Customer Reviews (1)

Boulez on Music Today
This must be the most faithful representation of Boulez' thinking processes but is very hard to come to terms with due to much use of now defunct 1950's terminology and the abstract nature of his theoretical approach.However it is a must for anyone with a keen interest in post-war serialism and remains one of the most important treatises in the theoretical archives.It must come back into print! ... Read more

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A giant of postwar music and the most powerful figure in the contemporary French music scene, Pierre Boulez talks about his career as one of the world's most controversial conductors and daring programmers of musical text. These candid interviews give us vintage Boulez: his bold views, enigmatic wit, practical wisdom, and uncompromising beliefs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

layman's guide to Boulez
Both the Kirkus and other Amazon review are on the mark with this book.I read this book as a great admirer of the composer and conductor and welcome any further knowledge into his 'larger than life presence' as an artist.The book which is divided into chapters separated by various topics and developed as a Q &A format.Whereas other books on Boulez ("Orientations" or Lev Koblyakov's Analysis of Le Marteau) deal with pitch analysis (almost exclusively in the latter), this book REALLY gives you insight into the inner-workings of the former conductor of the New York Phil and LSO.You become privy to his sense of programming, which of the 'dead' composers work get programmed and why, why the predilection for French composers (berlioz and ravel).Following the interview chapters are a pretty comprehensive list of all of the programs Boulez had done through 1995.It is definitely geared toward those who want to know more about this amazing conductor.You don't need to havea huge music background to understand this book, albeit some of the 'name' references of particular scores may be a bit confusing for the non-musical layman (for ex. referring to the Dance of the Earth, some might not know this as the last movement of Part I of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring) These are minor points but shouldn't discourage possible readers.Thank you Camille Naish for getting it into English for the rest of us!

you can never get enough Boulez ,I expected depths,insights
A man with a formidable intellect as Boulez can discuss musical topics especially the inner depths of orchestral sound like no one else, quite literally. If you happen to be conversant in French and German, as well as English, well there is no shortage of fascinating reflections on the great modernist works of this century: Debussy,Berg,Schoenberg,Varese,Webern,Berio. Boulez knows each with a ferocious intimacy. These interviews are quite old, 1986 .Mr.Vermeil visited Boulez at hisstate-like home outside Baden-Baden,long a refuge for Boulez from the late Fifties, although now he's a mandarin not a bohemian serialist, as heonce arrived. Vermeil is good at tracing many categories, Chapter headings and parts I found fascinating were "Choosing Works", "Rehearsing", "On Gestures", "Colleagues". There's more but it seems Mr.Vermeil never gets down deep into the discourse of the subject. He stays on the surface which is all right with me. We need anything today discussed on modernist music, a dead,dying language yet institutionalized,all which makes historical sense. Well it has been Boulez who has kept it (music)alive, extending its implications, much like Habermas might find agreeable. I guess what I'm looking for is "Boulez in rehearsal" what he focuses upon, his pace, his structure of the rehearsal, what musical problems are attacked first, orchestral balance, tempi,quality of sonority. And we never get that with Vermeil firing the questions. In this English translation however it includes a reprint from a seminar in New York at Carnegie Hall in 1993 with the Cleveland Orchestra,by seasoned new music writer Paul Griffiths. Mr.Griffiths I like very much, for he bringsus right through onto to stage, close to the rehearsal proceedings with apprentice conductors. And Boulez has them try out their chops(technique) on "Chronochromie" by Messiaen and "Jeux" by Debussy, two problematic scores. "Jeux" you have a nuanced line o! f changing timbres. Also Boulez never discusses the real live composers who he admires, Ligeti,Berio,Birtwistle, I thought he might discuss their work and bring us up-to-date on the state of aesthetic strategy. I thought the French if nothing else are incestuous on their own cultural products and ideamaker/mongers. Boulez hardly mentions the young composers who have worked with him at IRCAM in Paris, the multimillion dollar center. Composers, Dufourt,Bonnet or Manoury are quite interesting,quite evocative and powerful in their works.Yet Vermeil asks no questions on the Parisian new music scene. I thought that would be a first hit. Still Vermeil did cover soemwhat untrodden ground with Boulez. I would equally thank Amadeus Press who translated it,wrenching it out of French mothballs for eternity. ... Read more

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This volume contains a collection of writings by musician Pierre Boulez, who describes his own music and that of other composers, as well as the personalities and institutions with whom he has worked closely. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Destined for Obscurity
This book is an interesting collection of writings and speeches by conductor and erstwhile composer Pierre Boulez.

