The BBC reports that German avant-garde electronic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen has passed away at 79. Stockhausen pioneered the use of tape recorders, mathematical calculations and electronic sounds to create music. His 1953 piece “Electronic Study” was “the first musical piece composed from pure sine wave sounds,” and 1954’s “Electronic Study II” was the first electronic work to be published as sheet music.
Stockhausen was an important influence on Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, Charles Mingus, Pink Floyd, Sonic Youth, Coil, Bjork, and perhaps most famously Paul McCartney, who included an image of Stockhausen on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. Composer LaMonte Young, among many others, was a student of Stockhausen’s.
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