Klang (Stockhausen)

Karlheinz Stockhausen in his garden on 20 April 2005, two weeks before the premiere of the First Hour of Klang

Klang (pronounced [klaŋ])—Die 24 Stunden des Tages (Sound—The 24 Hours of the Day) is a cycle of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, on which he worked from 2004 until his death in 2007. It was intended to consist of 24 chamber-music compositions, each representing one hour of the day, with a different colour systematically assigned to every hour. The cycle was unfinished when the composer died, so that the last three "hours" are lacking. The 21 completed pieces include solos, duos, trios, a septet, and Stockhausen's last entirely electronic composition, Cosmic Pulses. The fourth composition is a theatre piece for a solo percussionist, and there are also two auxiliary compositions which are not part of the main cycle. The completed works bear the work (opus) numbers 81–101.