Karlheinz Stockhausen

Stockhausen, Karlheinz (1928– ), German composer and theorist. An experimenter with a variety of avant-garde musical techniques, including electronic, 12-tone, and aleatory music, he studied with Frank Martin, Olivier Messiaen, and Darius Milhaud, and was much influenced by Anton Webern. He has produced works like Gruppen (1959), in which 3 orchestras play “groups” of sounds against each other, and the electronic Kontakte (1959–60).