Punkte

Punkte (Points) is an orchestral composition by , given the work number ½ in his catalogue of works.

Punkte originated as a punctual orchestral work which was begun in September in Hamburg and had reached a first-draft stage by 30 September. The final draft was completed on 24 October 1952, but the work remained unperformed and unpublished (Blumröder 1993, 97–99; Frisius 2008, 56). The work did not receive the title by which it is known today until much later, however. In a letter dated 4 November 1952 to Alfred Schlee () (the editor from Universal Edition in Vienna who, at the premiere of Stockhausen's at the Donaueschingen Festival in October, had offered to publish his works), Stockhausen initially called his new score Zweites Orchesterspiel / Kontrapunkte / für Saiten- und Blasinstrumente, and in a letter to his friend Karel Goeyvaerts dated 14 January 1953, he calls the orchestral work Nr. 4 Kontrapunkte, adding, "It will be very difficult to perform this work". At this point in time, the chamber composition now known as (with a hyphen) was instead called simply Nr 5…, für 10 Instrumente. After a heated discussion in March with Hermann Scherchen, who Stockhausen hoped would conduct the work at a festival in Cologne, he decided to withdraw the score, and substituted the chamber work for ten instruments, now redesignated "Nr 1", and eventually given the title Kontra-Punkte. The withdrawn orchestral score, which has never been performed, was renamed Punkte at some unknown point in time (Blumröder 1993, 99–101).

Stockhausen wholly recomposed this score in 1962, at which time it was given the retrospective work number ½ (the fraction indicating that it preceded his "work number 1"). Work was begun during a four-week stay in Finland in the summer, when Stockhausen was lecturing at the Jyväskylä summer university. It was intended for performance in Palermo later in the year, but the score was not finished in time and the event was cancelled. Having rescheduled the premiere for Donaueschingen the following year, Stockhausen resumed work in October 1962 while staying at the house of his Darmstadt pupil Jack Brimberg in Locust Valley on Long Island, New York. After some anxious correspondence with Heinrich Strobel, director of the Donaueschingen Festival, the score was completed and dispatched to Strobel on 28 February 1963 (Kurtz 1992, 123–24). In its new form, the "points" of the original version scarcely ever appear as such. Instead, they have become centres for groups, crowds, swarms, and vibrating masses, become nuclei of micro-musical organisms (, 12). This "renewed" composition was premiered on 20 October 1963 at the Donaueschingen Music Festival, by the Orchestra of the SWF, conducted by Pierre Boulez, and was published by Universal Edition that year in facsimile (Kurtz 1992, 124).

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