A "cantata with radiophonic and theatrical overtones",[1] it is described by the composer as "practically an opera of Mother Earth surrounded by her chicks".

He had been invited by Baron Francesco Agnello to withdraw for the period of composition of the work to his palazzo in Siculiana on the south coast of Sicily.

Stockhausen's wife Doris would join them in March, leaving their children in someone's care in Cologne.

The palazzo was freezing cold, as it was really intended only as a summer residence, and for three months both Stockhausen and Bauermeister "worked like crazy" on their respective projects, retreating to a small, easily heated room, furnished with a piano and two tables.

Stockhausen decided to return to Germany to support her, and they spent a quiet time in the Black Forest, where Doris went to recuperate.

[12] Momente seeks to employ the greatest possible number of vocal phenomena—not just conventional singing but also the communication functions of spoken and whispered language, crying, and laughter, producing an "infinitely rich mode of expression ... [that] profoundly touches our emotive sensibility".

[13] Isolated syllables and even single phonemes or linguistic segments, including vowels, continuant consonants, and tongue clicks are used "in a scale extending from unvoiced exhaling via aspiration, whispering, giggling, murmuring, speaking, shouting, screaming and laughing, to singing" in order to "permit the composition of timbral transitions and relations between spoken and instrumental sounds".

[14] In addition to singing, the choir members clap their hands, snap their fingers, stamp and shuffle their feet, and slap their thighs.

They also play small "auxiliary" instruments: choir I has cardboard tubes of various lengths with glued-on covers, played like drums using light mallets; choir II uses twelve pairs of claves—all with different pitches; choir III shakes plastic soap boxes and refrigerator drink canisters filled with buckshot, which sound like maracas with different pitches, according to the number of pellets and the size of the plastic canisters or boxes; choir IV uses twelve pairs of Volkswagen lug-nut spanners (which kept disappearing during rehearsals, because most of the choristers drove Volkswagens).

Having the choristers play simultaneously with each syllable they sing or speak automatically and easily solves the problem of rhythmic coordination.

[15] However, Stockhausen reported that the WDR choir, which sang for the première, initially objected to these practices[16] and, "because such means of sound and noise production can have a comic effect, .

In the second level, only a slight degree of influence from one other type occurs (about 30%), and is indicated with lowercase, bracketed letters, e.g., M(k) and M(d) in the M group.

However, in the compositional working-out, the durations of I and I(m) were increased to about ten and five minutes, respectively, and I(k) was even more drastically expanded, to more than twenty minutes—as long as all the other I moments put together.

This version was also heard in the first American performance, at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, New York, on 1 March 1964.