Karlheinz Stockhausen Quotes

I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery.

Being quiet and meditating on sound is something completely different and will be discovered very soon by a lot of people who feel that the visual world doesn't reach their soul anymore.

I spent most of the year in the studio for electronic music at a radio station in Cologne or in other studios where I produced new works with all kinds of electronic apparatus.

The September 11 attacks were the greatest work of art in the cosmos...compared to that, we composers are nothing

Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing.

We are no longer the same after hearing certain sounds, and this is more the case when we hear organized sounds, sounds organized by another human being: music.

I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language.

In particular what is most important to me is the transformation of a sound by slowing it down, sometimes extremely, so that the inner of sound becomes a conceivable rhythm.

Music is mathematics, the mathematics of listening, mathematics for the ears.

And harmony means that the relationship between all the elements used in a composition is balanced, is good.

So there is a personal sense of style for a given work - I don't like a general style, but every work has its own style, and I want to create a style for every work.

It is true that the eyes dominate the ears in our time.

Or in other works I have also projected the sound in a cube of loudspeakers. The sound can move vertically and diagonally at all speeds around the public.

And I'll never forget the first time I took the possibility to project sound every day for six or seven hours with special devices which were built for me.

One experiments and has to choose always the best results.

Whenever I felt happy about having discovered something, the first encounter, not only with the public, with other musicians, with specialists, etc, was that they rejected it.

I no longer limit myself.

I was horrible at everything I ever tried to do and people respect me. The American Dream has come true!!

And I'm always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.

And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition.

But since the middle of the century in particular, the music has become very irregular in rhythm.

No, what is important is neither linearity or non-linearity, but the change, the degree of change from something that doesn't move to other events with different tempos in particular.

I have composed several pieces which are performed outdoors, not only in the auditoria.