(b Buenos Aires, 24 Dec 1931). Argentinian composer. Self-taught as a composer, he worked in Buenos Aires as a conductor and in films before moving to Cologne in 1957; he has taught at the Musikhochschule there since 1974. The first work he completed in Europe was Anagrama for voices and instruments (1958), using all sorts of improper vocal sounds in textures of Boulezian fastidiousness; this absurd combination of strict form and unconventional, subversive ingredients has remained characteristic. Many of his works are explicitly theatrical: at one extreme they include pieces for the opera house (Staatstheater, 1971; Die Erschöpfung der Welt, 1985) and radio dramas, though in other works the instrumentalists' actions are the drama (Match for two cellists and percussionist, 1964). The intention is often satirical, to examine ways in which music is used as psychological therapy, marketable commodity, religious devotion, subject of learned expertise etc. Several works have also been filmed by the composer (e.g. Ludwig van, 1970).
Born: December 24, 1931 in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died: September 18, 2008 in Cologne, Germany
Genres: Chamber Music, Choral Music, Electronic/Computer Music, Music Theater, Vocal Music
Biography
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kagel proved to be one of the most versatile, creative, and witty composers to come of age in the second half of the twentieth century. He studied piano, theory, violoncello, organ, singing, and conducting, and was self-taught as a composer. Kagel also studied philosophy and literature extensively during his college years, and his career eventually included film and drama.
His early career found Kagel filling positions that drew upon all of these interests. After having served in the early 1950s as advisor to the Agrupación Nueva Musica of Buenos Aires and one of the founders of the Cinémathèque Argentine, he took a position in Colón as conductor of the Chamber Opera and Theater. He conducted new music concerts with the Rhineland Chamber Orchestra in the late 1950s before serving as visiting lecturer in Darmstadt. The 1960s found Kagel in the United States, where he undertook a lecture tour and taught briefly at the University of Buffalo. He then returned to Europe, where he lectured at the Berlin Film and Television Academy before filling Stockhausen's shoes as the director of the Institute of New Music at the Rheinische Musikschule. He was also a presence at the West German Radio electronic music studio, and produced several of his own films and plays. Of course, one finds much bleed between categories and genres when looking at a given work by such a jack-of-all-trades. His plays and films often utilize musical forms as their underlying structures; likewise, his concept of "instrumental theater" insists on the importance of not only the musical sounds produced but also all the physical actions executed by the players. His post-structuralist leanings demand that he constantly elude labels such as "Dadaist" or "anticomposer," on the one hand, or a modernist, on the other; his aesthetic does not emphasize the dismantling of traditions and the building of new ones, but rather a constant and pervasive reevaluation of what constitutes music now.
Fittingly, then, one can find in Kagel's output elements ranging from serialism to expressionism to musique concrète to Dada to aleatoria. Even his earliest works exhibit this experimental attitude. Palimstesos (1950) utilizes word dissociation and metamorphosed speech patterns, ideas that were further explored a few years later in Anagrama (1955-1958). In this latter piece, a Latin palindrome provides the generative musical material; the sounds of words become a compositional device, while the meaning of the words is downplayed or even distorted. In addition, the letters of the words employed inform the pitches used, since many of the letters correspond to musical notes.
Many of his works also employ musical collage techniques, such as his Music for Renaissance Instruments and the music for the film Ludwig van. The influence of Satie, Cage (and perhaps Partch?) can be seen in Der Schall and Unter Strom, two chamber pieces which call for a variety of archaic, invented, or "nonmusical" (i.e. cash registers, horns, etc.) instruments. Again, however, these sounds are not thrown together with reckless abandon; as Kagel himself stated, "An essential aspect of my work is strict composition with elements which are not themselves pure." ~ Jeremy Grimshaw, All Music Guide
Kagel was born into a Jewish family which fled from Russia in the 1920s.[citation needed] He studied music, history of literature, and philosophy in Buenos Aires (Grimshaw 2009). In 1957 he came as a scholar to Cologne, Germany, where he lived until his death.
He died in Cologne on September 18, 2008 after a long illness, at the age of 76 (Nonnenmann 2008).
Works
Many of his later pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers (Kennedy & Bourne Kennedy 2006), such as to adopt certain facial expressions while playing, to make their stage entrances in a particular way, to physically interact with other performers and so on. His work comparable to the Theatre of the Absurd.[citation needed]
Staatstheater (1971) is probably the piece that most clearly shows his absurdist tendency.[citation needed] This work is described as a "ballet for non-dancers",[cite this quote] though in many ways is more like an opera, and the devices it used as musical instruments include chamber pots and even enema equipment. As the work progresses, the piece itself, and opera and ballet in general, becomes its own subject matter.[citation needed] Similar is the radioplayEin Aufnahmezustand (1969) which is about the incidents surrounding the recording of a radio play.
Kagel also made films, with one of the best known being Ludwig van (1970), a critical interrogation of the uses of Beethoven's music made during the bicentenary of that composer's birth (Griffiths 1978, 188). In it, a reproduction of Beethoven's composing studio is seen, as part of a fictive visit of the Beethoven House in Bonn. Everything in it is papered with sheet music of Beethoven's pieces. The soundtrack of the film is a piano playing the music as it appears in each shot. Because the music has been wrapped around curves and edges, it is somewhat distorted, but recognisably Beethovenian motifs can still be heard. In other parts, the film contains parodies of radio or TV broadcasts connected with the "Beethoven Year 1770". Kagel later turned the film into a piece of sheet music itself which could be performed in a concert without the film - the score consists of close-ups of various areas of the studio, which are to be interpreted by the performing pianist.
Other pieces include Con Voce (With Voice), where a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments and Match (1964), a tennis game for cellists with a percussionist as umpire (Griffiths 1978, 188) (for Siegfried Palm[citation needed]), also the subject of one of Kagel's films and perhaps the best-known of his works of instrumental theatre (Griffiths 1981, 812).
Kagel also wrote a large number of more conventional, "pure" pieces, including orchestral music, chamber music, and film scores. Many of these also make references to music of the past by, amongst others, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, and Liszt (Warnaby 1981, 38; Decarsin 1985, 260).
He has been regarded by music historians as deploying a critical intelligence interrogating the position of music in society (Griffiths 1978, 188).
References
Attinello, Paul. 2001. "Kagel, Mauricio." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
Decarsin, François. 1985. "Liszt’s Nuages gris and Kagel’s Unguis incarnatus est: A Model and Its Issue", translated by Jonathan Dunsby. Music Analysis 4, no. 3:259–63.
Griffiths, Paul. 1978. A Concise History of Modern Music: From Debussy to Boulez. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500181675. (Originally published as A Concise History of Avant-garde Music: from Debussy to Boulez. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0195200446 (cloth), ISBN 0195200454 (pbk.). Reissued as Modern Music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985. ISBN 0500201641. Revised edition, as Modern Music: A Concise History. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994. ISBN 0500202788.)
Griffiths, Paul. 1981. "Unnecessary Music: Kagel at 50". Musical Times 122:811–12.
Heile, Björn. 2006. The Music of Mauricio Kagel. Aldershot, Hants; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. ISBN 0754635236
Kennedy, Michael, and Joyce Bourne Kennedy (eds.). 2006. "Kagel, Mauricio". The Oxford Dictionary of Music, second edition, revised. Oxford, Toronto, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-861459-4
