Pierre Boulez on Music Theory Print

...explosante-fixe...

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Title#

The title of the work is taken from the concluding line of the first chapter of André Breton’s L’amour fou (1937): “La beauté convulsive sera érotique-voilée, explosante-fixe, magique-circonstancielle, ou ne sera pas” (Convulsive beauty will be erotic-veiled, exploding-fixed, magical-circumstantial, or it will not be at all).

History#

The first version of …explosante-fixe… (1971–1972) is a one-page aleatoric work in seven parts entitled, according to one report, Originel and Transitoires II–VII, though the manuscript score (published as two pages of music and twelve pages of instructions) bears the title in the composer’s hand … Explosante-fixe … , and the indications “Originel” and “Transitoires II–VII” are the names of the groups into which the work is divided. The seven parts each represent one member of a seven-note row found in the “Originel” section: E, G, D, A, B, A, E, an emblem of the Stravinsky memorial for which it was composed (the note E sustained at the beginning is pronounced Es in German, cognate with the letter S for “Stravinsky”). The pitches of this row were later used also in Rituel. In this original form, the instruments were not indicated, Like most of the other pieces in the Stravinsky memorial, this reflects the instrumentation of two brief commemorative works Stravinsky wrote in 1959: the Epitaphium for flute, clarinet, and harp, and the Double Canon (in memory of Dufy) for string quartet. In the two subsequent years, Boulez developed …explosante-fixe… into a work for solo flute, accompanied by clarinet, trumpet, harp, vibraphone, violin, viola, cello and electronics. Boulez, however, was ultimately unsatisfied with the electronics. These revisions involved changes in the order of sections and rewriting six of the eight instrumental parts. In all, there are four different versions for the flute, three versions each for the viola and cello, two versions each for the trumpet, violin, and clarinet, but only one version each for the vibraphone and harp, which differ from one version to the next only in the ordering of their constituent parts. Boulez withdrew the materials for both versions, primarily because of his dissatisfaction with the all-too-audible failure of the electronics, and in particular the computer tape that was intended to direct the conductorless 1973 Proms version, but also as an acknowledgement that the scoring really required a symphony orchestra. The next version of …explosante-fixe…, for vibraphone and electronics, was not composed until 1986. This version premiered in Turin, Italy at Settembre Musica Festival on 13 September 1993, in a performance by the Ensemble InterContemporain.

A Garland for Dr. K.

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History#

The Garland was initiated in January 1969 by the London office of Universal Edition, who invited eleven composers with close ties to their director, Dr. Alfred Kalmus, to write short pieces of music to celebrate his 80th birthday. All of the pieces were to be scored for performance by members of the Pierrot Players. The works were premiered as a group by the Pierrot Players on 22 April 1969, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre, London, in a programme that also included the world premieres of Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies, and Linoi II by Harrison Birtwistle. Seven years later, a recording of the entire Garland was made by a Spanish ensemble directed by Cristóbal Halffter for an LP produced by Universal Edition.

Ainsi parla Zarathoustra (Boulez)

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Background and history#

Jean-Louis Barrault, the director of the theatre company, created a scenic version of Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra and requested music from Boulez with whom he had collaborated for years. Boulez was from 1945 to 1955 musical director of the company, arranging and conducting incidental music and writing some himself. In 1954/55 Boulez had composed incidental music for the Oresteia in three parts, directed by Barrault. For , Barrault wrote detailed instructions for the music, which Boulez considered and often followed. While the French text based on Nietzsche’s work by Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt was printed in 1972, a version with Barrault’s additional instructions was published by Gallimard in the series Le Manteau d’Arlequin in 1975. The production was first performed at the Théâtre d’Orsay in Paris on 6 November 1974. The music remains unpublished; sketches and scores are extant in the collection Pierre Boulez of the Foundation Paul Sacher in Basel, while images and films of the production are held in part by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Anthèmes

