MAURICIO KAGEL

means of drums” (Arno Schmidt). The musicologist Werner Küppelholz asked whether one might in this work detect a reminder of Paul Wittgenstein (a pianist whose right arm had been amputated, the dedicatee of Ravel’s Concerto pour la main gauche for piano and orchestra), or even the fear of a surgical accident.

Kagel wrote, “This aphoristic composition was inspired by the publication in January 1984, in a medical magazine, of an article on my latest work. Whiling away the time in hospital waiting rooms, I began to think about the generous Hippocratic Oath. I could not say if it was because I was wondering about the influence this Greek practitioner had – but there I was, writing a piece for three left hands, while also calling on the right hand, music that could be played by two or three pianists. One hand keeps on providing a muted drumming, on a corner of the piano, as if transmitting extracts from the early oath in Morse code: ‘I swear by the doctors Apollo, Aesculapius, Hygieia and Panacea, by all the gods and all the goddesses…’ ”.

Unguis incarnatus est This work, like MM 51, conceived “for piano and…” an unspecified instrument with a low tessitura, weaves a link between the past and the present. The opening motive, given by the piano, is the ghostly, sibylline start of Franz Liszt’s Nuages gris (contemporary with Parsifal and Tales of Hoffmann, recounting the victory of good over evil). As Kagel wrote, “It is in his later works that Liszt shows that extremely intense expression may also be obtained with a sizeable reduction of means. This reduction in order to provide a longer-lasting effect shows how Liszt initiated a type of expression using a very limited number of tones (‘knapp-bemessener-Tonanzahl’) […] The musical relationship between Unguis incarnatus est and Nuages gris is that which exists between Liszt’s paraphrases and works by other composers that he used as a starting point for musical reflection. Liszt consciously yields to an increase of the tendencies inherent in the model, thereby unmasking the inflationist marks of style in Wagner. I worked in a similar way, and by insisting on a minimum sound effect, I tried to intensify the silence inherent in the grey clouds as well as their musically mute still life.”

The title of the work is a pun on “incarnates” (incarnated). Unguis incarnatus est (a technical term used in medicine), meaning an ingrowing nail, reminds one of the corresponding formula used in the fundamental dogma of the church, in the Creed, “et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine”. The piano pedal can also be taken as an unguis incarnates, as an ingrown nail in the pia-