Studie I
Studie I (English: Study I) is an electronic music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen from the year 1953. It lasts 9 minutes 42 seconds and, together with his Studie II, comprises his work number ("opus") 3.
History[edit]
The composition was created in the Studio for Electronic Music of the NWDR in Cologne between July and November 1953.[1] In the final stages of editing, Stockhausen commemorated the birth of his first daughter, Suja on 25 September 1953 by inserting a "serially unauthorized" 108 Hz (in a phrase attributed to Richard Toop), "one-gun salute".[2] The world premiere took place in Cologne on 19 October 1954 in the concert series Musik der Zeit, together with Stockhausen's Studie II and works by Henri Pousseur, Karel Goeyvaerts, Herbert Eimert, and Paul Gredinger.[3]
The work was important amongst other reasons because it was made (as were the works by Pousseur, Goeyvaerts, and Gredinger) not with the use of (electronic) instruments, like the Trautonium or Melochord, but rather out of pure sine tones. For the first time, complete compositional control was achieved, even over timbre. The ideal was to produce each sound synthetically and thus separately determined in its details: "The conscious organization of music extends to the micro-acoustic sphere of the sound material itself";[4][5] It is serially organized on all musical levels.[6][7]
Unlike Studie II, the score has never been published, apart from the first page as an illustration to Stockhausen's analysis of the piece.[8][9]