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Recordings#

Arditti Quartet: From Vienna. With short works by several composers. Includes the first version of Anthèmes, performed by Irvine Arditti. Disques Montaigne, 1995.
Donaueschinger Musiktage 1997. Includes a live recording of Anthèmes II, performed by Hae-Sun Kang. Col legno, 1999.
Boulez – Sur Incises & Anthemes II. Violin: Hae-Sun Kang. Deutsche Grammophon, 2000. This recording won the 2001 Gramophone Awards.
Mikka and Other Assorted Love Songs. Includes Anthèmes I, performed by Eric Rynes. Albany TROY1614. Albany Records, 2016.
Sequenza: seven works for solo violin, performed by Diego Tosi. Includes Anthèmes. Disques du Solstice, 2005.
Solo, performed by Julie-Anne Derome. Includes Anthèmes. Atma Classique/IODA, Atma A+CD 2 2117. Outremont, Québec: Atma, 1996.
Caprices, Anthèmes I plus works by Carter, Nunes and Sciarrino. performed by Irvine Arditti AEON AECD 1755

Cummings ist der Dichter

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Background#

Boulez was initially introduced to the poetry of Cummings in 1952 by John Cage during a visit to a New York bookstore. Boulez recalled that he immediately felt that he “had a pretty direct relationship with the poetry of Cummings,” but “did not feel sufficiently well acquainted with the English language to tackle one of his poems.” During the late 1960s, he considered setting five Cummings poems to music, and began composing a Cantate pour Baryton et petit Orchestre, using the poem that would eventually appear in Cummings ist der Dichter. However, he became dissatisfied with the piece, and subsequently reworked the instrumental passages into Domaines. In 1970, Boulez completed the first version of Cummings ist der Dichter, a ten-minute work for mixed choir and instrumental ensemble, based on a poem titled “birds( here inven/”, taken from Cummings’s 1935 collection No Thanks. The poem is typical of Cummings’s work in that it employs an unusual layout on the page, with a highly personal use of word fragmentation and parentheses. Boulez later reflected: “what interests me is not to transcribe Cummings’s discoveries literally into music, but to find a transcription of his world in my own.” He described the resulting work as having “a form which has its roots in the poem but which, of course, can also be grasped completely independently from the poem.” The 1970 version requires two conductors who at times function somewhat independently, and, like a number of other compositions of this period, it employs aleatoric techniques in sections. In 1986, Boulez completed a revised version of the piece which requires 16 solo voices or a mixed choir of up to 48 voices, plus an expanded ensemble. In addition, the performance indeterminacies in this version were eliminated and replaced with fully written-out passages. Cummings ist der Dichter is unique in that it was Boulez’s first and only setting of English poetry. Writer Peter F. Stacey stated that Cummings’s poems “made a refreshing change from the terse and complex poetry of Mallarmé,” while Boulez himself would later note that his exposure to the poems helped him “a great deal in rediscovering a certain freshness.” Musicologist Susan Bradshaw described the work as “an almost autobiographical reflection of the progressive developments in Boulez’s musical thinking during this period: developments that were soon to explode in the creative revival of the 1970s.”

Dérive 1

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Composition#

This short composition derives from two other compositions by Boulez, namely, Répons (1981) and Messagesquisse (1976–1977). It is similar to Répons in the sense that it is also a short piece for ensemble, as many others came about in the eighties, as pieces exploiting ideas that are presented in larger works by Boulez. Répons was created also as a re-elaboration of musical ideas from Éclat/Multiples (1970). This working method is typical of Boulez and is also displayed in the second part of the series of Dérives, Dérive 2, which was considered to be a work in progress for years and had several revisions, expansions and reworkings. This piece was finished in 1984, and premiered in Bath, Great-Britain, on June 8 of the same year, with Oliver Knussen conducting the London Sinfonietta. It was dedicated to William Glock and was later published by Universal Edition.

Domaines (Boulez)

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Background#

Domaines began its life in 1961 as a work for solo clarinet, and was gradually expanded over a period of eight years into a version for clarinet and ensemble, with the soloist, who moves about the stage, determining the order in which material is performed. In an interview, Boulez described his reasons for adopting mobile forms in works of that time period: Firstly, I felt that the course of a work ought to be multiple rather than simple; secondly, I found that the typographical layout of music could be renewed by the introduction of parentheses, italics, and so on; and thirdly, I wanted the performer confronted by a work to be able to find himself in a completely fresh situation every time he tackled it.

