Kagel - The 8 Pieces of the Wind Rose

The Guardian 100

Ensemble Aleph
(Evidence)

More than eight years after Mauricio Kagel’s death, it’s still not easy to fit him into the landscape of European music in the second half of the 20th century. Born in Argentina, Kagel moved to Europe in 1957, and as a late arrival on the post-1945 avant garde scene, he always seemed happy to cultivate his position as an outsider. His works were often wry and perceptive critiques of what his contemporaries were doing and and at their best they questioned the whole purpose of music and the assumptions on which it was based.

Towards the end of Kagel’s life, the teasing, confrontational world of his earlier pieces, with their theatricality and regular attacks on the conventions of performance, was often abandoned in favour of pieces that brought together bundles of cultural and historical references. The eight pieces for this “salon orchestra”, The Compass Rose, define that world better than any of his other works. Composed between 1988 and 1994, they were named after the directions on a compass, with the pieces increasing in length as Kagel became more fascinated by the allusive possibilities they suggested.