Stockhausen - Licht-Collage

 The German radio station SWR2 had a long association with Stockhausen, and broadcast over several years extracts from his enormous opera cycle - Licht - which has an opera for each day of the week. On 22nd August, it would have been the 80th birthday of Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died last year, and SWR2 broadcast a sequence of extracts from each opera, interspersed with commentary from Stockhausen himself in interviews with Reinhard Ermen. So, in the space of about 3 1/2 hours, a condensed version of this enormous cycle could be heard, including some of the more well-known episodes, such as Welt-Parlament and Helikopter-Quartett.

The commentary is in German, but is conversational and easy to follow, starting with an explanation of how the idea for the cycle came to Stockhausen in a temple in Kyoto after he had completed Sirius. Many of the ideas and themes which make up the mythology of Licht receive extended commentary. Moreover, I think you can get a sense of how Stockhausen began this with an idea rooted in a compositional framework he controlled, how a surrounding mythology emerged and entered his dreams and very being, his struggle with and acceptance of that and a final sense of weariness, relief and transcendence.

The picture above is Max Ernst's Birth of a Galaxy, which seems appropriate for something on this scale.