And I'll never forget the first time I took the possibility to project sound every day for six or seven hours with special devices which were built for me.

He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne and later studied with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical boxes through works for solo instruments songs chamber music choral and orchestral music to a cycle of seven full-length operas. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential not only on composers of art music but also on jazz and popular music.