‘Irrational Nuances’: Interpreting Stockhausen's<i>Klavierstück I</i>

Abstract The performance practice of European serial music has long been misunderstood. This article uses Stockhausen's Klavierstück I (1952–3) as a lens through which to view the realities this practice, drawing on close contextual analysis affordances score and now significant corpus recordings. These findings are used extend M. J. Grant's aesthetics provide practical basis for what she calls ‘serial listening’. Three principal styles identified attendant modes listening suggested, relating non-thematic principles hermeneutic contexts music, include embodied response performer defamiliarized musical material nascent dialectic instrumental electronic composition. investigation – informing serious judgements value taste broader implications development notation temporal theory in 1950s new music.