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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2021
This article adopts a disability studies perspective to evaluate the ways in which Mauricio Kagel's Repertoire from Staatstheater reimagines human bodies. Objects and bodies interact in myriad ways within the one hundred vignettes of Repertoire: some objects hinder or aid the bodies on stage, while others become incorporated within the body, acting as a single expressive unit. My analysis demonstrates the ways in which both objects and bodies transform their traditional roles as ascribed by society, rejecting procrustean physiques. Using disability studies concepts such as embodiment and experientialism I evaluate sound and physical action as inextricable expressions of imaginative corporealities. Reflecting upon Kagel's identity as an outsider of the European avant-garde, as well as his irreverence for oppressive social institutions, I evince that other forms of hierarchical disruptions are at play, namely that abled bodies do not preside over disabled ones and notions of beauty hold no clout.
1 Paul Griffiths writes, ‘Staatstheater appeared to be the opera to end opera, using all the apparatus of the opera house – soloists, chorus, orchestra, ballet company and props – in a sequence of skits mocking their functions and original purpose’ (Paul Griffiths, ‘Unnecessary Music: Kagel at 50’, The Musical Times 122, no. 1666 (1981), p. 811). Along these lines, Bjorn Heile explains, ‘the “scenic composition” Staatstheater (“state theatre”, 1971) contains a biting satire of one of the most prestigious European cultural achievements, opera’ (Björn Heile, ‘“Transcending Quotation”: Cross-Cultural Musical Representation in Mauricio Kagels Die Stücke der Windrose für Salonorchester’. Music Analysis 23/1 (2005), pp. 57–85). Additionally, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music, Paul Attinello explains that in ‘Each of its nine sections [Staatstheater] involves performers … in a set of actions that subverts the normal performance hierarchy: members of the chorus sing overlapping solos; soloists sing in ensemble; and non-dancers perform a ballet’ (Paul Attinello, ‘Kagel, Mauricio’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 11 July, 2019).
2 Due to the polysemous nature of the titles, I chose to keep them in German: Repertoire: szenisches konzertstück; Einspielungen: musik für lautsprecher; Ensemble: für sechzehn stimmen; Debüt: für sechzig stimmen; Saison: sing-spiel in 65 bildern; Spielplan: instrumentalmusik in aktion; Kontra ---> danse: ballett für nicht-tänzer; Freifahrt: gleitende kammermusik; Parkett: konzertante massenszenen.
3 Hughes, Edward Dudley and Kagel, Mauricio, ‘The Uncut Version Edward Dudley Hughes on the Maverick Mauricio Kagel’. The Musical Times 135, no. 1814 (1994), p. 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Both problematizing and embracing the notion of identity, Kagel explains, ‘I am glad to have been born in Argentina, since I was not confronted with the notion of cultural hegemony, which in Europe has been used to justify fatal inhibitions and aggressions. … As regards the concept of “cultural identity”: sure I've got one, my identity, yet I would prefer to speak of “fragmentary identities”. The aggressive identification with a single culture has often led to catastrophe’ (Kagel, Mauricio, ‘Fragen wird es immer genug geben: Mauricio Kagel im Gesprach mit Max Nyffeler’. Lettre 51/4 (2000)Google Scholar).
5 Griffiths, ‘Unnecessary Music’, p. 811.
6 See Davidson, Michael, ‘Aesthetics’, in Keywords for Disability Studies, ed. Adams, Rachel, Reiss, Benjamin and Serlin, David (New York: New York University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
7 Davidson, ‘Aesthetics’. p. 26.
8 Straus, Joseph N., Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Davidson, ‘Aesthetics’. p. 26.
10 Siebers, Tobin, Disability Aesthetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Siebers, Disability Aesthetics.
12 Sherry Lee provides a few examples of the modernist operas that used disabled characters: ‘Richard Strauss's and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten (1911–17), with its three disfigured characters […]; Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten (1913–15), whose disfigured principal character is in thrall to a beautiful woman with a hidden congenital impairment, and his Der Schatzgräber (1916–18), with its constellation of an ugly Fool, a disabled henchman, and a disfigured dwarf of legend; and Alexander Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg (1922), which sets Oscar Wilde's fairy tale of an ugly dwarf gifted as a plaything to a heartless young princess’. (Sherry D. Lee, ‘Modernist Opera's Stigmatized Subjects’. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, ed. Blake Howe, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Neil Lerner and Joseph Straus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 664–5.
13 Lee, ‘Modernist Opera's Stigmatized Subjects’, p. 662.
14 The performers, as dictated by score, may be actors or musicians.
15 Willi Worthmuller. Interview with Mauricio Kagel. Nurnberger Nachrichten, 8 June 1970, n.p.
16 Mauricio Kagel, ‘Mauricio Kagel’. Interview by Anthony Coleman. BOMB, Summer 2004, pp. 62–67.
17 The images of Staatstheater page on OperaLab Berlin's website show plenty of similar performative configurations, although with seemingly more dramatisation and colourful props (outside those objects specified by the score) as well as additional performers. The television version featuring Kagel can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuM8sYuZPp8&list=RDIuM8sYuZPp8&start_radio=1&t=913.
18 Der Grosse Duden is the definitive dictionary of the German language. Why has Kagel given its name to this scene? Perhaps because the disappearance of the performer's upper body into their musical instrument resembles a reader immersed in a volume of the dictionary.
19 Straus, Joseph N., “Normalizing the Abnormal: Disability in Music and Music Theory”. Journal of the American Musicological Society 59/1 (2006), pp. 113–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Abby Wilkerson. ‘Embodiment’. In Keywords for Disability Studies.
21 Wilkerson. ‘Embodiment’, p. 69.
22 Wilkerson. ‘Embodiment’, p. 69.
23 Davidson, ‘Aesthetics’.
24 Thomson, Rosemarie Garland, ‘The Beauty and the Freak’. Michigan Quarterly Review 37/3 (1998)Google Scholar, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0037.312.
25 Presented as a ‘missing link’ within the evolutionary continuum, William Henry Johnson, an African American, was on display. Falsely described as having been captured and brought directly from Africa, Johnson, or ‘Zip the Pinhead’ as he was called, was thought to have microcephaly, a condition in which the head is smaller, taking on a long, thin shape. The ‘Siamese Twins’, conjoined twin brothers, Chang and Eng Bunker, were also a frequent attraction. (Leonard Cassuto, ‘Freak’. In Keywords for Disability Studies).
26 Cassuto, ‘Freak’.
27 Thomson, ‘The Beauty and the Freak’.
28 Thomson, ‘The Beauty and the Freak’.
29 Waterman, Ellen, ‘Cassandras Dream Song: A Literary Feminist Perspective’. Perspectives of New Music 32/2 (1994), p. 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.