Karlheinz Stockhausen

Der Jahreslauf (The Course of the Years) is a piece of about 45 minutes for orchestra and tape that Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote in 1977 for the Japanese court music of gagaku. This disc has the version for European instruments, in which three harmoniums, three piccolos and three soprano saxophones stand in for the gagaku winds. It was later reworked as the first act of Dienstag aus Licht, but the form on this CD is the earlier, concert one.

The commission came from the National Theatre in Tokyo, and the staged first performance was given on 31 October 1977 in Tokyo by the Imperial Gagaku Ensemble. Stockhausen shaped four groups of players around four time spans, from years to millennia, each with its own instruments. Five rounds of play are separated by tutti passages, and each round is stopped by a taped interruption with staged action, after which the music resumes. Besides the harmoniums, piccolos and saxophones the score calls for harpsichord, electric guitar, anvil, bongos and bass drum. This recording was made in the large broadcasting auditorium of West German Radio (WDR) in Cologne on 9 February 1979, with Stockhausen conducting; he is also credited with a spoken voice. The players include Christoph Caskel (bass drum), Martin Schulz (bongos), Annemarie Bohne (harpsichord), Theodor Ross (guitar), David Gray (anvil) and the harmonium trio of Günter Hempel, Harald Hoeren and Wilhelm Neuhaus. Volker Müller was the sound engineer. The music lasts 45:26, and the 46:07 printed on the booklet includes the silence before and after.

This is Stockhausen-Verlag's Stockhausen Edition no. 29, a single CD issued in 1993 in a jewel case with a 32-page booklet.