Éclat

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Background#

Éclat was written to commemorate both Boulez’s 40th birthday and the opening of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The music had its origins in a discarded solo piano work titled Don, and can be heard as a continuation of both the sound world of Pli selon pli, in terms of its use of pitched percussion, and the mobile aspects of the Third Piano Sonata.

Instrumentation#

The ensemble consists of solo piano plus two instrumental groups, one comprising eight plucked or struck instruments (celesta, harp, glockenspiel, vibraphone, mandolin, guitar, cimbalom, and tubular bells), the other featuring six sustaining instruments (alto flute, cor anglais, trumpet, trombone, viola, and cello). Boulez recalled: “I wanted to make sound only with resonating instruments and with a variety of instruments whose resonance was varied… I had the sound idea before the work was written.”

Éclat/Multiples

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Background#

Shortly after the 1965 premiere of Éclat for fifteen instruments, Boulez announced that it was intended to serve as the first part of a large composition for orchestra. Regarding his tendency to revise and expand his works of this period, he commented: “on the creative plane, I live in a kind of plasma which allows me to move around gliding backwards and forwards. I remain within the same thing and I irradiate in several directions at once. I now have supple material which allows me to shift about in time and these re-creations.” Accordingly, the extended version of Éclat, called Éclat/Multiples, became a kind of work-in-progress, with ongoing expansions planned over time, although writer Susan Bradshaw suggested that “the almost superhuman size and scope of such a project made it doomed to remain open-ended.”

Figures—Doubles—Prismes

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Background#

In 1957, Igor Markevitch and Georges Auric commissioned Boulez to write a piece for the Société des Concerts Lamoureux. The result was an eight-minute orchestral work that was premiered in Paris on March 16, 1958, and announced as the beginning of a work-in-progress. This was followed by a premiere of the complete version, with a duration of roughly twenty minutes, on March 13, 1968 by The Residence Orchestra of The Hague, again conducted by the composer.

Incises

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Incises#

Incises (“Interpolations”) for solo piano was composed in 1994 as a test piece for the Umberto Micheli Piano Competition, where it was first performed on 21 October 1994. Boulez revised it in 2001. Incises was Boulez’s first work for solo piano since his Third Piano Sonata of 1955–57/63. The piece lasts less than ten minutes. The work plays with contrasts of gestures and textures, for instance, repeated pitches or chords in an even tempo interrupted by violent melodic arcs, or sparse chordal interjections without discernible rhythm over long held sonorities. Reviewing a 2005 performance of Incises, Tim Page described the work thus: “Incises is charged with a bright, cold, hard brilliance, like a spray of crushed ice. It is dense with eventseven when it is silent for a moment, Boulez’s music never really ‘rests’but also far more generous in its emotional expression than much of his earlier work.”

Le Marteau sans maître

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History#

Before Le Marteau, Boulez had established a reputation as the composer of modernist and serialist works such as Structures I, Polyphonie X, as well as his infamously “unplayable” Second Piano Sonata. Le Marteau was first written as a six-movement composition between 1953 and 1954, and was published in that form in the latter year, “imprimée pour le festival de musique, 1954, Donaueschingen” (though in the end it was not performed there) in a photographic reproduction of the composer’s manuscript by Universal Edition, given the catalog number UE 12362. In 1955 Boulez revised the order of these movements and interpolated three newly composed ones. The original, six-movement form lacked the two “Bel Édifice” settings and the third commentaire on “Bourreaux de solitude”. In addition, the movements were grouped in two closed cycles: first the three “Artisanat furieux” movements, then the three “Bourreaux de solitude” ones, otherwise in the order of the final score. The first movement, though fundamentally the same composition, was originally scored as a duet for vibraphone and guitar—the flute and viola were added only in the revision—and numerous less significant alterations were made to playing techniques and notation in the other movements. It received its première in 1955 at the 29th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Baden-Baden. Boulez’s work was chosen to represent France at this festival. The French members of the committee were against this, but Heinrich Strobel, then director of the Baden-Baden Südwestfunk Orchestra, which was scheduled to give all of the concerts at the festival, threatened to withdraw the orchestra if the work was not accepted. The first performance was given on 18 June 1955 conducted by Hans Rosbaud, with Sybilla Plate as the solo singer. Boulez, notorious for considering his works to be always “in progress”, made further, smaller revisions to Le Marteau in 1957, in which year Universal Edition issued an engraved score, UE 12450. In the years that have followed, it has become Pierre Boulez’s most famous and influential work.

