This year I shall give one lecture on COSMIC PULSES, two on HIMMELS-TÜR, and four on MOMENTE. The reasons for these choices are follows:

(a) COSMIC PULSES is the work that Stockhausen had intended to analyse this year. In fact, there will be three lectures on this remarkable piece. I shall give the first one, which will deal with the basic materials of the work, and the overall structure. In two following lectures, Antonio and Kathinka will describe their roles in realising the 24 ‘basic loops’, and two of the staff of the Freiburg Experimental Studio will explain how Stockhausen’s extremely complex spatialisation plans were realised.

(b) HIMMELS-TÜR was an obvious choice. Its scenario – a supplicant standing before The Door of Heaven, and finding, by trial and error, the right way of knocking to gain admission – is one that Stockhausen dreamed, and that clearly had profound personal significance for him, as someone entering the last stage of his life.

(c) There were two overwhelming reasons for my choosing to focus especially on MOMENTE. The first – a practical one – is that just a few days before Stockhausen died, and after a delay of many decades, the scores of both the original score and the 1972 Europe Version were finally published. The second is that Stockhausen regarded MOMENTE as – at least in terms of sheer musical invention – his most important work. Naturally, in four lectures one can only scratch the surface of this extraordinarily rich work, but at least one can make a start. I shall begin by looking at the preliminary sketches that document the work’s ‘genesis’. Then I shall seek to analyse both the overall structure (including the very complex application of ‘inserts’) and a number of individual Moments. Finally, I shall discuss the criteria for making both the extant and future ‘versions’ of MOMENTE.

In doing all this, I don’t imagine for a moment that I can stand, even momentarily, in Stockhausen’s shoes. But in his memory, I’ll try to make this my best contribution to the Kürten Courses.

Richard Toop

Richard Toop (musicologist) was born in Chichester, England, in 1945. He first met Stockhausen in 1969, and in Darmstadt was able to witness not only the daily public seminar-performances of AUS DEN SIEBEN TAGEN, but also all the studio recordings. In 1973-74 he was Stockhausen’s teaching assistant at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. In 1975 he emigrated to Sydney (Australia), and is now Reader in Musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium (University of Sydney). He has written many articles on Stockhausen’s work, including entries in the Revised Grove Dictionary of Music, and translated Michael Kurtz’s Stockhausen biography into English. Since 2002 he has given analysis lectures each year at the Stockhausen Courses Kürten; the 2002 lectures have been published by the Stockhausen Foundation for Music.