Zyklus - Karlheinz Stockhausen

Zyklus für einen Schlagzeuger (1959) [No. 9]:
"Karlheinz Stockhausen was a pupil of Messiaen and Milhaud, and was greatly influenced by the serial works of Webern. The work “Zyklus” (cycle) for solo percussionist was composed in 1959 as a test piece for the Kranichstein Music Prize for percussion players. The work represents the application of a concept formulated by Webern and continued by Messiaen seeking the unification of all properties of sound under a single principle of organization. Based on these influences, Stockhausen sought to apply serial control to all aspects of musical sound. In “Zyklus” he combined the idea of total serialism with indeterminacy, allowing the performer a certain amount of freedom within carefully controlled musical parameters. “Zyklus” is scored for thirteen groups of percussion instruments. These are indicated by graphic symbols appearing throughout the score immediately preceding the musical notation for a given instrument. The piece comprises seventeen units, called periods, which are contained on sixteen spiral-bound pages. The performer is instructed to begin on any page and play all the pages successively, ending the performance with a repetition of the first stroke sounded in a given version. The score symbols are notated in such a way as to allow the performer to move in any direction on the page; forward, backward, right side up, or upside down. Depending on the direction in which the performer chooses to proceed, the periods tend to move toward or away from ambiguity. The percussionist, playing within a circular arrangement of instruments, moves in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction according to the chosen performance version." (B. Michael Williams)