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"I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language." ―Karlheinz Stockhausen

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More than twenty years after its premiere, Mantra occurs as Stockhausen's first "Formelkomposition," and therefore as a keywork to almost all of his following pieces, such as "Inori," "Tierkreis," and "Sirius," as well as his music-theater cycle, "Licht." The basis of the piece is a twelve-tone motive, where every note has a specific duration, rhythmic value and intensity. In conncetion with this, Stockhausen mentions that he has quite free images or sounds, just as in "Aus den Sieben Tagen," a meditation piece based on verbal notation which was created in California in 1968, and also in the piece "Fur kommende Zeiten" that was written at the same time as Mantra. And although in interviews Stockhausen talks about how he uses rigid and free forms in mixed ways, all the works following Mantra are nevertheless "Formula" compositions, or even―as in "Licht"―"Superformula" compositions.

John Cage is one of the giants of 20th century contemporary music. While he never wrote anything you'd call Classical Top 40, his music up to 1950 is far more accessible than the random and chance-influenced pieces he created later on. These mysterious, wispy pieces sound as though they were written for a small ensemble of ghostly percussion instruments, although they are played by a single performer playing a piano with various gadgets attached to the strings. His composing, performing and philosophy are intertwined, and Cage has influenced innumerable composers and performers in classical, jazz and rock music. Cage has made a life's work out of music-as-sound and sound-as-music.

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"Silence. Sounds are only bubbles on its surface. They burst to disappear." (John Cage)

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Of all the composers of the twentieth century John Cage (1912–1992) is doubtless one of the most inventive and the most determined in the pursuit of his musical goals. The significance of the seven pieces brought together here is the striking panorama of the intelligence of the material presented, over a period of four years, from 1939 to 1943, by the composer whom the critic Fred Goldbeck described as “the greatest Giraudouxian of our age”.