Kontra-Punkte

History

The first, untitled version, written in 1952–53, was a sparse-textured, "punctual" composition scored for flute, E-flat clarinet, contrabass clarinet, contrabassoon, trumpet, contrabass tuba, piano four hands, harp, violin, and double bass. This score was almost immediately rejected by the composer, who created a new version in the spring of 1953 for flute, clarinet in A, bass clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, piano (one player), harp, violin, and cello. This version has the distinction of being "Nr. 1" in the composer's catalog of works, although the Klavierstücke I–IV, designated "Nr. 2", were actually composed in the previous year.

The hyphenated title signifies a "counter-action" against the punctual style currently in vogue in the early 1950s, an action embodied in the composition itself as a process of transforming dissociated "points" into cohesive "groups" of notes, and therefore from an essentially static condition to an audibly dynamic one. The title also implies a criticism of Stockhausen's own earlier composition Punkte, as well as of his friend Pierre Boulez's 1951 work Polyphonie X—a criticism for which Boulez seems to have forgiven Stockhausen.

Kontra-Punkte was first performed during the ISCM World Music Days in Cologne on 26 May 1953 by members of the WDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hermann Scherchen. This performance, however, was only of roughly the first two-thirds of the work, owing to lack of sufficient time for the pianist to prepare the extremely difficult closing part. Later that same year, Scherchen conducted the first complete performance on a Domaine musical concert in Paris. One review of the 1953 (partial) premiere reported that Scherchen immediately repeated the piece because, shortly after the beginning of the first performance, the pianist had gotten two bars behind, despite being assisted by the composer "who from time to time played a note obviously not within the capacity of ten fingers but required by the score".

Somewhat confusingly, an earlier, orchestral work by Stockhausen was titled "Kontrapunkte" (without the hyphen: "Counterpoints"). This work, suppressed by the composer at the time on grounds that it was unplayable, was drastically recomposed in 1962 and issued under the title Punkte (Points), by which name the original work is also now called.