Between the original planning, which began as early as November 1967, and the start of the courses in August 1968, Stockhausen experienced a personal crisis that changed the shape of the project. Following the premiere of Kurzwellen in Bremen on 5 May 1968, Stockhausen received a letter from his second wife, Mary Bauermeister, informing him that she would not be returning from America and declaring that their marriage was at an end. The resulting depressive episode prompted Stockhausen to a hunger strike, during which he read Satprem's book on Sri Aurobindo. The result was a new form of composition for Stockhausen, the fifteen texts of Aus den sieben Tagen. He called this intuitive music, and resolved to use these verbally described processes as the basis of the Darmstadt composition studio, which lasted for the seventeen days preceding the Ferienkurse. As part of his efforts to sharpen the participants' awareness for this new kind of composing, Stockhausen scheduled some seminar sessions late at night or early in the morning, which included listening to recordings of Japanese Gagaku and temple music, as well as field trips to services at a Jewish synagogue in Frankfurt and a Russian Orthodox church, and a specially arranged Catholic mass at a Capuchin monastery.
