The Music of Mauricio Kagel

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'BjA?rn Heile provides a wide-ranging and persuasive portrait of one of contemporary music's most prominent yet provocative senior figures. Kagel isn't easy to pin down, but this book manages it by demonstrating close familiarity with all the works discussed, and it conveys their essence, both visual and aural, clearly and engagingly. Touching on the wider musical and critical context as well, Dr Heile's book is the first to make plain Kagel's significance for an English-language readership, and it should leave its readers more eager than ever to explore this rewarding repertory.' Arnold Whittall, King's College, London. 'Astonishingly, this excellent book is the first in English about one of the most fascinating and paradoxical of living composers. BjA?rn Heile's impressive survey reveals the extraordinary range of Kagel's work, from his anarchic inventions of the 1960s and '70s - embracing music, film, theatre, dance and radiophonic art - to an ironic yet sophisticated treatment of post-modern culture, culminating in concert music of lasting imagination and power. Despite Kagel's centrality to the European avant-garde, Heile finds enduring Argentinian characteristics: most audibly its dance music, more enigmatically a Borgesian surrealism in which fantasy replaces reality. Underlying Kagel's achievement, as Heile observes, "the wondrous and the absurd go hand in hand"' Richard Steinitz 'For the first time the whole Kagel, from the Argentinian beginnings to 2004... very readable book... In his own words, Kagel is trying to write music "which encourages thinking and has to complemented by thinking". Heile's monograph completely fulfils this demand. It is as useful for looking up factual information as for reflection - on a composer who, like no other, brings ideas to sensory perception. That is the best that can be said about a Kagel book.' Neue Zeitschrift fA1/4r Musik 'Kagel is a major cultural figure with a wonderfully rich output of work that shows