Grau/Schumacher - STOCKHAUSEN:MANTRA

Mantra, composed in 1970 and premiered in Donaueschingen, was Karlheinz Stockhausen's first composition following the orchestral work Carr� to return to a largely traditional style of notation and to a relatively closed form. Mantra is at the same time, the first of Stockhausen's works in a style of composition that he has been pursuing exclusively since the mid-1970s: The entire structure is derived from a single melodic-rhythmic-tonal complex, i. e., the mantra. Stockhausen described this method as composition by formula. The unified construction of Mantra is a musical miniature of the unified macro-structure of the cosmos, just it is a magnification into the acoustic time-field of the unified micro-structure of the harmonic vibrations in notes themselves.