Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was born near Cologne in 1928 and orphaned by the Second World War, working farm jobs and playing bar piano before he could study music properly. In the 1950s he joined the electronic music studio at the West German radio station in Cologne, where composers built sound directly on tape, and he became the figure most identified with treating electronics as a serious musical instrument.

His ambitions kept growing: Gruppen puts three orchestras with three conductors around the audience so music can travel through the room, and later projects included a cycle of seven operas, one for each day of the week. He was famous well beyond classical circles; his face appears in the crowd on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album cover. He died in 2007.

Start with Gruppen if you can, ideally on a good recording with headphones so the three orchestras register. Then try Kontakte, where piano and percussion trade sounds with electronics.