# 20 composers remark favorably on Friedrich Cerha's SPIEGEL



## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Has Friedrich Cerha's 7-part orchestral cycle (_Spiegel I_ through _Spiegel VII_) from 1960/1961, lasting about 80 minutes in duration, remained too long in the shadows of Ligeti, Penderecki, Xenakis, etc.?

Here's some YouTube clips if you are unfamilair with this series.






Let each listener decide for him/her-self.

Be aware, though, that if you don't like Cerha's _Spiegel_ opus, then you will be in disagreement with the following 20 contemporary composers who praise Cerha & his _Spiegel_:


Pierre Boulez
Gyorgy Kurtag
Helmut Lachenmann
Hans Zender
Brian Ferneyhough
Georg Friedrich Haas
Beat Furrer
Bernhard Lang
Michael Jarrell
Mark Andre
Marcelo Toledo
Rebecca Saunders
Jose M. Sanchez-Verdu
Bernhard Gander
Klaus Lang
Elena Mendoza
Johannes Maria Staud
Hector Parra



[These 20 composers, by the way, have all been quoted within the liner notes booklet inside the KAIROS 2-CD set of _Spiegel_, _Monumentum_ & _Momente_]


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

It was not fully performed or recorded until well after the decade in which it was written, if not even more 'just lately.' I heard of them, heard them, within the last two years, when this full recording was a new release.

One listen, if open to this contemporary vocabulary, is enough, without composite squibs of admiration from 20 composers, to convince they are magnificent musical edifices, some 'monumental' and 'sculptural' in feel.

Nearly twenty years later, Cerha gained the most press as a composer when he ended up being the one to complete Berg's Lulu, the 'unfinished' score of which had been withheld from anyone's eye for decades after Berg's death. Cerha said almost 100% of what he was handed was fully written out, in particel draft as to orchestration. Regardless, he did a more than convincing / magnificent bit of work with Lulu.

One could rather glibly but in an apt way say the only reason his Speigel series did not gain more general recognition / popularity is that Kubrick had no recording of them to use without permission for the score of his film, _2001. a Space Odyssey._


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Thanks for the inspiration! *Just listening*... Hadn't listen to to Cerha fora while, was high time!

/ptr


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