Zeitmaße (; German for "Time Measures") is a chamber-music work for five woodwinds (flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon) composed in 1955–1956 by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; it is Number 5 in the composer's catalog. It is the first of three wind quintets written by Stockhausen, followed by Adieu für Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer (1966) and the Rotary Wind Quintet (1997), but is scored with cor anglais instead of the usual French horn of the standard quintet. Its title refers to the different ways that musical time is treated in the composition.
History
Zeitmaße was composed more or less concurrently with three other works in contrasting media, which together formed the basis for Stockhausen's rise to fame in the 1950s. The others were Gesang der Jünglinge for electronic and concrète sounds, Gruppen for three orchestras, and Klavierstück XI for piano.
In order to begin work on a commission for the new orchestral composition which would become Gruppen, Stockhausen interrupted work on Gesang der Jünglinge in August 1955, retreating to an inexpensive rented room in the attic of a parsonage in Paspels, Switzerland, recommended to him by a colleague in the WDR studio, Paul Gredinger. He had scarcely arrived in Paspels when a message reached him, requesting a short composition to celebrate Heinrich Strobel's tenth anniversary of service at the Südwestrundfunk, Baden-Baden.
The humorous, caprice-like song—for alto voice, flute, clarinet in A, and bassoon—sets an epigrammatic text written by Strobel, in a French translation by Antoine Goléa.: The song, in which Stockhausen omits the last five words of the French text, was later published in a memorial volume for Strobel. Upon returning to Cologne, Stockhausen resumed work on Gesang der Jünglinge and returned also to Zeitmaße—now scored for flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon—completing a first version that was recorded for the radio in December 1955 by the Wind Quintet of the WDR Symphony Orchestra (led by their oboist, Wilhelm Meyer), and first broadcast in January 1956. Stockhausen subsequently nearly doubled the length of the work by inserting five "cadenzas", which became the defining moments of the composition. The planned premiere by the WDR Quintet at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in July 1956 fell through, but Stockhausen brought the score there anyway and showed it to his friends. Pierre Boulez initially dismissed Zeitmaße with a characteristically cutting remark to the effect that Stockhausen would do better to stay in the electronic studio, but soon changed his mind and asked to programme it in Paris in his Domaine Musical concert series. Stockhausen agreed, and the world premiere took place there on 15 December 1956, "before a quiet and extremely attentive audience". Five months later, Boulez included Zeitmaße in a programme taken on tour to London—a performance which was broadcast by the BBC on 6 May 1957—and after returning to Paris, made the first recording for commercial release. This recording was made in the composer's presence over a span of eight days in June 1957.
In the meantime, the WDR Quintet had made a recording for broadcast, and in February 1957 gave the German premiere in Bonn, followed in March by a tour to Baden-Baden, Linz, Vienna, and Venice, performing the piece twice on each programme. In a letter to Wolfgang Steinecke, director of the Darmstadt Courses, Stockhausen reported a "quite unexpectedly huge, genuine success" on every occasion, and that he was "especially surprised by the spontaneous reaction of the Italians". Steinecke had already invited Stockhausen to give seminars at Darmstadt. One was titled "Time Composition" and focused on Zeitmaße and Klavierstück XI; Universal Edition had promised delivery of the printed score in time for the performance of Zeitmaße on 22 July. The other was on that year's announced topic, "Music and Speech", and discussed Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître and Nono's Il canto sospeso, as well as Stockhausen's own Gesang der Jünglinge.