the multimedia work Beethausen von Stockhoven (1970); and the chamber works Ylem (1973) and Tierkreis (1977). Youthsong (1956) projects a singing boy's voice, mingled with electronic sounds, through five spatially separated loudspeakers. In 1971 he was appointed professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne.

Mentioned in "My Favorite Records", an FZ penned article in Hit Parader (1967): There's a record by Karlheinz Stockhausen on the Deutsche Gramophon label called "Gesang der Jünglinge", it's the "Song Of The Youths"; "Kontakte" ("Contact") is on the other side. Buy that (DGG 138811).

It was the 1956 "plick-plop" piece "Gesang der Jünglinge" (a boy's voice construed and converted with a panoply of electronic sounds), that inspired Paul McCartney to utilize his Brennell tape recorders for less conventional purposes, as Stockhausen himself had done. McCartney, an advocate of all things melodious, had undergone a reformation of thought, no longer subscribing to the ingrained belief that rhythm, time signatures and even melody were essential. The cover art of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band depicts Stockhausen, top row, fifth person from left. The Beatles recycled his "Hymnen" ("Anthems") in the track "Revolution Number 9" of "The White Album".

FZ in Village Voice, 1968, in Sally Kempton's "Zappa and the Mothers: Ugly Can Be Beautiful": "Stockhausen isn't really an influence. That is, I have some of his records but I don't play them much. Cage is a big influence. We've done a thing with voices, with talking, that is very like one of his pieces, except that of course in our piece the guys are talking about working in an airplane factory, or their cars."