Class Post (9-30-08): Ludwig Van

Ross' Stockhausen in Berlin Photojournal lead me to a film called Ludwig Van, by composer Mauricio Kagel, who died just this month. I scrolled down to the film, and watched the incomplete version online. To me, the film was curiously interesting, but made very little sense to me. I had never heard of Kagel, so I did a little research. Ross mentioned this article from The Guardian. It gave a good basic understanding of Kagel and his work.
Kagel was serious about music in a humorous, tongue-in-cheek way. His music was a commentary on music. It is obvious from his films that he knew the power of music, but he didn't forget that it is possible to not let music take itself so seriously. Reading the description of his works, one of which was a performance piece for 111 bicyclists,
I was reminded that P.D.Q. Bach did much the same thing, only in a more "popular" way. Peter Schickele, the man behind PDQ, has the same ability to consider ideas from the Baroque and Classical eras objectively, and then humorously apply them to composition.
The author of the article in The Guardian, Tom Service, went so far as to say that Kagel "should be essential listening for anybody interested in new music." It appears to me that he might be worthy of a listen, or a watch in the case of his films, for anybody interested in music history at all. Kagel was a musicologist. He was able to extract ideas about music history, digest them, and present them from an original point of view. He makes an interesting study into the way people think and understand music and it's history.
It's not surprising that he studied philosophy and literature in Buenos Aires, and that one of his lecturers was writer,Luis Borges himself. The fact that he was schooled and raised on the geographical periphery of classical music is definitely a reason for his ability to simultaneously remove himself from and be present in music.