Mauricio Kagel completed 1898 for children's voices and instruments in 1973. Deutsche Grammophon commissioned the work in commemoration of its seventy-fifth anniversary (1898-1973). It is in two movements and is slightly less than fifty minutes in duration. Kagel's career and output was uneven, often writing music that was humorous to like-minded intellectuals and politicos. His absurdist leanings tended to fall into a category of gags that were of some trumped-up agit-art value that wore out most listeners long before the works themselves ended. However, when he chose to write a communicative piece, he did so with such a fluency and stylistic strength that imparts upon Kagel his rightful though frustrating legitimacy. He is in fact an excellent composer, and 1898 is a lovely, gentle, and relentlessly listenable piece.

Kagel's own explanations of his works tend to be remote to non-scholars, but little explanation is needed to make this work accessible to those who are approaching Kagel for the first time. 1898 does not use complex harmonies or rigorous alternate syntax. Two melodic threads are woven together loosely in a way that the composer regarded as indicative of the end of nineteenth-century music. The date 1898 is also the year when records more or less began to be mass-produced. These are clearly important points in music history. Newer, more radical music was around the corner, and people could now listen to orchestras and chamber music at home. With tonality about to be broken by Schoenberg within ten years (his first atonal pieces were written in the first decade of the twentieth century) Kagel wanted to reflect this change with music that "inhales tonally, and exhales atonally."

The stringed instruments that Kagel wanted used for this piece were those used when recording music was just getting started. He found a photograph of a recording session from 1910 that showed a recording orchestra using Stroh-violins, which replaced the stringed instrument's body with a metal disc and a brass bell similar to a trumpet's. This was supposed to enhance the player's volume for recording purposes. Kagel wanted to use these instruments to match the strings' timbres to those of the trumpet, tuba, French horn, trombone, etc. He could not find the actual instruments themselves, and so redesigned them with a friend in Germany who was capable of producing a satisfactory ersatz Stroh instrument. It was only after the items were in production that another friend brought back an actual Stroh-cello. It was discovered that a music dealer who had sold the Stroh-cello had in fact many more of the instruments in an attic in Baghdad. It was therefore possible to make accurate recordings and performances that feature the exact sound that the composer wanted. The children's choir does not employ conventional choral parts. They include laughter and vocal effects that anyone can make. Kagel wanted "the spontaneous reaction of untrained voices in ... a strict context." This is what really brings the work to life.

1898 concerns the falling apart of one musical language and the birth of another. It is a sort of disaster that creates a new, less easily recognized, musical syntax. The fact that it all took place when the phonograph made music more commercially accessible is a historical irony. Adding the sounds children's laughter takes the sting out of this weird trade off. As well, the children's sounds are effortless, fun, and made musical in this setting. The optimism that this juxtaposition creates is not unqualified, but it makes it easier to approach the idea of getting the public behind new music again.

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