It has three parts.The first (200 pages) consists of pieces that deal with Boulez' attitudes and philosophy about composing and music.His theories are intellectually interesting, but devoid of musical inspiration.It seems that his low reputation as composer is well deserved.

The second part (also 200 pages) is the most edifying.He displays a deep understanding of the intricacies of the orchestra, and the interpretation of other composer's works.It demonstrates why he is such a reliable conductor.

The third part (100 pages) is the least interesting.It is a collection of personal memories and reminisces.

As a writer, one admires his courage in tackling subjects (like artistic taste) that so obviously open him up to ridicule.Few composers have explained their thought processes in a way so clearly understandable to the layman better than Boulez.

In summary, one comes to the conclusion that Boulez will be remembered, if he is remembered at all, as a conductor who produced some top notch recordings of Stravinsky and Debussy, and some mediocre Wagner operas.

modernist compendium ofa composer/conductor
I cannot add much to the other reviews, this is the full weight of Boulez from both worlds as conductor and creator of theory and music. Boulez always found inroads into the theory of his works, like the indeterminate,aleatoric Third Piano Sonata which includes an analysis here, great readingfrom tis documentary value. Also reflections on Debussy's Jeux, a seminalwork for the post-war generation of composers, the epiphanic, the slowintroduction of materials and their appraisal. The problem is that Boulezwrites quite tersivily, in short bursts, much like the sonic poet he is.Also the work on Wagner's Ring is discussed quite well, the approach tofaster tempi, and Wagner's free form almost leitmotiv, where these musicalideas float through. There is also much on administration, on creatingIRCAM, and reflections on where Booulez came from, profiles ofDesormiere,Hans Rosbaud, Hermann Scherchen. Boulez would frequent theirrehearsals, a hands-on non credit education.

The essential tome of the modernist musical dialectic.
For anyone even remotely interested in the world of contemporary music and the volcanic changes that Pierre Boulez spearheaded in that conservative world from the 50's to the present, this is the essential book--a manifestooutlining the hopes, ideals, problems and successes that we face in themodern musical world. Every subject is covered here; from extensive essaysand polemics to recording sleeve notes to interviews and tributes tomusical colleagues and friends, Boulez leaves no subject untouched. Whatmay seem at first dry and forbidding turns out to be, upon powerful anddeep immersion, an inspiring and even moving text and 'calling' for themodern musician.

An essential insight into the cutting edge of composition
Orientations provides unique and fascinating insight into the ideas of Pierre Boulez over4 decades.With the recent release of Repons on Deutsche Grammophon, listeners will be delightedto examine the thoughtbehind the highly beautiful, shimmering sound of his recent works.Welearn here that Boulez has set out to break down the barrier between thecomposer and the audience, a crusade which he continues to fulfill in acharacteristically exemplary manner.It is particularly interesting toobserve the persistance of particular problems and solutions in thecomposer's work (such as spatialisation, the setting of texts, theintegration of technology), and to bear in mind how these ideas havedeveloped, from works such as Poesie pour pouvoir, to the 1993 version ofexplosante-fixe.

A sort of modernist bible, Orientations deserves to bere-printed.Indeed, it is to be hoped that the composer will produce a newvolume in the near future which will include discussion of Repons,explosante/fixe, and Sur incise, and perhaps take stock of the whole gamutof postmodernism, the minimalists and the like.

