A first version of In Freundschaft was composed on Sunday, 24 July 1977 in Aix-en-Provence as a birthday gift for Suzanne Stephens. This version was written for the clarinet, but Stockhausen immediately made a fair-copy transposition for flute, and it was this version that was first performed, one time each by two American flautists, Lucille Goeres and Marjorie Shansky, for Stephens’s birthday party in Aix on 28 July 1977. The first public performance, also of the flute version, was given by Lucille Goeres on 6 August 1977, in a concert by course participants of the Centre Sirius at the Aix Conservatory. Stockhausen reworked the composition on 27 April 1978, at which time he also made versions for oboe, trumpet, violin, and viola (Stockhausen 1978). The premiere of the version for clarinet was given by Suzanne Stephens on 30 November 1978 as part of a concert Hommage Olivier Messiaen, in the Salle Wagram, Paris, and the version for oboe was premiered by Heinz Holliger on 6 July 1979 in a Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts concert in the large hall of Funkhaus Halberg at the Saarländische Rundfunk in Saarbrücken. At around this time, Stockhausen adapted the clarinet version for the basset horn, with extended range to low C, and this version was first performed by Suzanne Stephens at a private gathering at the composer’s house on the occasion of his fifty-first birthday on 22 August 1979. Both the clarinet and basset-horn versions are authorised for performance on bass clarinet, and the first public performance of the extended-range version was given by the Dutch bass clarinetist Harry Sparnaay on 10 January 1981 in Haarlem (Stockhausen 1989a, 136–37).

Date of composition 1977
Premiered 1977, August 6th (Centre Sirius) in Aix-en-Provence, France
Catalogue Nr. 46 (1/2)
Approx. duration 15 minutes
Instruments Flute
Autotranslations beta Karlheinz Stockhausen: In Freundschaft, Nr. 46 (1/2)
Karlheinz Stockhausen: In Freundschaft, Nr. 46 (1/2)
Karlheinz Stockhausen: In Freundschaft, Nr. 46 (1/2)