Le Soleil des eaux

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Background#

Boulez first encountered Char’s poetry in 1945 or 1946, and was immediately attracted to its conciseness and “internal violence”. Boulez based his first cantata, Le Visage nuptial (1946–47) on the poet’s work, and would later use Char’s poems as the basis of Le Marteau sans maître (1953–55). The two met in the summer of 1947, at which point they began a long friendship. Le Soleil des eaux began life as incidental music for a radio drama of the same name, written by Char, broadcast on RTF on April 29, 1948 and published in April 1949 with illustrations by Georges Braque. The play revolved around a story of fishermen on the river Sorgue whose livelihoods are threatened by pollution from a new factory, and who revolt and attack the factory in response. (Char was born in L’Isle-sur-Sorgue, and the river was a source of inspiration for him throughout his life. Joan Peyser also noted that the story parallels Char’s own struggle against Nazism as a member of the French Resistance. ) Boulez’s contribution to the project, composed at the request of Alain Trutat, a friend of poet Paul Éluard and later the founder of the radio station France Culture, was a 32-minute work which was in part newly-composed, and in part based on a movement for two pianos written in February 1948 and titled “Passacaille-Variations” (later incorporated into an unpublished Sonata for two pianos). The poem, written in 1947, was unpublished at that time, but was later included as part of a group of poems titled La Sieste blanche in the collection Les Matinaux (1950). The setting of the poem is unaccompanied; according to Boulez, he conceived of it as a monody and “thought it would be interesting, rather than trying to find an accompaniment, to articulate it by means of interjections, reflections, landscapes, and distorted images.” In October 1948, Boulez revised the score, adding a second movement based on Char’s poem “La Sorgue: chanson pour Yvonne”, which appeared as part of La Fontaine narrative, included in the collection Fureur et mystère (1948). (The dedicatee was Yvonne Zervos, a long-time friend of Char who, with her husband Christian Zervos, edited the magazine Cahiers d’art.) This second version, for three vocal soloists and chamber orchestra, was premiered on July 18, 1950 by the RTF orchestra, conducted by Roger Désormière, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. In 1958, Boulez revised the score a third time, adding mixed 3-part chorus and rescoring the work for full symphony orchestra. This version was premiered on September 9, 1958 at Darmstadt by the Hessian Radio Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Ernest Bour. Finally, a “definitive” version for soprano soloist, mixed 4-part chorus, and orchestra was prepared. This version was premiered on October 4, 1965 by the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra and chorus, conducted by the composer, with Catherine Gayer as the soloist. The third and fourth versions were published by Heugel in 1968.