A difficult, though highly rewarding look at music.
Boulez's Orientations is a substantial collection of essays, liner notes, and reviews written over several decades.His prose is clear and concise (much like his conducting) and his topics cover a wide range.He discusses topics from Beethoven to Stockhausen and even "the elliptical geometry of utopia."Though frequently a tad verbose and difficult to comprehend, this book provides hours of stimulation and intellectual challenge for the hardcore musician and the layman alike. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

somewhat dated but illuminatespast Boulez
these interviews are relatively old prior to the Eighties,just when Boulez began guest conducting orchestras within the United States with extended stays as with The Cleveland Orchestra,endorsed by George Szell.
The materials here focus on the early period,the three Piano Sonatas,how each Sonata explored differing concepts and situations where time became expanded and contracted, the First Sonata through two contrasting ideas, the sustained sound, and the pointillistic one,projected within a highly virtuosic context with resonances, great timbres from all registers of the piano. This idea later expanded to full tilt in the longer brutal Second Piano Sonata, and the disintegration of rhythmic, intervallic cells, that come to the surface in great clariy, or come to one as if a lamenting sould looking for nourishment in time,time being like an "oxygen" for intervals.The Flute Sonatine as well is discussed,cut from the same field as the First Sonata,and we find the excitement of expanded 12 Tone technique and when these works became first published by Amphion,also some discussion on the more rarified air,the dodecaphonic developments in his latter 'structures for two pianos', where electronic timbral thinking was the focus almost the infinite array and distribution of the row, although Boulez saw the reiteration of the 12 Tones to be uninteresting,and simply at times preferred to state only 9 Tones.We learn that Boulez had performed his "structures" with Yvonne Loriod on tour in Europe.There is a recording as well.
The problematics of the interface between electronic sound and acoustic is discussed here as well, like the orchestra, as his 'poesie our pouvoir' (1958) withdrawn "Polyphonic X" for 18 instruments;it was Stockhausen who really resolved this paradigm and Boulez himself although decades later at IRCAM and the 4X computer systems.
Deliege has long been in the Boulez camp writing essays on his music along with Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Dominique Jameaux, Jean Vermeil,and Joan Peyser.

The early Boulez aesthetic was quite fascinating,coming from the ravages and cultural freeze of the Second World War. You can say Boulez always developed his own path and did not stay in anyone's shadow for too long,as Messiaen at first, then the dodecaphonic grandfathers as Schoenberg,Webern, Berg,then John Cage, (concepts of the indeterminate, aleatoric)Mallarme-ian and James Joyce orientations in literature then was the citadel where complexity and the "unknown" began to be explored, as he says in these interviews, and Mallarme's "Livre" "Blue Notebook, a collection of loose pages, of works that can be read in any order was a great bolt of illumination if you place yourself within the context of the Fifties, actually within a culture that was quite conservative on both sides of the Atlantic.So much so that contemporary music was not considered an important vigorous art as then Gaullist cultural Czar Andre Malraux promuligated,someone who should have known better. Boulez emigrated, then found fertile ground in Germany,in Baden-Baden conducting with increased responsibilities, and then seeking introductions to power brokers, as Paul Sacher, Wieland Wagner, Sir William Glock.All this is made explicit in these interviews.
The Boulez aesthetic has always search-with differing success-for the situation where the work functions by itself, where the materials (as the early Piano Sonatas),or the "Mallarme Improvisations"(Three Parts) take on an independence of thought, where the works come to write themselves from the inevitable agenda put in place.This later finding the ultimate "automata" compositional procedure in the "Notations for Orchestra" where Boulez simply found pleasure in the orchestration of youthful 12 piano pieces of somewhat a naive import. ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna, Pli Selon Pli, le Marteau Sans Maître, Dialogue de L'ombre Double, Sur Incises, Notations, Répons. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna (1974-75) est une œuvre de Pierre Boulez écrite pour ensemble orchestral divisé en huit groupes. Bruno Maderna, compositeur italien, était un ami de longue date de Pierre Boulez. Ils se connaissaient d'au moins depuis 1958 puisqu'ils ont dirigé ensemble deux des trois groupes orchestraux pour l'exécution de Gruppen de Karlheinz Stockhausen. Boulez a dirigé à plusieurs reprises des œuvres de son ami. L'œuvre a été écrite peu après la mort de Bruno Maderna, survenue le 13 novembre 1973. Boulez décrit sa partition comme une cérémonie de mémoire, dans lequel il y a de nombreuses répétitions des mêmes formules, avec un profil et une perspective en constant changement . L'œuvre utilise huit groupes de musiciens (avec à chaque fois, différents instruments), séparés spacialement, en référence à plusieurs partitions de Maderna procédant de même ( Quadrivium, 1969 ). Chaque groupe est dirigé par un percussionniste (un neuvième percussionniste étant inclus dans le dernier ensemble), doté d'instruments variés, qui impulse un tempo individualisé, donnant ainsi une indépendance rythmique à chaque ensemble, le tout étant dirigé par le chef d'orchestre La disposition optimale, d'après Boulez, est de mettre ainsi le public au centre des différents groupes. La création a été faite à Londres, le 2 avril 1975, par l' orchestre symphonique de la BBC sous la direction du compositeur. Son exécution demande environ un peu moins d'une demi-heure. L'œuvre a été enregistré un an plus tard par les mêmes interprètes. Boulez fon...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Pierre Boulez is arguably the most influential composer of the second half of the twentieth century. Here, Jonathan Goldman provides a fresh appraisal of the composer's music, demonstrating how understanding the evolution of Boulez's ideas on musical form is an important step towards evaluating his musical thought generally. The theme of form arising from a grammar of oppositions - the legacy of structuralism - serves as a common thread in Boulez's output, and testifies to the constancy of Boulez's thought over and above his several notable aesthetic and stylistic changes. This book lends a voice to the musical works by using the writings - particularly the mostly untranslated collected Collège de France lectures (1976-1995) - to comment on them. It also uses five musical works from the post-1975 period to exemplify concepts developed in Boulez's writings, presenting a vivid portrait of Boulez's extremely varied production. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

