Mauricio Kagel was born in Argentina in 1931. He studied music, literary history, and philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and became an artistic advisor to the Agrupacion Nueva Musica at the age of 18. In the early 1950s, he co-founded the Cinémathèque Argentine and worked as a film and photography critic; during this same period he began composing his first instrumental and electroacoustic pieces. From 1955 to 1957, he worked with the University of Buenos Aires, the Chamber Opera, and the Teatro Colon.

In 1957 he moved to Cologne, Germany. Two years later, he founded the Kölner Ensemble für Neue Musik, and from 1969 to 1975 directed the Institute for New Music at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne, the Cologne New Music Courses, and the Cologne New Music Ensemble. Starting in 1974, he occupied the chair for new music theater at the Hochschule für Musik, a post created for him.

Although Kagel cannot be said to have founded any “school,” his thirty-five-year teaching career had a major impact on many composers of the younger generation.

Kagel’s work is vast and varied: he composed for orchestra, voice, piano, and chamber orchestra, as well as many pieces for stage, film, and radio.

In the early 1960s, the composer began to focus on instrumental theater. Sur Scène (1959) was his first such piece, and made him an authority in the world of European music. Many instrumental and stage pieces followed, interspersed with “open” form symphonies such as Hétérophonie and Diaphonies I, as well as II and III.

In the 1970s, Kagel became interested in deconstructing the classical tradition (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms), which he held up against various forms of popular music. In 1970, Ludwig van, particularly in its film version, showcased Kagel’s inventiveness in the genres of theater, concert, film, and radio. The following year, Staatstheater was quickly followed by a return to the symphony orchestra with Variationen ohne Fuge. He continued to add both instrumental and theater pieces to his catalogue, weaving the two together as he explored unexpected sounds and “music-producing” gestures, from Charakterstück for zither quartet and Exotica for non-European instruments (1972) to his two operas, Die Erschöpfung der Welt (1980) and Aus Deutschland (1981). Kagel pushed this shattering of sound conventions and habits even further in the 1980s with pieces such as Rrrrrrr… for 41-piece ensemble (1980-1982) and Third string quartet (1986-1987).

Kagel’s humorous, theatrical approach remained at the fore throughout his career, even as the composer returned with increasing frequency to more traditional instruments in compositions such as the cycle Die Stücke der Windrose for “salon orchestra” (1991-94); Études (1992-96) and Broken Chords, for large orchestra (2002); Quirinus’ Liebeskuss (2002), for voice ensemble and instruments; or Fremde Töne und Widerhall for orchestra (2005).

Mauricio Kagel received many awards and honors over the course of his career, including the Koussevitzky Prize in 1965, Zürich’s Scotoni Prize for Hallelujah in 1969, the Adolf Grimme Prize in 1970 and 1971, the Karl Sczuka Prize from SWR Baden-Baden in 1980, the Erasmus Prize in 1998, the Prix Maurice Ravel in 1999, the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis in 2000, an honorary doctorate from the Musikhochschule Franz Liszt, Weimar 2001, and the Rolf Schock Prize in 2005. He also was awarded the Mozart-Medaille der Stadt Frankfurt, was named a French Chevalier des arts et des lettres, received an Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and was named to the Berlin Academy of Arts.