Collegium Vocale Köln

They are best known as the group for which Karlheinz Stockhausen composed Stimmung in 1968, a work which they had performed more than three hundred of times throughout the world by 1986.

[1] In addition to Stimmung, the Collegium Vocale performed other works by Stockhausen, notably as part of the ensemble of musicians who appeared with him at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, between March and September 1970, where individual singers of the group performed Spiral for a soloist with a short-wave radio.

[2] On 5 June 1971 the Collegium Vocale participated in the world premiere of Stockhausen's Sternklang in the Tiergarten in Berlin, and appeared also in subsequent performances in the Englischer Garten in Munich, at the Shiraz Arts Festival in 1972, in the Parc Franck Delmas at the La Rochelle Festival in 1974, and in the Parc de Saint-Cloud in 1975.

Four members of the group also took part in a studio recording of the work made in June 1975.

[3] In the meantime, they had also participated in the world premiere of his Alphabet für Liège on 23 September 1972.

Collegium Vocale Köln (inter al.), Shiraz Arts Festival September 1972: back (standing), Volker Müller, Karlheinz Stockhausen, (seated) Karl O. Barkey , Hans-Aldrich Billig , Wolfgang Lüttgen, Günther Engels, Christoph Caskel , front, Péter Eötvös , Dagmar von Biel , Gaby Rodens , Wolfgang Fromme , Helga Hamm-Albrecht
German Pavilion, Expo '70, where the Collegium performed Stockhausen's works in the spherical auditorium, out of view at the right