The twentieth century produced many great
composers, but few who devoted as much energy to the construction and
maintenance of their own persona as Karlheinz Stockhausen; instead of merely
writing music, he used his dazzlingly complex and increasingly ambitious works
as the building blocks for a public figure who seemed to delight in his own reputation
for inaccessibility. But if ‘Karlheinz Stockhausen’ was Karlheinz Stockhausen’s
greatest creation, it would not have been possible without the help of such
convention-challenging works as Kontakte, Inori or, most
importantly, Licht, the seven-day, thirty-hour cycle of music-theatre
works that occupied him for the final three decades of his life.
Although Licht has not yet been
performed as a complete cycle, each of the seven days has been heard in some
form; but due to the extraordinary…
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