humble orientations
reading through these essays and analyses,was the young Boulez coming to terms with modernity, the value here is his analysis of the cell-rhythmic distribution in Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" something he did with Messiaen, and the concept simply stayed with Boulez. There is also encyclpedic like entries on the Grand Auteurs of modernity, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Debussy, Ravel, Bartok, and Messiaen. These are general like descriptions but now and then Boulez let's go with some flash, some bursting, (eclatante) of illumination on some structural principle or one of balance, or the materials developed within a work, and we get the for the times typical diatribes of the Masters here not allowing themselves to go far enough into the realms of the unknowns.Still these materials here are worth a good read,to see the excitement one did find with the potentialities of modernity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Only goes up to the mid-1980s, but a pleasing study
Dominique Jameux's study of Pierre Boulez appeared in 1984, with a second edition in 1986, and was translated into English in 1991. While the book necessarily stops before some interesting things happened in Boulez's career, such as the revival of "...explosante-fixe..." and the completion of "Repons", it is one of the most detailed overviews of his life and work up to that point, and worth seeking out for Boulez fans.

Part I, "Trajectories" is the biographical portion of Jameux's work. It traces Boulez's life from birth through his youthful Paris iconoclasm, his groundbreaking works of the 1950s, the beginning of his conducting career in the 1960s, and finally the IRCAM era. Throughout Boulez is shown as a thoroughly fascinating man, a titan of his age, although Jameux isn't afraid to thrown in some criticism of his attitude. My only complaint about this biography is that often it doesn't place Boulez in enough context. For example, we know he taught at Darmstadt, but who were his colleagues and how did Boulez fit in?

The second part, "Commentaries", is a series of musicological analyses of twelve works. These are "Sonatine", the three piano sonatas, "Le Soleil des eaux", "Structures" (but only Book I), "Le Marteau sans maitre", "Pli selon pli" (in a shorter version than what is played nowadays), "Eclat" and "Eclat/Multiples", "Domains", "Rituel", and "Repons". I can only regret that "...explosante-fixe...", perhaps my favourite of his orchestral works, is not included.

While some of the theory gets heady for a layman, Jameux's study is essential reading for serious fans of the great French composer, conductor, and intellectual.

Primary source of materials on a modernist activist creator
This is an incredibly usefull work on Maitre Boulez. Jameux is a critic,journalist writer in attendance for numerous concerts with Boulez conducting, as well as interviewer of him. Originally published in Frenchin the early Eighties, this translation is a primary source. It traversesall of Boulez's works with brief, yet focused analysis with a full range ofunderstanding. If you are fascinated by the early Boulez(many believe moreinteresting than the middle Boulez,the realm prior tohis"Repons") Jameux writes well on this early period the"Flute Sonatine" the early Rene Char settings"VisageNuptial" and especially the powerfull "Second Piano Sonata"the use of rhythmic cells as a local structuring device. But Jameux alsocontinues well into material on Boulez the conductor with lists of hisperformances and how Boulez captured the realm of modernity throughocean-hopping engagements,countless concerts of the Masters,Schoenberg,Berg,Webern,Bartok, Debussy,Stravinsky,Ravel. If you are lookingfor more advanced scholarship on Boulez,analysis of his works perhapsutilizing fractal thinking you will not find it here. Jameux's work is moreto lay the first layer of information and materials never collected in oneplace on Boulez. It is a great odyssey to follow, Boulez the creator,andconductor, the life of an activist remaining anon-proselyte for thevigours of modernity. ... Read more

