Mauricio Kagel
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Mauricio Raúl Kagel (Template:IPA; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer and academic teacher.
Life and career
[edit]Early life and education
[edit]Mauricio Raúl Kagel was born on 24 December 1931 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family that had fled Russia in the 1920s.Template:Sfn He studied music, history of literature, and philosophy in Buenos Aires.Template:Sfn In 1957 he moved to Cologne, West Germany, where he lived until his death.
As teacher
[edit]From 1960–66 and 1972–76 Kagel taught at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.Template:Sfn He also taught from 1964–65 at the University at Buffalo as the visiting Slee Professor of music theory. At the Berlin Film and Television Academy he was a visiting lecturer.Template:When He served as director of courses for new music in Gothenburg and Cologne.Template:Sfn He was professor for new music theatre at the Köln Hochschule from 1974–97.
Among his students were Moya Henderson, Kevin Volans, Maria de Alvear, Carola Bauckholt, Branimir Krstić, David Sawer, Template:Ill, Juan Maria Solare, Norma Tyer, Gerald Barry, Martyn Harry, and Chao-Ming Tung. Template:See LMST
As composer
[edit]Some of his pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers,Template:Sfn such as to adopt certain facial expressions while playing, to make their stage entrances in a particular way, or to physically interact with other performers. For this reason commentators at times related his work to the theatre of the absurd.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He has been regarded by music historians as deploying a critical intelligence interrogating the position of music in society.Template:Sfn He was also active in the fields of film and photography.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1991 Kagel was invited by Walter Fink to be the second composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival. In 2000 he received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize.
Music
[edit]Template:See also Staatstheater (1970) remains, probably, Kagel's best-known work. He described it as a "ballet for non-dancers",Template:Cite quote although it is in many ways more like an opera; the devices it uses as musical instruments include chamber pots and enema equipment.
Similar is the radio play Ein Aufnahmezustand (1969) which is about the incidents surrounding the recording of a radio play. In Con voce (With Voice), a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments. Match (1964) is a "tennis game" for cellists with a percussionist as umpire,Template:Sfn also the subject of one of Kagel's films and perhaps the best-known of his works of instrumental theatre.Template:Sfn
Kagel also wrote a large number of more conventional orchestral and chamber pieces. Many of these make references to music of the past by, among others, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and Liszt.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Films
[edit]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.Template:Sfn In it, a reproduction of Beethoven's 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 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.
References
[edit]Citations
[edit]Sources
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Further reading
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External links
[edit]- Mauricio Kagel website, biography
- Mauricio Kagel biography and works on the UE website (publisher)
- Mauricio Kagel site by Björn Heile
- Kagel Biography by BBC Radio 3 programme Cut and Splice.
- Mauricio Kagel at UbuWeb Film presents various Kagel films, including the full version of Ludwig Van, available for free download.
- Template:Usurped has FLAC files made from a high-quality LP transcription available for free download.
- Edition Peters: Mauricio Kagel October 1998.
- Interview: There Will Always Be Questions Enough Mauricio Kagel in conversation with Max Nyffeler.
- UbuWeb: Mauricio Kagel featuring Der Schall (1968) and ACUSTICA for experimental sound-producers and loud-speakers.
- Washington Post obit by Anne Midgette.
- Guardian obit by Adrian Jack.
- New York Times obituary by William Grimes.
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- Interview with Mauricio Kagel, 2 November 1992
Template:Mauricio Kagel Template:Navboxes Template:Subject bar Template:Authority control
- 1931 births
- 2008 deaths
- 20th-century classical composers
- 20th-century German composers
- 20th-century male composers
- 21st-century classical composers
- 21st-century German composers
- 21st-century male musicians
- Argentine classical composers
- Argentine emigrants to Germany
- Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent
- Composers for carillon
- Composers from Buenos Aires
- Deutsche Grammophon artists
- Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners
- German classical composers
- German male classical composers
- Jewish classical composers
- Jewish Argentine musicians
- Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
- Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
- Rolf Schock Prize laureates