Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Tactil, for three (1970)
Theodor Ross & Wilhelm Bruck, Spanish guitar, harmonica
Mauricio Kagel, piano, harmonica
Mauricio Kagel (b. 1931) is a longstanding musical maverick. An Argentinian for many years resident in Germany, he is well placed to offer an outsider's angle on European conventions, and in this piece from the early 1970s he celebrates artlessness in a highly artificial way. That's the irony and, up to a point, the attraction.
Tactil, Kagel says, ''is based exclusively on rhythms from light music... without the melodies that go with them''. But what might be a simple, mechanical exercise in mischievous minimalism reveals subtleties in the overlap between different rhythmic patterns. The restricted sound-world of guitars and piano also yields unexpected possibilities, although the final stages, where an element of theatre emerges, really need to be seen as well as heard. --Arnold Whittall
Art by Julio Le Parc
Tactil, for three (1970)
Theodor Ross & Wilhelm Bruck, Spanish guitar, harmonica
Mauricio Kagel, piano, harmonica
Mauricio Kagel (b. 1931) is a longstanding musical maverick. An Argentinian for many years resident in Germany, he is well placed to offer an outsider's angle on European conventions, and in this piece from the early 1970s he celebrates artlessness in a highly artificial way. That's the irony and, up to a point, the attraction.
Tactil, Kagel says, ''is based exclusively on rhythms from light music... without the melodies that go with them''. But what might be a simple, mechanical exercise in mischievous minimalism reveals subtleties in the overlap between different rhythmic patterns. The restricted sound-world of guitars and piano also yields unexpected possibilities, although the final stages, where an element of theatre emerges, really need to be seen as well as heard. --Arnold Whittall
Art by Julio Le Parc
