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Gruppen ("Groups") for three orchestras (1955-57) is amongst the best-known works of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. It is "a landmark in 20th-century music . . . probably the first work of the post-war generation of composers in which technique and imagination combine on the highest level to produce an undisputable masterpiece" (Smalley 1967, 794). A large group of 109 players is divided into three orchestral units, each with its own conductor, which are deployed in a horseshoe shape to the left, front, and right of the audience. The spatial separation was principally motivated by the compositional requirement of keeping simultaneously played yet musically separate passages distinct from one another, but led to some orgiastic passages in which a single musical process passes from one orchestra to another. The title refers to the work's construction in 174 units, mainly composed in what Stockhausen terms "groups"—cohesive groupings of notes unified through one or more common characteristics (dynamics, instrumental color, register, etc.). This category is contrasted with the "punctual" style of early Darmstadt serialism, which nevertheless also occurs in Gruppen, along with a third category of "statistical" swarms or crowds, too dense for the listener to be able to accurately distinguish individual notes or their order of succession. Consequently, the importance of individual notes is relatively low, so that sonority, density, speed, dynamics, and direction of movement become the main features for the listener (Smalley 1967, 795).

References

• Beyer, Peter. 2000. "Regelwerk und Theorie serieller Musik in Karlheinz Stockhausens GRUPPEN für 3 Orchester." In Musiktheorie: Festschrift für Heinrich Deppert zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Wolfgang Budday. Tutzing: Hans Schneider.
• Harvey, Jonathan. 1975. The Music of Stockhausen: An Introduction. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Koenig, Gottfried Michael. 1962. “Commentary”. Die Reihe 8 ("Retrospective") [English edition, 1968], 80–98.
• Misch, Imke. 1998. “On the Serial Shaping of Stockhausen’s Gruppen für drei Orchester”. Perspectives of New Music 36, no. 1 (Winter): 143–87.
• Misch, Imke. 1999. Zur Kompositionstechnik Karlheinz Stockhausens Gruppen für 3 Orchester (1955–57). Signale aus Köln: Beiträge zur Musik der Zeit 2, edited by Christoph von Blumröder. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag.
• Smalley, Roger. 1967. “Stockhausen’s Gruppen.” Musical Times 108, no. 1495 (September): 794–97.