Introduction

Kurt Schwertsik, one of Austria's leading composers, was born in Vienna in 1935 and studied composition and horn at the Vienna Music Academy. He became a professional horn player and in 1958 started, with Friedrich Cerha, the new music ensemble Die Reihe. In the years 1959–62 he studied with Stockhausen in Darmstadt and Cologne, but in 1965 he cofounded the Salonkonzerte “to liven up the stifling academicism of new music” and attacked aspects of the avant-garde, for which he was ostracized by Darmstadt as he moved toward Dada under the influence of Cage. Since then he has had a steady stream of international commissions and has taught at the Vienna Conservatory, the Vienna Hochschule, and in California. In 1987 he said: “I believe the function of art is to denounce seriousness. It should be fun. There’s a halo of awe around modern music. You achieve more if you’re not serious.” Photographs of Schwertsik in youth and maturity look remarkably like Erik Satie, whose work and philosophy he has admired for many years. His Strenger Engel was included in Cage's Notations (1969).

Interview

Approved by Kurt Schwertsik

PD Do you remember when you first came across Cage's work?

KS It was a concert by David Tudor—I think it was 1957 in Vienna—with all the beautiful features of that time, such as a drumstick in the piano and all sorts of sounds. People were flabbergasted. Tudor was very nice; we didn't speak very good English then. [laughs] It was the first listening experience I had with the music of Cage and, of course, Feldman and Christian Wolff too. I also saw Cage at Darmstadt where he gave three lectures, including the “Lecture on Nothing” where he has those beautiful pauses. And he gave another lecture during which he lit cigarettes. Each one was somehow handled differently—smoked once, twice, not at all, or smoked to the butt. [laughs]

He also gave a course where he explained what he had published in the periodical Die Reihe about his Music for Piano, where you take a sheet of paper and you mark the points and the irregularities on the paper according to the number you got from the I Ching and then you draw the lines over these little points.