Bernardo Kuczer

Argentina

Bernardo Mario Kuczer was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 30 April 1955. Until his early twenties, he was involved in rock music as composer and guitarist, writing also music for the theatre. Simultaneously, he studied architecture and graduated in 1978.

Through the study of the classical guitar with Hector Rocha and then with Jorge Panitsch he came into classical music. He studied harmony and musical analysis with Nestor Zadoff and then with Sergio Hualpa and later Renaissance counterpoint with Nestor Zadoff. He became a member of an interdisciplinary music investigation group, collaborating with psychologists, biologists, doctors and musicologists.

In 1979 he presented a thesis under the supervision of Sergio Hualpa with own ideas about "the Basic Components of Music, their multiple interrelations and a special kind of "energy" generated by their uni- and multidimensional dynamic interactions, an energy which determines and enables the micro and macro Articulation of the Music-stream". The thesis was first named: "La forma natural de la música" ("The natural ways of music"), then "The New Connections" and later "Música sin el Factor Humano" ("Music without the Human Factor").

Europe

In 1980, Kuczer went to London to study the viola da gamba, abandoning it shortly after for starting composition.

His first ensemble piece ("Even ... the loudest sky") (1981) for saxophone quartet, was selected by the British SPNM (Society for the Promotion of New Music) for the "composers' week-end", London 1981.

Kuczer arrived in Freiburg in 1983 to study composition with Brian Ferneyhough. He felt however very soon the need to continue his way in music alone.

In 1984 he was invited to participate of the "International Summer Courses for New Music" at Darmstadt, where several pieces of his tape-cycle Civilización o Barbarie received a first performance and where he was awarded, as first Latin American composer, the "Kranichsteiner Musikpreis" (Kranichstein Music Prize).

In 1986, for the next edition of the Darmstadt Courses, he was invited to perform a second concert with works of his tape-cycle.

Civilización o Barbarie was later selected, as personal choice of the jury, by Klaus Huber (one of the three jurors), for the "World Music Days" of the ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) held in 1987 in Cologne.

During 1990 he was a stipendiary of the "Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung" (Heinrich Strobel Foundation) of the broadcasting service Südwestrundfunk.

After 1999 he remained apart and distant to the active music and concert scene.

Since 2000, he has been working extensively with computers, designing, writing and developing his own computer programs. These programs, which are based on and are used to further research his personal hypotheses, models and theoretical ideas about harmony, rhythm, sound, musical form and "Music-Stream", have also been used to generate his latest digital works.

At times and complementary to his main musical activities, Kuczer has been active in other fields of art. He has produced more than 1000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, as well as designed his own furniture. As a writer he has written some 250 poems and two (still unpublished) books, the title of the first one being: "Salvas de Guerra" (contra La Música)" ["War Salvos" (against Music)]. He also produced and musicalised an own documentary film: "Vida ?" (por un Espacio Poético o una Poesía del Espacio-Tiempo), una documentación" ["Life ?" for a Poetic Space or a Space-Time Poetry, a documentation].

Work and performances

Kuczer's musical oeuvre comprises more than 81 (principal) works (with some 110 individual "named" pieces) covering different areas of music (e.g. instrumental music, tape music, electroacoustic music, computer music, algorithmic compositions and digital music).

More than 60 of his works have remained unperformed (and mostly unrevealed). Several of his instrumental pieces were and/or are still considered unplayable. His Saxophone Quartet (1981) was first regarded as unplayable until 1994, when it was given its first performance. Some of his works have been played and broadcast in various European cities and elsewhere.

Examples:

Press reviews

... the real revelation of this disc is Argentinian Bernardo Maria Kuczer, whose "even ... The loudest sky!!" is one of the wildest things I've heard for some time. Brilliantly written (fiendishly difficult) and played with utter conviction, it makes you wonder what Kuczer's been up to since he wrote this back in 1981. Anything new by either Kuczer or [the saxophone ensemble] Xasax is welcome here.

On the 2 May 1996, Fara C. wrote in the world music magazine World:

..., and " Even … The loudest sky!!! ", composed by the Argentine Bernardo Kuczer in 1981. This work reaches a summit of complexity such as it had never been played before the world creation of Xasax in 1994 ! Six months of hard work were necessary to the group to triumph over these supernatural seven minutes. A musical intensity which the quartet will make us share with crazy pleasure.

The Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich wrote a review about the Darmstadt International Summer Courses of New Music 1984, published in the monthly magazine Le Monde de la musique:

However, the end of the evening had to be spent... in the company of the Argentinian Bernardo Kuczer living in Germany and some of his apocalyptic electroacoustic pieces grouped into an immense cycle under the title Civilización o Barbarie. I admit that I fled. But two days later I was able to hear again, at a somewhat more bearable volume level, these extraordinary pieces of music of a visionary madman, skinned alive, bleeding shreds of flesh of a prodigious expressive power, produced, paradoxically, with a simple cassette tape recorder!

Work list