Momente (Moments) is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969, scored for solo soprano, four mixed choirs, and thirteen instrumentalists (four trumpets, four trombones, three percussionists, and two electric keyboards). A "cantata with radiophonic and theatrical overtones", it is described by the composer as "practically an opera of Mother Earth surrounded by her chicks". It was Stockhausen's first piece composed on principles of modular transposability, and his first musical form to be determined from categories of sensation or perception rather than by numerical units of musical terminology, which marks a significant change in the composer's musical approach from the abstract forms of the 1950s.

Stockhausen began work on Momente in January 1962, with a performance planned for the following May. He had been invited by Baron Francesco Agnello to withdraw for the period of composition of the work to his palazzo in Siculiana on the south coast of Sicily. Agnello was an ardent supporter of modern music, and directed the Settimane Internazionali di Nuova Musica di Palermo. The plan was that Stockhausen would go to Sicily first, and Mary Bauermeister would follow a week later, to work on paintings for an exhibition planned for Amsterdam in June. Stockhausen's wife Doris would join them in March, leaving their children in someone's care in Cologne. The palazzo was freezing cold, as it was really intended only as a summer residence, and for three months both Stockhausen and Bauermeister "worked like crazy" on their respective projects, retreating to a small, easily heated room, furnished with a piano and two tables.

Shortly before Doris was to have come to Siculiana a telegram arrived, saying she had been taken seriously ill and required surgery. Stockhausen decided to return to Germany to support her, and they spent a quiet time in the Black Forest, where Doris went to recuperate.

A first version of Momente, consisting of all the K moments, i(m), i(d), M(m) and MK(d), was premiered on 21 May 1962 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. Moment i had already been composed, but was not included in the Cologne performance. A second group of moments, including all the remaining M moments and some of the D moments, was composed for a performance planned for the 1963 Settimane Internazionali di Nuova Musica di Palermo, but the musicians rebelled at the unconventional nature of the music and the performance did not take place. Early in 1964 these moments were revised. Seven of the M moments and the i moment were added for a tour in October 1965, but the D moments were withheld for practical performance reasons.

Some of the D moments were subsequently reworked, and the long i(k) moment composed for a completely new version, completed in 1969 but only premiered on 8 December 1972 in Bonn. This version was recorded for commercial release and taken on a tour of Europe.

Stockhausen draws on a variety of sources for the texts of Momente:

The main compositional problem was to mediate among all these text fragments, in order to avoid the effect of mere collage.

Momente seeks to employ the greatest possible number of vocal phenomena—not just conventional singing but also the communication functions of spoken and whispered language, crying, and laughter, producing an "infinitely rich mode of expression ... [that] profoundly touches our emotive sensibility". Isolated syllables and even single phonemes or linguistic segments, including vowels, continuant consonants, and tongue clicks are used "in a scale extending from unvoiced exhaling via aspiration, whispering, giggling, murmuring, speaking, shouting, screaming and laughing, to singing" in order to "permit the composition of timbral transitions and relations between spoken and instrumental sounds".