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As composer and conductor (of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philarmonic), Pierre Boulez regularly appears with the greatest orchestras and opera houses throughout the world. In these conversations with Cecile Gilly, he recalls not only the great moments of his career, but brings penetrating insights into the art of conducting, including his views on other great composer-conductors (Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler, Strauss). Boulez speaks unusually frankly about the way his own music has changed as a result of his conducting career, and how he sees the role of the conductor and performer today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

wonderful sets of questions,more on point than previous
"I began composing the works, and then found the technique to conduct them"
Boulez's activism, his affinity for modernity always had a content, an aspect of directedness, of finding/locating the shortest distance between two points. And Cecile Gilly's questions here seem commonplace yet they excite quite provocative answers. Of course one must see a work in rehearsal with Boulez in order to find this "sortest distance" ourselves, as those available with his own"Notations" being prepared. But short of that. . .
Here the interviews have a chronology,and we learn for Boulez with his youthful beginnings in the Fifties it engaged the presentation of the best possible performance of the products of modernity,of activism as well for the cause of the new.He speaks here of his learning processes acquired/formulatedquite directly in attendance of rehearsals of Hans Rosbaud and Roger Desormiere, later Otto Klemperer in his last years in London. Klemperer actually phoned Boulez requesting permission to attend a Boulez rehearsal of his works.Boulez's humanism is wonderful to think about that he openly admits he had no orchestral technique of writing effectively for the orchestra during the earlier part of this career. Now he has the maturity,experience and retrospection to re-vise these works, as the "Le Visage Nuptial" and "Les Soliel Des Eaux". These were works that had an "overdetermined" polyphony.
We encounter these problems today in learning the modernist language for there still is a shortage of interpreters of the New.The last part here is "Transmitting knowledge" which is really the content of conducting and learning music as well. There is a section on young conductors where the skills during a Master Class become readily apparent. Boulez says, young conductors are first and foremost are concerned with themselves, not the work, their own means and work habits. Go after the problems of the work,appreciate the timbre and the structure, Why is it unique and interesting? not how one will interpret it.
For conducting we know that there was no work within the modernist repertoire that Boulez did not dare to try.This is how he claimed territory,and acquired technique. No others cared to have this affinity for the new for the Star-System of conductors was in place throughout the Fifties and Sixties...at least in the USA.But there is a modest appraisal of time and place that emerges here in these interviews, that of problems of performance,the technique of it, of balance of orchestral forces and timbre. Boulez says here that most conductors don't have a deep appreciation for the timbre of things, of the music, more the gesture,its effect on the populace,and music is finding solutions of interpretation of projecting timbre, sound colours , and finding them takes time and emerges only within a process of change and contemplation. The first performances of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" for example in Paris, where some 31 rehearsals were requested by Boulez, or Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande",the repertoire of Webern, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.On Schoenberg and the problems there Boulez says(to paraphrase) yes Schoenberg hadknown the effects of timbre, but in his music it is more a function of the motive, where it goes and its demise within the orchestra. Whereas Stravinsky loved sound, just to hear it,regardless of where it went.
Other high points discussed here was Wagner's "Parsifal", then the "Ring" itself with Patrick Chereau in the Mid-Seventies. Boulez relates a story of Klemperer asked Boulez(referring to Parsifal)"How do you deal with all this religiousness? and Boulez's response was "He(I) ignore it, and deal with pure technique, the long sheaths of time,slow tempi,and the most mature work within Wagner's oeuvre.Here Cecile Gilly requests basic necessities, but these interviews are more squarely on target, more technical in content on conducting than ones I've read previously. "Should a conductor be a composer?", she asks, and where,who have been successful composer-conductors?. or "What were your artistic aims at that time? What sort of programmes did you wish to conduct?, and a little later, "Were these concerts well attended?
There are also a traversing over quite traditional materials, as Berlioz the great orchestrator,19th Century music, the evolution of the orcehstra and Wagner as composer and conductor himself. But Boulez has wonderful things to say as " Orchestral imagination is a particular gift."Again the simplicity is misleading,for there are those genius composers who really could not orchestrate as Brahms,Chopin, Mussorgsky,Schumann,Scriabin.However Berlioz, had other shortcomings, ones of viable structure, of form in music becoming completely dependant on a narrative,yet still relatively naive in his approach, he founded the modern sounding orchestra with "Symphonie fantastique". The "voicings" of chords for example are all conmmonplace root position triads, yet when the contrabasses pluck these"commonplace" chords they are more percussive and brilliant sounding within the "acoustical illusion" of the orchestra.


