The Schlagtrio was originally written in Paris in 1952 as a Schlagquartett (Percussive Quartet), for piano and three timpanists, each playing a pair of drums. It was premiered that year in Hamburg, but only in a radio recording. The first public performance was given in Munich on 23 March 1953, in Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Musica Viva concert series (Kurtz 1992, 56), after which Stockhausen decided that he had made impractical demands for subtle attack differentiations in both the percussion and piano parts. He withdrew the score after those two performances until 1973, when he decided to renotate it (Stockhausen 1978, 55). This revision was carried out during a holiday break in 1974, at N'Gor, a beach resort near Dakar in Senegal (Kurtz 1992, 50). The attacks and pitches remained unaltered, but the six timpani were redistributed, three each for just two players, and the note values were doubled in order to facilitate reading (Stockhausen 1978, 55).

Date of composition 1952 in Paris, France
Premiered 1953, March 23rd in Munich, Germany
Catalogue Nr. 1/3
Instruments Piano
2x Timpani
Autotranslations beta Karlheinz Stockhausen: Schlagtrio, Nr. 1/3
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Schlagtrio, Nr. 1/3
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Schlagtrio, Nr. 1/3