Mauricio Kagel & John Cage
When I was doing some research on avant-garde and chance music I came across an interesting composer named Mauricio Kagel. An author names Bj Heile wrote a book in 2006 titled, The Music of Mauricio Kagel where he talks about his life and his music during the 1950's. Heile states,
“Mauricio Kagel was undoubtedly one of the major figures in the new music of the last fifty years. Growing up in the rich cultural atmosphere of Buenos Aires in the 1940s and ‘50s… he became a member of avant-garde circles as well as receiving a rigorous musical education….He embraced multiple serialism, aleatory technique and electronics, but he is best known for his pioneering explorations in music theatre, radio play, film and mixed media.”
According to Heile, Kagel was a bit of an unusual composer of the time. Many composers did not appreciate or use serialistic music and were turned off by John Cage. Kagel however embraced them! He was very good friends with Györy Ligeti, with whom he shared many commonalities. They were both from foreign countries when they studied in school, lived under communities or oppressive governments and they were both Jewish. This relationship seems to be an important fact because they wrote and studied the same type of music; electronic, aleatoric, and even possibly chance music(might be debatable). They influenced each other.
There was an interview done with Kagel by a man named Bruce Duffie. And in this interview, Kagel explains his view on composing different sorts of music. He is almost philosophical in his view of composition and he explains early in the interview how no music is chaos. It’s just free. An interesting concept. Here is something he says that I enjoyed reading and sort of find it to be the motto of his career:
BD: In your opinion, is there any kind of musical composition that cannot be written?
MK: I will never say this. One very, very enjoyable aspect of music history is that the future is not predictable. I find it very trivial to say the future will bring this and this or we are going toward this and this, because if you live fifty or sixty years, you will be in front of at least two or three really very important changes in the way of doing music! I saw, in the last 40 years, a lot of very important changes of direction! A polyphony of directions, and this is absolutely marvelous. Today it is possible to have very different ways of doing and thinking music at the same time! Nobody has the truth.
Here is the full interview, should you be interested. http://www.bruceduffie.com/kagel.html
Kagel was one who really embraced John Cage's work. Here is a song by Kagel that has only been performed a few times. It’s very short, but the performs not only use the instruments in unusual ways, but they also handle them differently. One of the performers uses a long stick connected to a string and pick to pluck a guitar from five feet away. He also starts off the piece with a tambourine in his mouth getting hit in the face by another large stick. Ouch. The question running through my head is, “Is this really music?” There are distinct sounds and rhythms, so perhaps it is. The castanets gave the piece a sense of rhymic value that made it seem more musical to me.
This piece reminded me of John Cages’ Water Walk piece. He says that it’s called Water Walk because the piece contains water and he walks all through out it…Haha preety ironically funny to me. In this interview I will share, Cage talks to use about how all sound can be music. Then he continues on to be criticized a bit about his “weird sounds.” He talks until about 4:40 and then presents the piece.
This is where the piece begins. The most interesting part about this was the audience's reaction. It might have been the MC setting them up to laugh because he mentions it. But Cage takes it as seriously as a symphonic performance and the laugher might just be because the audience doesn’t know what else to think or do. It really made me cringe when he pounded on the piano a few times…but that might be because I’m a musician. :) I found it also interesting that the sounds, in the beginning, tended to carry the rest of the sounds forward. Almost like they were pedal notes with different instruments playing over the top. Take a listen and let me know what you think!
TTFN!
