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KAGEL, MAURICIO

(1931 - 2008)

Among today’s leading composers, Mauricio Kagel, a native of Argentina, has contributed to instrumental and music theatre repertoire, with scores also for radio plays and films. Since moving to Germany in 1957 with a German government scholarship he has made his home in Cologne. In the 1950s he participated in the Darmstadt summer courses for new music and in 1969 became director of the Institute for New Music at the Rhine Music School in Cologne and, as a successor to Karlheinz Stockhausen, leader until 1975 of the Cologne courses for new music. In 1974 he was appointed a professor of music-theatre at the Cologne Musikhochschule. Mauricio Kagel was co-founder of the Cologne Ensemble for New Music and has worked in the electronic studios in Cologne, Berlin and Utrecht. He has conducted many of his works himself and is the stage director and producer of all his films and radio plays. He has received various honours and awards and has been represented at many important contemporary music festivals. On the occasion of his 75th birthday he made guest appearances in July 2006 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, at the Goethe Institute and in the Teatro Margarita Xirgu, a symbol of German-Argentinian cultural exchange, with concerts, open rehearsals and recitals.