Zeitmaße is a chamber-music work for five woodwinds composed in 1955–1956 by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; it is Number 5 in the composer's catalog. It is the first of three wind quintets written by Stockhausen, followed by Adieu für Wolfgang Sebastian Meyer (1966) and the Rotary Wind Quintet (1997), but is scored with cor anglais instead of the usual French horn of the standard quintet. Its title refers to the different ways that musical time is treated in the composition.
Stockhausen lecturing at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, July 1957
Paspels, the village where Stockhausen began work on Zeitmaße.
The cor anglais, or English horn, is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially an alto oboe in F.
Cor anglais
English horn, c. 1860–70
Opening motive from the 2nd movement (Largo) of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, From the New World