Since the last post on my Stockhausen blog was so easy I updated it with a new...

TIMELINE HISTORY OF STOCKHAUSEN'S LIFE AND WORKS

Found alot of interesting factoids while putting this together. Didn't know that Stockhausen and Helmut Lachenmenn went to Darmstadt Summer school together for one thing...

Any corrections are welcome :)

I don't know what level of detail you aspire to with this timeline, nor to what extent you are focussing on Stockhausen's compositional output (as opposed to his personal biography), but the gaps between 1928 and 1950 are conspicuous. The dates of the move to Altenberg and his residence at the teacher-training school in Xanten, at least, are documented in Kurtz's biography. Some details could be specified more exactly (like the Paris premiere of Zeitmasze, for example, which was in December), while much other detail could be added (the fact that Zeitmasze was actually first performed in January 1956, albeit in a radio recording made the previous month, and in a shorter, preliminary version).

Thanks for the feedback Jerry. I left a big gap in the biographical stuff from '28 to '50 since the Stockhausen "official bio" skips that part as well. I guess I should add it, or change the title to "Professional Career Timeline", tho that doesn't quite roll off the tongue. The other question is if I should add in unpleasant stuff like the gassing of his mother, death of his brother, Nazi party-related items, 9/11 controversy... OK, maybe I'll just add the early schooling stuff come to think of it!

Adding the months to the premiere dates is reasonable, but I still haven't even finished the LICHT premiere years yet, so that'll be later. Putting in the premiere dates was kind of a last minute idea, and I'm actually not totally convinced that they are even necessary, since this is just an unofficial timeline. There are other premieres also based on radio broadcasts or private concerts, but for now I just put in the one most emphasized in the CD booklets, which is 1956 for Zeitmasze.

I suppose if nothing else, this attempt at a timeline will hopefully prompt someone to write an updated biography beyond where Kurtz ends at 1992...

Edit: I changed it to "Musical Timeline and Work List", that's probably more accurate, thanks for the insight.

Well, this is like our other discussion about analysis and hearing. The most important thing is that it's doing what you want it to do!

Think it's any coincidence Jerry had a suggestion about a certain piece about which he's written a certain highly anticipated book? I'm sure he could think of a dozen more edits, too. For that matter, I bet everyone who's interested in Stockhausen would have similar notes. I certainly did when I read it. But who cares? You can't have everything in there!!

Thanks, that's a good way to look at it Joe. Everything on there is obviously colored by what I consider "worthy". Was it inconsistent for me to give the Wergo KONTAKTE release its own box, but not all the other first releases of works? Sure, but it's a desert island disc for me so it gets a box! And of course the names of composers KS met along the way (which I bothered to list) is completely governed by whether or not I ever heard of them. But I am happy to field any factual errors, since that helps me more than bothers me.

And of course, if I missed any major composition milestones, that I would most definitely be interested in.

That's an interesting forum-esque debate: Desert Island Discs.

Do you mean that within the Stockhausen canon, or in general, out of all recorded music history? I have my own favorites among his recordings, but I guess I've never really thought about how they stack up against my non-Stockhausen favorites.

If you make a topic for that I'll contribute, but does the Caskel/Tudor make my desert island collection out of ALL music? Sadly, no, and and I know that empirically, because in the early 90's I took a 2-year sabbatical and allowed myself only 15 90-minute cassettes to bring along for the trip. The Wergo was not one of the sides. However one of those cassettes was a compilation of 30-second excerpts of "essentials" from my entire new music/improv collection, and this version of Kontakte was included on that, though just 30 secs of it (probably the infamous falling "middle finger-to-Boulez" gliss-to-pulses moment). In fact I still have the cassette tape, but since I never listed the contents I can't be sure exactly what's on it the moment.