The Shiraz Arts Festival was an arts festival held annually from 1967 to 1977 in the Iranian city Shiraz. Its creation was suggested by Farah Pahlavi and sponsored by National Iranian Radio & Television. The festival included music, dance, and theater, performed in the ruins of Persepolis, and attracted national and international artists, including Parisa, Yehudi Menuhin, Ravi Shankar, Ram Narayan, Vilayat Khan, Iannis Xenakis, Peter Brook, John Cage, Gordon Mumma, David Tudor, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Joseph Chaikin, Jerzy Grotowski, Valda Setterfield, and Merce Cunningham. Following the Iranian Revolution, the festival was discontinued.
Beginning with Mantra for two pianos and electronics (1970), Stockhausen turned to formula composition, a technique which involves the projection and multiplication of a single, double, or triple melodic-line formula (Kohl 1983–84a; Kohl 1990; Kohl 2004). Sometimes, as in Mantra and the large orchestral composition with mime soloists, Inori, the simple formula is stated at the outset as an introduction.
He continued to use this technique (e.g., in the two related solo-clarinet pieces, Harlekin ["Harlequin"] and Der kleine Harlekin ["The Little Harlequin"] of 1975, and the orchestral Jubiläum ["Jubilee"] of 1977) through the completion of the opera-cycle Licht in 2003 (Blumröder 1982; Conen 1991; Kohl 1983–84a; Kohl 1990; Kohl 1993; Kohl 2004; Stockhausen-Verlag 2010, 10).
Some works from the 1970s did not employ formula technique—e.g., the vocal duet "Am Himmel wandre ich" ("In the Sky I am Walking", one of the 13 components of the multimedia Alphabet für Liège, 1972), "Laub und Regen" ("Leaves and Rain", from the theatre piece Herbstmusik (1974), the unaccompanied-clarinet composition Amour, and the choral opera Atmen gibt das Leben ("Breathing Gives Life", 1974/77)—but nevertheless share its simpler, melodically oriented style (Conen 1991, 57). Two such pieces, Tierkreis ("Zodiac", 1974–75) and In Freundschaft ("In Friendship", 1977, a solo piece with versions for virtually every orchestral instrument), have become Stockhausen's most widely performed and recorded compositions (Anon. 2007a; Deruchie 2007; Nordin 2004).
Source
