ABSTRACT
From his earliest pieces of the 1950s Karlheinz Stockhausen’s music has been notable for innovative treatment of musical time. His current project, the seven-opera cycle Light, is not only of such audacious length as to call attention to its temporal aspects: it is also about time. An examination of the “superformula” that provides the material and formal structuring for all seven operas, together with detailed analyses of Michael’s Journey Around the Earth (Thursday, act 2) and Lucifer’s Dream (Saturday, scene 1), reveals a subtle and detailed treatment of musical time which links substance with form, and even fuses with the dramaturgy of the cycle.
