BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:‘Un pezzo … di una grandissima serietà e con una grandissima 
 emozione … e con elementi totalmente bruti’: aesthetic and socio-polit
 ical considerations and the failure of their integration in Mauricio Kagel
 ’s work post-1968 - Dr Björn Heile (University of Glasgow) 
DTSTART:20150218T170000Z
DTEND:20150218T183000Z
UID:TALK58092@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:39522
DESCRIPTION:Scholarship on new music is still characterised by advocacy: w
 orks are commonly explained in accordance with their composers’ stated i
 ntentions and their own theories\; analysis is reduced to composition in r
 everse whereby the composer’s creative process is retraced and so forth.
  The result is a public debate on music whereby scholars appear as little 
 more than spokespersons for composers and their works and where serious re
 search is hard to distinguish from PR. It is my belief that\, as in most c
 omparable fields\, musicology has to develop its own methods and theories\
 , independent of the composers and repertoires discussed and that scholars
  have to retain a critical distance from their subjects. The result would 
 be a more intellectually stimulating discourse on new music which would ul
 timately benefit composers too.\n	My discussion focuses on certain of Maur
 icio Kagel’s works from the late 1960s and early 70s. As I argue\, these
  works often thematise failure\, while at the same time\, they themselves 
 represent failure. They are characterised by the tension between aesthetic
  considerations and socio-political if not downright pedagogic intentions 
 that had been a latent feature of Kagel’s oeuvre for some time but that 
 came to the surface in the wake of the events of 1968. Although this tensi
 on was often productive and led to interesting results\, Kagel proved ulti
 mately unable to reconcile the conflicting imperatives inherent in his pra
 xis. This failure led him to largely abandon socio-political ideals and wi
 thdraw into the comfort zone of pure art in the course of the 1970s.\n\nBj
 örn Heile is Reader in Music since 1900 and Head of Music at the Universi
 ty of Glasgow. He is the author of The Music of Mauricio Kagel (Aldershot:
  Ashgate\, 2006)\, the editor of The Modernist Legacy: Essays on New Music
  (Aldershot: Ashgate\, 2009)\, co-editor (with Martin Iddon) of Mauricio K
 agel bei den Darmstädter Ferienkursen für Neue Musik: Eine Dokumentation
  (Hofheim: Wolke\, 2009) and co-editor (with Peter Elsdon and Jenny Doctor
 ) of Watching Jazz: Encountering Jazz Performance on Screen (OUP\, forthco
 ming). He is currently preparing a large collaborative research project on
  the performance practice of Mauricio Kagel’s experimental music.
LOCATION:Recital Room\, Faculty of Music
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR