Mauricio Kagel: Mauricio Kagel 6 - 1994

 

Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008) - Klangwölfe, Unguis incarnatus est, An Tasten, Trio 

("Mauricio Kagel 6")

Saschko Gawriloff, Siegfried Palm, Bruno Canino

Auvidis Montaigne MO 782043

01. Klangwölfe, for violin and piano (1978-79)    [12:50]
02. Unguis incarnatus est, for piano and violoncello (1972)    [06:29]
03. An Tasten, Klavieretüde (1979)    [15:42]
04. Trio, in drei Sätze (1984-85) - I.    [07:56]
05. Trio, in drei Sätze (1984-85) - II.    [08:28]
06. Trio, in drei Sätze (1984-85) - III.    [11:51]


Saschko Gawriloff: Violin
Siegfried Palm: Violoncello
Bruno Canino: Piano

 

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From the moment when a composer develops a musical language that cannot be marketed in a simple way, s/he is producing a critical work of art.
“Mauricio Kagel: De Mozart a la música pornográfica”, interview with the journalist Ramón Chao for the Spanish magazine Triunfo (28/02/1976).

 

Mauricio Kagel was a unique composer. He absorbed all of the ideas of the avant-garde but always distanced himself from the most dogmatic aspects of the currents that dominated the New Music scene soon after World War II. His subversive mind wouldn’t allow of that, and in this he was akin to Ligeti, who always kept his distance as well. In fact some of Kagel’s works of the first period could be viewed as a direct critique of some of the procedures of that same avant-garde.

At heart he was an anarchist, and he used humor, irony and detachment to create his works. He was also fond of taking things out of their regular context and follow from there, like in the piece An Tasten, where classical rhetorical figures of accompaniment of piano lessons from the 19th-century take a life of their own and set on a fascinating journey.

In a way, Kagel’s works are in themselves a sociology of music, a critical theory made of sound. His music was not overtly militant like that of, say, Nono, but he believed that it can be an agent of change, that it can enlighten the listener and challenge his/her conceptions.

Again like Ligeti, Kagel was a composer who experienced a so-called return to tonality, but in my opinion his “neotonal” works don't sound retro and the best of them retain that edge that many of his compositions always had, albeit in a different form. In works like the first Trio and the third String Quartet, his tonality is unsettling, a kind of a harmonic no-man’s land, with moments of great beauty.

All the pieces of the record included on this post belong to that second period of Kagel that some call “post-modernist” or “neotonal”. This could be debated, but better let us give the word to the man himself. Here are some excerpts translated from interviews and articles collected in the book Palimpsestos (Buenos Aires, Caja Negra, 2011):

“My partial return to tonality is not determined by nostalgia. Besides, ‘tonality’ is not the right term to describe the use of a harmony that is not based on the equivalent treatment of the twelve tones. During serialism there was a preference for major and minor seconds, sevenths and ninths, but today we privilege other combinations of intervals that can give the impression of a (pseudo)tonality, an apparent tonality, inasmuch as thirds, fifths and sixths are much more frequent than before.”

“As a consequence of the emancipation of dissonance, the development of melody progressed while harmony regressed. However, in time the lack of attraction and repulsion, of systole and diastole, develops symptoms of boredom in the listener. Motivated by these reflections, I began very soon to experiment with different chord models without fear of encountering traditional harmony. The most important experience was realising that certain chords can be varied according to compositive procedures derived from serialism and, in doing so, acquire an apparent functionality. And when I developed that I arrived to the notion of ‘serial tonality’, for instance in Chorbuch. I found ample, fertile harmonic fields that allowed to maintain the principle of attraction, not with its traditional function, but with a different one of a character that is merely aural. To decide what should happen next in a linear fashion, I just needed my compositive intuition. Without codes, without comprehensive methodologies, without compositive systems ad gloriam of the author.”

“I want to be able to write a varied, unorthodox harmony without having to be ashamed. Not mere consonances or mere dissonances, but both things balanced in an imperfect way. The question ‘is it modern? is it old-fashioned?’ gets a univocal answer: this music is contemporary because it has been written today.”

“In some works I have written, scents of moments from the history of music that are not very far off can be perceived, but they are not quotations. This is the result of a harmony that breathes free, that is not congested. And this is achieved by a consequent rigour, economy and coherence, not by appealing to eclecticism... as soon as I hear this word mentioned, I get sick.”