Le Visage nuptial

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Instrumentation#

The piece is scored for soprano solo, alto solo, women’s choir, and an orchestra consisting of nine percussionists: ;Woodwinds :4 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo, 4th doubling on G flute) :3 oboes :English horn :3 clarinets (1st and 2nd in B and A, 3rd in E and A) :bass clarinet in B :4 bassoons (4th doubling contrabassoon) ;Brass :4 horns :4 trumpets in C :3 trombones (3rd doubling bass trombone) :Tuba ;Percussion :timbales :9 players (see below) ;Keyboards :celesta ;Strings :2 harps :16 violins I :14 violins II :12 violas :10 cellos :8 double basses The parts are as follows: ;Percussion 1 :xylophone, sounding an octave lower :glockenspiel, sounding two octaves lower :Japanese wood blocks :pair of crotales, sounding an E 5 ;Percussion 2 :marimba :2 claves (medium and high) :Turkish cymbal, suspended (medium) :pair of crotales, sounding a B 4 ;Percussion 3 :vibraphone ;Percussion 4 :set of cowbells, ranged G 3 to A 5 :3 tom-toms :2 Turkish cymbals, suspended (medium, medium-high, and low) :Chinese cymbal, suspended :Sizzle cymbal, suspended :claves (low) :2 maracas (medium) :pair of crotales, sounding a B 5 ;Percussion 5 :set of steel drums, ranged G 3 to B 5 :2 maracas :güiro :2 Japanese wood blocks :slit wood drum :bass drum :triangle :gong (medium-low) :tam-tam (large) :pair of crotales, sounding an A 4 ;Percussion 6 :glockenspiel :4 metal blocks :claves :whip :güiro :2 maracas :Turkish cymbal, suspended :2 gongs, sounding B 3 and C 4 :tam-tam (large, same as Percussion 5) :pair of crotales, sounding a D 5 ;Percussion 7 :set of crotales (2 octaves) :crotale, sounding an E 4 :2 frame drums :3 Japanese wood blocks :güiro :whip :gong (medium) :2 tam-tams (medium and large) ;Percussion 8 :tubular bells (2 octaves) :snare drum (without snare) :2 conga drums :claves :güiro :large triangle :2 anvils, medium and large :2 gongs, high :tam-tam, medium :pair of crotales, sounding an F 5 ;Percussion 9 :4 bongo drums :2 maracas :2 Turkish cymbals, suspended (high, low) :large sizzle cymbal :2 bell plates, sounding B 3 and C 4 :pair of crotales, sounding a C 5

Livre pour cordes

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Background#

Livre pour quatuor (1948–1949), Boulez’s only work for string quartet, presented numerous performative challenges resulting from the composer’s inexperience at the time it was written. Boulez recalled that the quartet “posed great interpretative problems for a quartet,” and suggested that “you would need a conductor to solve them.” In the late 1960s, he withdrew the work from publication, requesting that it no longer be performed except by quartets that had already rehearsed and played it, and began rewriting it for string orchestra (16 first violins, 14 second violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos, 8 double basses), starting with the two-part first movement (1a, “Variation” and 1b, “Mouvement”). He recalled: I felt that the best way of bringing out everything in the original composition would be to orchestrate it. But in an orchestral work one can no longer have the same point of view; so I rethought the music completely, and in the two movements of the Livre for string quartet that became a Livre for string orchestra… there is such a degree of proliferation, and such an additional weight of ideas, that it is almost a new piece. According to Boulez biographer Dominique Jameux, Livre pour cordes sounds “infinitely better” than the version for string quartet, although he acknowledged that it lacks some of the earlier work’s “extraordinary vigour, vehemence and alacrity.” Writer Paul Griffiths called the work “an elaborate amplification which spreads in varying densities around the original, giving it veils of fine counterpoint and harmonic breadth.” Although Boulez revised the score in 1989, he abandoned the project, and chose not to rescore the remaining movements of the quartet.