Boulez in his terse, yet expansive when needed answers, always places the materials, the "musical text" as he refers to it, within a context.One example was the largesse of amplitude of the growing Romantic orchestra, the sound of the overbearing augmentation of the orchestra, due to larger halls, where Beethoven's philosophy(in the last years of the 19th Century) needed Tubas in order to not make flimsy and miniturize the content of his explosive 'Symphonies', Even Mahler got in on this aesthetic of filling the stage with persona,to no great end actually. For the music,not its conception does not change only those who perform and listen to it,they have needs and requirements for realizations that changes.

There are also many questions on the founding of IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the administrative problems encountered. Boulez usually had resolved one problem with the experience(s) from another place. Like the "teaching" aspect of IRCAM came from his early experiences with Georg Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, where Szell rendered a highly professional ensemble from what was rather mediocre in performance abilities as an ensemble. And Boulez says here you need to get an ensemble to think the same,explain things to them, each musician is quite accomplished on their own, they know their instrument, but then that means very little when placed within the context of learning a new work for example, or the problems of balance and listening as in Berg's "Three Pieces for Orchestra".
Boulez's creative work is discussed as well and we learn is founded in certain aspects on tradition,(something he would never have admitted in the Fifties,again the Boulez aesthetic is/was formulated in process of acquistion) as Wagner and the projection of "acoustical illusion" this in relation to Boulez's orchestral realizations of "Notations" 12 youthful piano solos,use as "seeds" for really ;etudes; for orchestra.
My favorite moments here are those under "Illusions and kaleidoscopes",Gilly askes, "In explosante-fixe/. . . . you tried in particualr to develop instrumental transformations of sound", and Boulez's response was "Yes, it is a kind of puzzle with musical segments that alternates more or less rapidly and ina more or less predicatable manner." Then another question." You attempt to short-circuit perception". Quite interesting set of interviews here. Those prior seemed too general much of the time, although those with Rocco di Petri those where on composition more than conducting, and those with Jean Vermeil from the Seventies was of a general traversing over points in Boulez entire career,less on technical sets of problematics.Those of Celestine Deliege were from the Sixties, although quite more on compositions. ... Read more

