A Persevering Person With Serial Concept: A Study Of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstücke I-XIV

Karlheinz Stockhausen, a lead figure of the post-war generation of composers, exerted great influence on the music of Germany as well as of the world in the 20th century. Enjoying a long creative career, he produced a large number of compositions of different genres, which reflected his unique, varied and even bold musical ideas. Based on a study of Stockhausen's music, the author of this dissertation suggests that one of his most important compositions is the Klavierstucke, or the series of piano pieces. The reason lies in the fact that this series spanned the whole creative course of the composer and was created with various styles and methods that were developed in his lifetime. In KlavierstuckeⅠ-ⅪⅤ, one can find some of the most representative compositional techniques of the composer. With the analysis of these techniques, the author suggests that it is the serialistic thinking that lies in the core of the composition of the fourteen piano pieces.Centered around this idea, this dissertation consists of four chapters. In the first chapter, the author, trying to attributes the composer's insistence on serialism to his ideas about music, traces the course of the formation and development of his personality and ideas, which was influenced by external factors such as family, society and culture. The other three chapters focus on the characteristic serialized techniques presented by the fourteen piano pieces. Through close examination of the works, the author makes some innovative analysis based on previous studies.The conclusion this dissertation has reached is that Stockhausen never in his creative career abandoned serialism, largely due to his ideas about music. The compositional techniques of the 20th century, with total serialism, which makes every parameter of music highly organized, seemed to have reached the extreme of artificiality. Although the tendency of applying mathematics and statistics to musical parameters has continued, the resulted works often appear rigorous and mechanical and sound avoid of emotion and humanity. Stockhausen, however, through long period of exploration and many times of practice, eventually developed his Formelkomposition, a compositional method which employs twelve-tone technique and at the same time incorporates emotional elements.While many composers and scholars see no future in serial music, Stockhausen, with his insistence on the development of this technique, illustrated by his Klavierstucke I-XIV, has proved that there are still considerable room for such music to advance.