Jubiläum is a relatively short work of about 15 minutes duration, written in 1977 on commission for the 125th-anniversary celebration of the Hannover Opera House, and has therefore been called Stockhausen's Operatic Festival Overture.

The formula is presented mainly in a series of dense textures overlaid with shimmering glissandos and rapid melodic figurations, in a "mix of majestic confidence and restless activity" that produces a quality of "breathtaking splendour that is Stockhausen's alone".

[10][4] The fourth, lowest instrumental group (bell plates, bassoons, and double basses) plays the formula seven times as a ground bass, synchronised each time to one of the other three groups: The low brass break through the musical fabric with a statement of the formula from the back of the hall (or from a projecting balcony at the back or at one side) a little more than three minutes from the beginning, and the four oboes similarly play from offstage about nine-and-a-half minutes through the piece.

[11] All four instrumental groups conclude the work with a synchronous formula statement, nearly four times the speed of the slowest tempo, to end in a "festive, brilliant, and confident" mode.

[12] These elements combine to produce a symmetrical form of nine sections plus the concluding (tenth) statement:[5] In the revised version of 1980, one after another six solo instruments step forth from the orchestra, starting in the second stage with the first horn.

In the fourth stage (just after the first window), a cumulation begins, first with a duet, then a trio, quartet, quintet, and finally a sextet, linking the polyphonic layers through all the registers and horizontalising their harmonies into concise melodic and rhythmic figures.