Livre pour quatuor

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Background#

The bulk of Livre pour quatuor was composed during 1948–1949, immediately following completion of the Second Piano Sonata, and contemporary with the publication of the essay “Proposals.” Boulez’s first instrumental piece without piano, it can be seen as marking a transition between the hyper-expressivity and reliance on traditional forms found in the earlier works, culminating in the Second Sonata, with the serial experiments that followed. In a 1950 letter to John Cage, Boulez acknowledged the influence of the older composer, stating: “Meeting you made me end a ‘classical’ period with my quartet.” Sketches for Livre pour quatuor reveal Boulez’s initial experiments with applying serial techniques to both pitch and rhythm. In an interview, he recalled that he “began by using completely independent schemes in which pitches, durations and rhythms were combined at first starting from cells, but these cells became so independent that they virtually became rhythmic series.” Boulez would continue these experiments in the works that followed, namely Polyphonie X, Deux Études for tape, and the first book of Structures. Livre pour quatuor was also the first of Boulez’s compositions to reflect the influence of poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Boulez noted that the idea for the quartet came to him while reading Mallarmé’s Igitur and Un Coup de Dés, during which he came to see the poetry as forming “a continuity from which sections could be detached because they had meaning and validity even when taken out of the continuous context in which they were placed.” Boulez’s quartet was initially conceived as a group of six separable movements, or “feuillets” (leaves), from which the performers would select the ones they wanted to play. (Although the quartet’s title suggests an homage to Mallarmé’s Livre, in which the pages could be read in any order, Boulez recalled that he did not read the poem until after its publication in 1957.) He would continue to explore such ideas in later works, such as the Third Piano Sonata. The quartet remained in a state of flux for many years, as Boulez grappled with its technical and expressive challenges. Although he completed movements 1 (in two parts), 2, 3 (in three parts), and 5 by mid-1949, movement 6 was not completed until 1959, while movement 4 remained incomplete. He revised the piece in 1959 with the help of members of the Parrenin Quartet, and, during 2002–2012, he continued the revisions, working with the Diotima Quartet. Over the years, as Boulez attended performances of individual sections of the work, he grew dissatisfied with it due to the numerous performative challenges resulting from his inexperience at the time it was written. He concluded that it “posed great interpretative problems for a quartet,” and suggested that “you would need a conductor to solve them.” In the late 1960s, he withdrew the work from his catalogue, requesting that it no longer be performed except by quartets that had already rehearsed and played it, and began rewriting it for string orchestra. His recomposition of the two-part first movement became Livre pour cordes (1968), while rewrites of the remaining movements remained forever incomplete.

Messagesquisse

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Background#

In 1976, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich commissioned twelve composers (Conrad Beck, Luciano Berio, Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Cristóbal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber and Witold Lutosławski) to write pieces celebrating the 70th birthday of conductor and patron Paul Sacher. The composers were asked to base their works on the Sacher hexachord, in which Sacher’s last name is spelled out as musical notes: eS-A-C-H-E-Re is translated into E♭-A-C-B-E-D (Es is E♭ in German; H is B♮ in German; Re is D♮ in French). These compositions were collected under the title 12 Hommages à Paul Sacher, and published together in the book Dank an Paul Sacher (Thanks to Paul Sacher). The complete cycle was not performed in its entirety until 9 May 2011, at a concert by cellist František Brikcius at the Convent of Saint Agnes, part of the National Gallery Prague, Czech Republic. Its title is a portmanteau word that combines “messages” and “esquisse” (“sketch” in English). The work’s pitch material is based on rotations of the Sacher hexachord, while its rhythms are derived from the letters of Sacher’s last name represented in Morse code. Boulez biographer Dominique Jameux noted the work’s “clearly perceptible design,” while musicologist Susan Bradshaw described it as “a birthday telegram written in an easily decipherable musical code that relates everything to the single cell of an initiating series drawn from the letters of its dedicatee’s name.” Boulez would go on to base a series of compositions on the Sacher hexachord: Répons (1980, revised and expanded 1982 and 1984); Dérive 1 (1984); Incises (1994, revised and expanded 2001); and Sur Incises (1996–98).

Piano sonatas (Boulez)

