Dienstag is an opera for 17 solo performers (three singers, 10 instrumentalists, 4 dancer-mimes), actors, mimes, choir, orchestra, and electronic music.

The first component of this opera was in fact the first part of the entire Licht cycle to be composed: Jahreslauf (Course of the Years), which became the first act of Dienstag, was originally written in 1977 as an independent piece for gagaku ensemble.

A concert version for European instruments, with the slightly different title Der Jahreslauf (The Course of the Years), was performed in the Large Broadcasting Hall of the WDR, Cologne, on 10 February 1979.

The day before the premiere, a studio recording was made for commercial release, and the same musicians participated in five staged performances of this act produced by the Paris Opera at the Opéra-Comique from 20 to 24 November 1979.

[2] It was while working on this piece in Japan that the idea occurred to him of composing a seven-part cycle of operas, all based on a single, multi-layered musical formula.

It was premiered under the title Willkommen mit Friedensgruß (Welcome with Peace Greeting) on 4 November 1988 in the Kölner Philharmonie, as part of the ceremony marking the anniversary.

[5] The second act, Invasion, was originally commissioned for the Ensemble InterContemporain by Michel Guy, director of the Festival d'Automne, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989.

[6] The solo synthesizer part together with the electronic music for the closing five scenes of this act ("Pietà", "Explosion", "Jenseits", "Synthi-Fou", and "Abschied") constitute Stockhausen's Klavierstück XV.