Product Description
In this significant study of the music of Pierre Boulez, Dr. Koblyakov provides a complete analysis of Le Marteau sand Maître and deals with the development of serial music in the twentieth century and the problems of serial organization in general. He reaches stimulating conclusions about serial thinking and harmony in themusic of Pierre Boulez, thus enabling an understanding of the intricacies of this major composer's compositional techniques. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a dissection of an avant-garde masterwork
Le Marteau sans Maitre, or The Hammerless Master was after the Surreal poet Rene Char, he was part of the Resistance to the Nazis during World War 2. Boulez was the first to realize the creative implications of the dodecaphonic language begun by Arnold Schoenberg later Anton Webern.Serialism was a vigorous extension of the utilization of the profoundnumber of 12, all of the tones in the tempered system. This 12 was extendedto rhythm,duration, articulation and dynamics, so not only pitch was apoint of organization.What this created was a situation where sound couldnow be projected in an infinite variety of shapes and designs. Serialismwas a brief epoch like any epoch with a beginning middle and end, and itcame to a marvelous end around the late Fifties. Its demise can beexplained by the exhaustion of the language, of its music materials. Eachwork was an excursion into eradicating itself. Boulez, of his gneration wasalways the most musical, always with tangible gestures and emotive threadstraceable to Debussy,or Webern or Messiaen, wheras composers likeStockhausen, or Nono, Berio,tried to erase this connection. Boulez broughtan informed musical sensibility, an aesthetic of the sensuous, the exotic,and mysterious to his music,informed by World Music as well, as theinstrumental constitution that Marteau suggests. Serialism had its problemshowever, structurally, it couldn't extend itself into largerforms,orchestration was also problematical, and there was a point where thecomplexity the density of the phrase existed purely for itself, for no onecould hear it. Marteau however is a classic precisily because it harboredmodest expressive goals, albeit within an incredibly complex structuralplan.Koblyakov discusses Boulez's use of harmony, a concept others of hisgeneration might well dismiss. And the fascination here is the analysis ofpoints,and simultanaeities of density, how they function within locallyfrom note to note and from movement to movement, how harmonies areconstructed, their gradations and shape.Marteau unfolds as the three poemsBoulez selected in three discreet sections composed of shorter movements,with what is now a classic avant-garde instrumental combination of voice,viola, alto flute, guitar and a large array of handheldpercussion&(vibraphone).As a tribute to this works profundity, therewere countless works by Boulez contemporaries with this identical setafter.Boulez's aesthetic always sought the means toward multiplication,how a germ of an idea can sustain, refigure and reproduce itself. This isdone here with reiteration of the materials of the serialized 12, withharmonies accreting and diminishing as the work progresses.How pitchreproductions can exist on alocal level within each movement and on aglobal level, within the entire work.Koblyakov impeccably traces thesecomplex transformations of pitch with wonderful graphic tables equallyexhaustive as the work. A full score of the work projected into screensdefining the works relationships is also provided here. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

ontology of purpose
Paul Klee's work has been an enduring place of habitation for Pierre Boulez, since his early days as an unofficial student in
Paris, seeing Klee's canvases in Paris for the first time represented a new way to think about the possibilities of music.Musical Academia in post-war France was abominable,backward looking,conservative and remained so even up through the Seveties when Andre Malraux(long before) was the cultural Czar of France. Malraux thought music as a marginal art form compared to literature of paintings largely because he was too ignorant to follow its innovations and achievements. Boulez left France for the fertile ground of Germany where a string of conducting positions and premieres of his new works were part of the lifeworld there.

Klee for Boulez represented a way out of the quagmire, the paradigm of expression in post-war Europa that from the patrilinear descent of the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern(Eisler is left out,but a rich important member nonetheless)and from the rhythmic innovations of Boulez's teacher mentor Olivier Messiaen. Klee's duly proportioned works of predictable textures, and colour gradations, tone schemes was the ground to begin to think within the context of music in differing ways, in ways of process where a work can be thought through to its continuation, through what sustains its unfolding in time, what gives it its durational shapes, and means for uniting texture and register, dynamic,timbre and pitch configurations. Largely Boulez wanted to break free from serial thinking in music a creative pathway he never found comfortable, at least not until after his exhaustive "structures" for two pianos.Then the use of aleatoric means as in his "Third Piano Sonata", had mixed results for Boulez, and certainly not a direction that ustained his interest and would have proved beneficial to his latter music. So Klee's often playful work was this place of creative habitation that Boulez fully expounds here in "Le pays fertile", the ground that bears fruit, or a pathway, a vigorous one for creativity and context. Reference is also made to Klee's numerous "Notebooks" where he makes parallels with the graphic world of function,of line and context,what they can come to mean, of tone,and spatial trajectories that the avant-garde in music would adopt itself. Although Boulez in retrospect found no affinity for musical graphics as say the Cage School,(John Cage and Earle Brown in particular)had or Sylvano Bussoti and Cornelius Cardew all from differing creative perspectives.He found a representation of Klee's visual approaches in the spatial dimensions of music. (Loud events obviously being closer to the listener,to softer ones more away in a hinterland distance.)Later Boulez would come to see the spatiality of means as in his "repons" with the use of the 4X computer as an aid to distribute timbre antiphonally, yet as an emanation from one single source the live ensemble of instrumentalists.
Reading this work, a fragment of a hommage to Klee draws one into Boulez's creativity itself,and if you know his work, his music,you can see where ideas and compositional concepts may have emanated from its ontology. ... Read more