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First Piano Sonata#

In early 1945, Boulez, who had been studying with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, attended a performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Wind Quintet, conducted by René Leibowitz. Boulez later reflected: “It was a revelation to me. It obeyed no tonal laws and I found in it a harmonic and contrapuntal richness and a consequent ability to develop, extend, and vary ideas that I had not found anywhere else. I wanted, above all, to know how it was written”. Boulez and a group of fellow students sought out Leibowitz and began studying privately with him. Thanks to Leibowitz, Boulez became familiar with the music of Anton Webern, who would prove to be a major influence. Boulez’s First Piano Sonata was written in 1946, and was completed on the eve of his twenty-first birthday. Boulez had originally dedicated the piece to Leibowitz, but their relationship ended when Leibowitz tried to make “corrections” to the score. According to biographer Dominique Jameux, by this point, Boulez had become disenchanted with Leibowitz’s approach to twelve-tone composition (he later stated that Leibowitz “could see no further than the numbers in a tone row”) and had already absorbed what he needed in terms of musical influences. Thanks to his work with Messiaen (under whose guidance he had analyzed a wide range of music, from plainchant to that of Stravinsky, as well as music of non-western cultures), Boulez inherited a rhythmic grammar involving the manipulation of rhythmic cells via augmentation, diminution, and interpolation. (In a 1948 essay, Boulez wrote of his desire for “a rhythmic element… of perfect ‘atonality’”.) From Webern (via Leibowitz), he inherited not only the mechanics of twelve-tone methodology, but a taste for “a certain texture of intervals” as well as a kind of writing in which he attempted to unify the vertical and horizontal aspects of music. (Along with the Sonatine for flute and piano and Le Visage nuptial, the Sonata was one of Boulez’s first serial works.) From Schoenberg, he inherited an affinity for piano writing that exhibits “considerable density of texture and a violence of expression”, in which the instrument is treated as “a percussive piano which is at the same time remarkably prone to frenzy”. (In this context, Boulez had expressed admiration for the third piece of Schoenberg’s Three Piano Pieces, Opus 11, as well as for the piano part in the “Die Kreuze” movement of Pierrot lunaire.) All of these influences are evident in the First Piano Sonata. With the Sonata, Boulez took a step away, not only from a reliance on traditional forms, but also from the kind of thematic writing found in the Sonatine, and toward a music in which clearly identifiable gestures and collections of intervals are mutated in such a way that there is no clear hierarchy between original and derived appearances, forming what Gerald Bennett called “a three-dimensional space where all the related forms are equidistant from an imaginary centre”. The work consists of two movements: The first movement is characterized by the juxtaposition of slow, pulseless passages interrupted by wild flurries of notes (Paul Griffiths suggested that this type of writing showed the influence of music from India and Indonesia) with faster material that moves in a jumpy, stilted way. The second movement alternates fast, toccata-like music of even note values (Griffiths noted that this music, with its percussive, evenly emphasized rhythms, has a static feel that can also be associated with music of Asia) with sections featuring widely spaced single notes and lyrical, polyrhythmic two-part counterpoint in which the pulse is obscured. (Charles Rosen described the contrapuntal music as turning the piano “into an immense vibraphone”.) Overall, the work is illustrative of Boulez’s employment of what he referred to as a principle of “constant renewal” in its rejection of thematic writing, its rhythmic and textural variety, and in the number of different modes of attack. In terms of serial technique, the Sonata is early evidence that his approach was personal and idiosyncratic in that large sections are built around a conflict between passages built on strictly ordered pitch material and those in which a series is treated as a reservoir of malleable cells. (Rosen wrote that Boulez treated the series as “a nucleus to be exploded, its elements projected outwards”.) The Sonata, which has a total duration of roughly nine minutes, was first performed, with Boulez at the piano, in late 1946, at a private event organized by Maurice Martenot, inventor of the ondes Martenot. In the audience were composers Virgil Thomson and Nicolas Nabokov, as well as conductor Roger Désormière. (Thomson later praised Boulez in a review that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune. Désormière would go on to become the first conductor to perform Boulez’s music.) Yvette Grimaud gave the first public performance of the Sonata in Paris later that year. In 1949, John Cage recommended Boulez to Amphion music publishers. Boulez subsequently revised the piece prior to its publication in 1951.

Pli selon pli

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Movements and poems#

The composition is in five movements, the first and last using a line from a Mallarmé poem, the three middle movements using the entire text of a Mallarmé sonnet. The movements and their associated poems are: The title is taken from yet another Mallarmé poem, Remémoration d’amis belges, in which the poet describes how a mist that covers the city of Bruges gradually disappears: Boulez said: “So, fold by fold, as the five movements develop, a portrait of Mallarmé is revealed.” Boulez uses the five Mallarmé poems in chronological order, beginning with the early “Don du poème” of 1865 in the first movement and continuing to the late “Tombeau” of 1897 in the last. The work thus represents a life of Mallarmé, and it concludes with the word “mort” (death), the only clearly intelligible word of the last movement. The first movement uses just the first line of “Don du poème” and the last movement just the last line of “Tombeau”. Describing the setting of these texts, a critic wrote that in the first and last movements “the voice is hardly present – though significant when it is” and that the voice “function s as an instrumental timbre in its own right.” Of the work as a whole wrote: “The idea of ‘setting’ a text, however, in the conventional sense, is not adopted here. Rather, the soprano is an integral part of the instrumental fabric and only rarely are specific words or phrases ‘illustrated’ musically in the traditional manner.” The 1st chord of the “Don” movement is used in Luciano Berio’s collage piece Sinfonia.

