Mauricio Kagel – Music, Movement, Theater, Film

Throughout his creative career, Mauricio Kagel composed, in his stage and film productions, heterogeneous mixtures of sound, movement, action, materials and light sources. This heterogeneity of the setting corresponds with Kagel’s aesthetic viewpoint, which sees “contradictions and misunderstandings as something tremendously creative”. Such an aesthetic of contradiction tends to mistrust everything that is finished, unchanging or representative, and this will be a central focus in this course.

With his concept of “decomposition”, Kagel proposes a re-evaluation of the music of the past, not in order to negate historical music or art, but to reinterpret values and structures of the past, the ultimate goal being reflection (also from the didactic perspective). In this respect, Kagel’s works, particularly his writings and his film compositions about cultural, societal and psychological problems, reflect the rapprochements between scientific and artistic thinking that are characteristic of our time.

The orientation of the course as well as the aesthetic and didactic discussion will be based on selected original texts and films by Mauricio Kagel.

Project Page: Songs of(f) Stage

Required reading

KAGEL, Mauricio and KLÜPPELHOLZ, Werner: Kagel ... /1991. Ostfildern 1998
SCHNEBEL, Dieter: Mauricio Kagel. Musik Theater Film. Cologne 1970