We now remember Karlheinz Stockhausen as a pioneer of electronic music, laboring away in studios dominated by hulking early synthesizers and tape machines toward a new sonic experience, but he wrote his most popular work for much humbler devices: music boxes. Composed in 1974 and 1975, Tierkreis, the German word for zodiac, consists of twelve melodies, each representing a sign on that astrological calendar, each centered on a different pitch, each played on its own dedicated music box.

Source: Hear Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Pioneering Compositions for Music Boxes | Open Culture