Some things should not be said but in the end they should come out in certain circumstances – in 1971 Gottfried Michael Koenig – a world-renowned innovator in the field of Electronic Music asked the composer if he was an incarnation of Ludwig van Beethoven.

The composer was as shocked as anyone reading this would be because at that time he was only just producing the compositions that would take him straight through the work of Koenig.

Furthermore at the time he was struck by the audacity and arrogance of Koenig to think that the incarnation of Beethoven would turn up at PlompetorenGracht 14 - with Atlantis on the front of the building and apparently a former Gestapo headquarters in the back streets of Utrecht.

Although the composer had noticed that when he started studying with him he kept tripping over when he saw him.

It wasn't’t until he returned to England after my first spell at Utrecht that he realized why Koenig had said that – on seeing a painting of Beethoven in his mid twenties it was like looking into a mirror.

Though during a short reintroduction to British music life it didn't need a reincarnation to see that Daniel Barenboim fails to interpret Beethoven.

Because of the fast progress the composer made at Utrecht, the Dutch were comparing him to Stockhausen, and this eventually got to Koenig who may have thought the above for a while when it came to the situation that he might be challenging his position as director, so the fact that at one point he thought the composer was the incarnation of Beethoven, didn't stop Koenig from pushing him out of the studio.

Koenig was a fellow pupil of Stockhausen under Eimert and was eventually forced out of Germany by Stockhausen this was why he was working in Utrecht, while Stockhausen was based in Cologne and took over the WDR studio after Eimert.

Stockhausen criticised Koenig's innovations saying 'you would have to be mad to use a computer for composition'.

This split between Koenig and Stockhausen in Electronic music is the fundamental split in its development - Koenig representing the continuation of pure electronic music as originated by Eimert and Stockhausen the deviation from this into musique-concrete and electro-acoustic music. In fact Stockhausen's only piece of electronic music was his initial studies - which owed much to Eimert, his other pieces were essentially electroacoustic pieces.

Eimert had requested a copy of Electronic Music No.7 by the composer but died just before it was completed for performance in 1972.

Soon after the composer did have a series of correspondence with Stockhausen about working in Koln at the WDR studio, but this never developed as partly because he liked to keep the studio for himself and like Boulez never saw fit to encourage the next generation, further more as he considered Koenig a challenge, would not have helped a composer from his camp.

The piece the composer planned to complete in Koln- Electronic Music No.10 is still waiting for the call.

Having come off worse with a battle with Stockhausen,. Koenig wasn't going to allow himself to get in another struggle and by this time a profound split had already developed between the composer and Koenig over harmony in electronic Music so the composer was forced out of the studio in 1972.