Studie I

[1] In the final stages of editing, Stockhausen commemorated the birth of his first daughter, Suja on 25 September 1953 by inserting a "serially unauthorized" 108 Hz (in a phrase attributed to Richard Toop), "one-gun salute".

[2] The world premiere took place in Cologne on 19 October 1954 in the concert series Musik der Zeit, together with Stockhausen's Studie II and works by Henri Pousseur, Karel Goeyvaerts, Herbert Eimert, and Paul Gredinger.

[6][7] Unlike Studie II, the score has never been published, apart from the first page as an illustration to Stockhausen's analysis of the piece.

[8][9] The fundamental hypothesis for Studie I was that its serial system should begin in the middle of the human auditory range and extend in both directions to the limits of pitch perception.

Durations and amplitudes are inversely proportional to the distance from this central reference, so the sounds become both shorter and softer as they approach the upper and lower limits of pitch audibility.