Kagel: Szenario / Duodramen / Liturgien

Description

Mauricio Kagel (b. 1931) Szenario • Duodramen • Liturgien  Born in Buenos Aires on 24 December 1931, Mauricio Kagel was self-taught as a composer, taking a degree in philosophy and literature at the University of Buenos Aires. From his earliest pieces (around 1950), he was actively opposed to the neo-classical conservatism favoured by the Perón government, while an anti-establishment intent is similarly evident in articles and reviews written for the journal Nueva Visión. Kagel traveled to West Germany on a DAAD scholarship during 1957, soon settling in Cologne, where he worked with all the main new music organizations and performing bodies. Active as a conductor, writer and teacher, his numerous honours include the Mozart Medal of Frankfurt, Ordre des arts et des lettres, Bundesverdienst Orden First Class, and membership of the Berlin Academy of Arts. Retrospectives of his works have been held throughout Europe and also in North America.Although his earlier mature pieces, such as the String Sextet (1953), the choral Anagrama (1957) and the orchestral Heterophonie (1961), are marked by the influence of avant-garde figures such as Boulez and Stockhausen, Kagel's musical aesthetic was already his own, bringing together precisely organized elements with others that undermine such precision in what is a subtle but determined examination of the rôle of 'control' in art and, by extension, society. The early 1960s saw the advent of his concept of 'instrumental theatre', in which sound itself becomes subject to the presence of the performers in acting out a dramatic context for the work to take place. At around the same time, he embarked on a series of films where music and vision are combined in new and often intriguing perspectives, not least Ludwig Van (1970), a bicentennial 'homage' to Beethoven that questions the rôles of tradition and the performer, with pertinent implications for the subsequent development of the classical music industry.During the 1980s Kagel's language underwent a number of changes, in line with his incorporation of more conventional musical notation, as well as his recourse to outwardly more traditional harmonic and tonal elements. Thus Sankt-Bach-Passion (1985) is more a continuation, rather than rejection, of the German sacred choral tradition, while instrumental works such as the First Piano Trio (1985) and the Third String Quartet (1987) similarly draw on the lineage of Austro-German classicism for their individual exploration of formal and expressive tenets: in other words, asking how might it be possible to compose such pieces without either repudiating or succumbing to the legacy of the musical past. Such an approach has inevitably led to charges of Kagel having embraced the thinking of post-Modernism, as have many other composers of his generation, but the subversive and questioning nature of his stance, as evident in the orchestral Three Et