Mauricio Kagel
Zwei-Mann-Orchester
Essays und Dokumente
Edited by Matthias Kassel
136 pages, 24,5 x 22,5 cm
ISBN 978-3-7965-2751-7
CHF 28
Basel: Schwabe 2011
(not available through Schott)
German edition only.
The Basel 2011 version of Mauricio Kagel's Zwei-Mann-Orchester
Mauricio Kagel's Zwei-Mann-Orchester (Two-Man Orchestra) is one of the most original yet peculiar pieces in contemporary music. It was created between 1971 and 1973 for two one-man orchestras. Using a maximum number of instruments and sound generators, two musicians construct a complex arsenal of equipment and develop the associated music themselves in accordance with Kagel's conceptual score. The result is a dual entity consisting of sounding kinetic sculpture and visually oriented music.
The work’s third performance only took place in Basel in April 2011 during a joint project involving the Paul Sacher Foundation, the Basel Academy of Music, and the Museum Tinguely. For this most recent version Wilhelm Bruck, who had already played the original version at the Donaueschingen première (1973) and the second version in Kassel (1992-93), was joined by Basel percussionist Matthias Würsch to help construct the orchestral machine.
The present volume, published by the Paul Sacher Foundation, gathers together essays by several guest authors on the work's musical and artistic background. It also offers a comprehensive and richly illustrated documentation of the Zwei-Mann-Orchester and its performances to date, using original sources from the Paul Sacher Foundation's Mauricio Kagel Collection and other archives.
