Eine Windrose für Mauricio
A Compass for Mauricio op. 115 (2015)Boosey & Hawkes
In 1959 I met Mauricio Kagel in WDR´s electronic Studio in Cologne. He allowed me to watch him working and I thereby not only learned a lot about his complex aesthetic ideas in countless conversations but also we talked much outright nonsense: Kagel had a strong sense for absurd theoretical constructions. We even sightread Haydn symphonies with four hands on the piano.
Time and again I tried to implement in my works what I had learned about the compositional strategies in his scores, but to no avail: his approach to music was completely different from mine!
A few years ago I got to know his Stücke der Windrose (Pieces of the Compass Rose) for salon ensemble and couldn‘t get enough of them: their highly unstable mixture of popular quotations, drifting by as if carried by the wind, and their eerie apocalyptic atmosphere place them among his best pieces and secure their position as eminent documents in music history.
My little compass neither tries to approximate Kagel‘s aesthetic, nor his compositional technique. It‘s just a little Serenade in his memory.
Who knows, he might find it amusing?
Kurt Schwertsik, Vienna, April 2016