Zyklus

Form

The title of Zyklus is reflected in its form, which is circular and without a set starting point. The score is spiral-bound, and there is no "right-side up"—it may be read with either edge at the top. The performer is free to start at any point, and plays through the work either left to right, or right to left, stopping when the first stroke is reached again. (In this way, it is an example of what Stockhausen calls "polyvalent" form.) The instruments are arranged in a circle around the performer, in the order they are used in the score. The notation is only conventional in some details, and an early review of this first graphic score by Stockhausen remarked that "The initial impression is that one is looking not at a score, but at a drawing by Paul Klee". Zyklus contains a range of notational specificity, from exactly fixed at one extreme, to open, "variable" passages at the other. Stockhausen composed these elements using a nine-degree scale of statistical distribution, but states that the listener is not "supposed to identify these nine degrees when you hear the music, nevertheless the music that results from such a method has very particular characteristics...".

In principle, the percussionist decides on the starting point and direction through the score only at the moment of commencing a performance, but in practice this is almost universally worked out well in advance. Only the percussionist and composer Max Neuhaus has consistently performed spontaneous versions.