Stations: Rihm & Stockhausen

Rihm and Stockhausen’s first meeting took place in the summer of 1972. Stockhausen, 24 years his senior, had already seen a lot of talented young people, but was quite taken with Wolfgang Rihm and his youthful self-confidence when he applied for his composition class at the age of barely twenty. And so Rihm, who had been taking professional composition lessons for a long time, regularly travelled from his new home in Cologne to Kürten, 25 km away, where the master held his classes. He would later say that this time was a time of self-discovery and self-examination as a composer.