Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel (born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 24, 1931 - September 18, 2008) was an Argentine composer. He is most famous for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance. Many of his pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers, 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 has often been compared to the theatre of the absurd, and he is often talked of as the musical equivalent of Eugène Ionesco. Kagel has also written 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. He studied theory, singing, conducting, piano, cello and organ with private teachers, but as a composer was self-taught. Emigrated to Cologne (Germany) in 1957. Founded the "Kölner Ensemble für Neue Musik" (Ensemble for New Music) in 1959. Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Karel Goeyvaerts, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen belong to that handful of composers that provoked a landslide in the music of the ‘50s and ‘60s of the past century, that has remained unparalleled up to now.
Zappa and Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel is named in the list of influences inside the sleeve of Zappa's debut album "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading: "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them".
Interviewed by David Reitman (Rock Magazine, 25 January 1971), Zappa said that he wasn't so impressed by Kagel's electronic music as he was by a lecture he gave at a college in California: "(...) He played a tape of a piece called Anagrama. (...) I don't think it's released. I got the score to it. It's fantastic. It's for chorus and percussion, there's a harp in there and a few other things. I'm surprised they never put that out. But the orchestration was unbelievable. For instance, in the percussion section there are two giant rolls of paper that these guys have to rip up on cue. And it's really notated out exactly. They have sheets of tin foil that they play and it really sounds good. And the chorus is singing phonetic texts – it's probably the basis of It Can't Happen Here and things like that." [1]
The last line of Seal Call Fusion Music (from At The Circus (BTB)) is: "Mauricio Kagel, eat yer heart out."
