He also attended the Darmstadt summer courses (1958, 1964–1966), winning the Kranichstein Music Prize of the international piano competition on his first visit.
Gruber and Kurt Schwertsik, Zykan co-founded the Salonkonzerte Group and associated ensembles such as MOB art & tone ART (sometimes termed the 'Third Viennese School') to further his ideas about ‘instrumental theatre’, music that aimed for closer links between performance, music and language.
[5] More conventionally, Zykan also composed opera, orchestral, concerto and instrumental music, as well as film scores.
One of his earliest works was a piano concerto using serial techniques, which won a prize at the Innsbruck Youth Culture Week in 1963.
His three operas are Singers Nähmaschine ist die beste (1966, of which there is a revised film version, 1973), Kunst kommt von Gönnen (1980) and Auszählreim (1986).