Polyphonie X

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

In 1948 and 1949, Boulez worked on Livre pour quatuor for string quartet, in which he began to explore the notion of expanding serial technique to encompass rhythms and dynamics as well as pitches. This was followed by further efforts in the direction of integral serialism in the form of the first book of Structures for two pianos, Polyphonie X, and Deux Études for tape, as well as an article titled “Eventuellement” containing detailed comments and reflections on the experience of composing the pieces. Polyphonie X had its origins in a work that Boulez, in a letter to John Cage dated 30 December 1950, described as a piece of chamber music for 49 instruments, “a collection of 14 or 21 polyphonies (maybe more), I don’t know yet, very long in duration. But one will be able to select what one likes”. (Paul Griffiths noted that this concept represented an early example of what would later become known as an “open” work, in that it would have allowed the conductor to freely select a subset of pieces.) In the remainder of the letter, Boulez laid out his thoughts with regard to the serial treatment of pitch (including quarter tones), rhythmic cells, and instrumental combinations (and thus timbre). (This text, along with material from another letter to Cage, later appeared as an article titled “The System Exposed”.)

Répons

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The music#

Répons is subdivided into an Introduction, Sections 1–8 and a Coda. Of the use of metre and harmony in Répons Boulez said: The pitches of the row used in Répons are those based on the Sacher hexachord and used in the rows for several other Boulez compositions: Messagesquisse, Dérive 1, Incises, and Sur Incises. Boulez selected the solo instruments, all pitched percussion, based on the ability of the computer equipment to “exploit their resonating characteristics to the limits of the technology available at the time”.

Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Rituel, commissioned by BBC London, was written a year after the death of Boulez’s friend and fellow composer/conductor Bruno Maderna in December 1973. It was first performed in London on 2 April 1975 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Boulez. Following the premiere, Boulez revised the score, removing optional, “open” features due to concerns regarding the ability of a large ensemble to react in a coordinated way to unpredictable situations. Gunther Schuller conducted the Berkshire Music Center Orchestra, a student ensemble, in the U.S. premiere of Rituel on 14 August 1975 as part of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. The musical material of Rituel was derived from …explosante-fixe…, a two-page tribute to Igor Stravinsky, described by Goldman as “a kind of open-ended composition kit”, that Boulez composed for a 1972 issue of the journal Tempo. Over the course of roughly twenty years, Boulez would base a number of compositions, including Anthèmes I and II, on this material.

Structures (Boulez)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The first book of Structures was begun in early 1951, as Boulez was completing his orchestral work Polyphonie X, and finished in 1952. It consists of three movements, or “chapters”, labelled Ia, Ib, and Ic, composed in the order a, c, b. The first of the second book’s two “chapters” was composed in 1956, but chapter2 was not written until 1961. The second chapter includes three sets of variable elements, which are to be arranged to make a performing version. A partial premiere of book2 was performed by the composer and Yvonne Loriod at the Wigmore Hall, London, in March 1957. This was Boulez’s first appearance in the UK as a performer. The same performers gave the premiere of the complete second book, with two different versions of chapter2, in a chamber-music concert of the Donaueschinger Musiktage on Saturday, 21 October 1961. Structures I was the last and most successful of Boulez’s works to use the technique of integral serialism, wherein many parameters of a piece’s construction are governed by serial principles, rather than only pitch. Boulez devised scales of twelve dynamic levels (though in a later revision of the score these reduced to ten), twelve durations, and—from the outset—ten modes of attack, each to be used in a manner analogous to a twelve-tone row. The composer explains his purpose in this work: I wanted to eradicate from my vocabulary absolutely every trace of the conventional, whether it concerned figures and phrases, or development and form; I then wanted gradually, element after element, to win back the various stages of the compositional process, in such a manner that a perfectly new synthesis might arise, a synthesis that would not be corrupted from the very outset by foreign bodies—stylistic reminiscences in particular.