| Karlheinz Stockhausen
(born Burg Mödrath, Germany, 1928) One of the most influential composers of the post-1945 avant-garde and a pioneer of electronic music. Stockhausen studied in Paris with Olivier Messiaen, met Pierre Boulez, who introduced him to musique concrète (tape music) and to the Parisian avant-garde, and, in 1953, returned to Cologne to work under Herbert Eimert at the Studio für Elektronische Musik at Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk. From 1956, he regularly taught summer courses in Darmstadt, where he championed the music of John Cage. In 1967, he married the painter Mary Bauermeister, who held performances of new music in her gallery in Cologne. By the late 1960s, recordings of Stockhausen's music sold more copies than those of any other composer except Igor Stravinsky. This fame receded during the 1970s, when his activity focused increasingly on his seven-part operatic cycle, Licht. In 1972 he established his own publishing house, and in 1994 he founded the Stockhausen Stiftung für Musik, which includes a Stockhausen archive.