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During the 1950s Stockhausen studied Musique concrète with Pierre Schaeffer in Paris and then worked in the NWDR studio for Elektronische Musik. At that time the two national schools were thought to be irreconcilable, but in his first masterpiece Stockhausen combines them brilliantly. His “concrete” material consists of a 12-year old boy chanting the song of the three holy youths from the Book of Daniel; Stockhausen uses fragmentation and superposition to render the boy's voice more abstract, while the purely electronic sounds come to resemble human vowels and consonants. This is also the first of Stockhausen's compositions to use quadraphonic sound projection to create an immersive sound experience.
Further reading: Wikipedia article.
In Stockhausen's second electronic masterpiece the spatial element becomes still more important, with sounds moving around the listener at fantastic speeds. To achieve these effects he used a loudspeaker on a rotation table, picked up by four microphones; it is astonishing to hear this music today and to realise with what primitive means it was produced. Kontakte is also the most perfect realisation of Stockhausen's theory of time, which regards pitch, rhythm and form as a different aspects of single phenomenon. Stockhausen makes these relationships audible by taking us on an “fantastic voyage” into the inner workings of the phenomenon we know as sound.
Further reading: Wikipedia article.
In 1974—1975 Stockhausen composed twelve melodies for the signs of the Zodiac. These melodies formed the basis for his song cycle Tierkreis, the ritualistic music-theater piece Musik im Bauch, and the monumental Sirius for two singers, two instrumentalists, and electronic tape. Sirius can be regarded as Stockhausen's Four Seasons oratorio, presented by beings from outer space. Each of the four soloists is associated with a season and an element: the trumpet is Fire/Spring, the soprano singer is Water/Summer, the bass clarinet is Air/Autumn and the bass singer is Earth/Winter. Stockhausen subsequently made versions of the spring, autumn and winter sections with one soloist and tape, and the winter section (Capricorn) was written for and premièred by Nicholas Isherwood. Capricorn also includes the Annunciation which forms the final part of Sirius, after which the four soloists are “beamed up” to the mother ship.
Further reading: Wikipedia article on Sirius.