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Pierre Boulez

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Pierre Boulez (IPA: /pjɛʁ.buˈlɛz/) (born March 26, 1925) is a conductor and composer of classical music.

Contents

Life and music

Early Years

Boulez was born in Montbrison, France. He initially studied mathematics at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire under Olivier Messiaen and Andrée Vaurabourg (Arthur Honegger's wife). He studied twelve-tone technique with René Leibowitz and went on to write atonal music in a post-Webernian serial style. The first fruits of this were his cantatas Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux for female voices and orchestra (both composed in the late forties and revised several times since), as well as the Second Piano Sonata of 1948, a well-received 32-minute work that Boulez composed at the age of 23. Thereafter, Boulez was influenced by Messiaen's research to extend twelve-tone technique beyond the realm of pitch organization, serialising durations, dynamics, accents, and so on. This technique became known as integral serialism. Boulez quickly became one of the philosophical leaders of the post-war movement in the arts towards greater abstraction and experimentation. Many composers of Boulez's generation taught at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany. The so-called Darmstadt School composers were instrumental in creating a style that, for a time, existed as an antidote to music of nationalist fervor; an international, even cosmopolitan style, a style that could not be 'co-opted' as propaganda in the way that the Nazis used, for example, the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Boulez was in contact with many young composers that would become influential, including John Cage.

Serialism

Boulez's totally serialized works included Polyphonie X (1951) for 18 instruments, and Structures I for two pianos. The latter work was quite successful, and seems to sum up the feelings of zero hour in Europe during the early 50s. Structures was also a turning point for Boulez. As one of the most visible totally serialized works, it became a lightning rod for various kinds of criticism. György Ligeti, for example, published an article in die Reihe that examined the patterns of durations, dynamics, and pitch in it, and found that a single pitch did not fit the pattern, which he then proceeded to question in excruciating detail. These criticisms, combined with what Boulez felt was a lack of expressive flexibility in the language, as he outlined in his essay "To the farthest reach of the fertile country", led Boulez to refine his compositional language. He distilled the feel of total serialization into a more supple and strongly gestural music, and he kept his methods for composing secret, to prevent people like Ligeti from discussing the technique, rather than the content of his music. Boulez's strongest achievement in this method is his masterpiece Le marteau sans maître for ensemble and voice, from 1953-1957, one of the few works of advanced music from the fifties to remain in the repertoire. Le marteau was a surprising and revolutionary synthesis of many different streams in modern music, as well as seeming to encompass the sound worlds of modern jazz, the Balinese Gamelan, traditional African musics, and traditional Japanese musics. It seemed to be powerfully relevant and earth-shatteringly cosmopolitan, and it was hailed by diverse musicians, including Igor Stravinsky. At that time, Boulez seemed to control the modern musical discourse. Lev Koblyakov cracked the code of these new techniques in his 1975-7 doctoral thesis (now published under the title "Pierre Boulez: A World of Harmony"), a feat one could liken to reverse engineering a complex machine. (However, Koblyakov accomplished this well after specific flavors of serial technique had been controversial among composers; Boulez had already moved on to other things.)

Experimentation

After Le marteau sans maître, Boulez began to strengthen the position of the music post-WWI modern composers through conducting and advocacy. He also begins to consider new avenues in his own work. With Pli selon pli for orchestra with solo soprano, he began to work with an idea of improvisation and open-endedness. He considered how the conductor might be able to 'improvise' on vague notations, such as the fermata, and how the players might 'improvise' on irrational durations, such as grace notes. In addition, he worked with the idea of leaving the specific ordering of movements or sections of music open to be chosen for a particular night of a performance, an idea related to the mobile form of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Interestingly, though the two works sound similar today, and certainly represent the same impeccable craft, Pli selon pli was not received as well as Le marteau. (Stravinsky for instance, hated the former but loved the latter.) This is perhaps more of a cultural barometer than a reflection on the work itself. During the time that Boulez was testing these new ideas, those colleagues who had never been entirely comfortable with the prominence of a rigorous musical language, such as György Ligeti, had brought a convincing musical counter argument to Boulez's musical ideals. In a poetic twist, Boulez had moved from peerless respect for Le marteau sans maître, meaning "the hammer without master", to seeming defeat with Pli selon pli ("Fold upon fold"), which sets a Stéphane Mallarmé poem about the tripping impotence of a swan, unable to take flight from a frozen lake.

From the 1950s, beginning with the Third Piano Sonata (1955- ), Boulez experimented with what he called "controlled chance" and he developed his views on aleatoric music in the articles Aléa and Sonate, que me veux-tu?. His use of chance, which he would later employ in compositions like Eclat, Domaines and Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna is very different from that in the works of for example John Cage. While in Cage's music the performers are often given the freedom to improvise and create completely new sounds, in works by Boulez they only get to choose between possibilities that have been written out in detail by the composer - a method that is often described as mobile form.

1970s

Some critics have accused Boulez of trying out the musical fads in the 1970s, for example the Rituel for orchestra divided into eight groups has been viewed as under the influence of American minimalism. None of these fads seemed to fit Boulez well, and gradually, Boulez closes the book on this sort of experimentation. Some later revisions to his works, such as a fixed ordering for the movements of Pli selon pli (which previously could be performed in any order), is by some seen as a reaction against this line of criticism. (Boulez himself explained that after working with the piece for awhile, it seemed that there was a best ordering: the one he chose.) However, Boulez has had a strong tendency to view all of his pieces as works in progress. His output since the 1970s has been considerably slowed; works tend to be contemplated over many years, and some, such as the Third Piano Sonata remain unfinished, though two of its projected five movements have been performed. ...explosante-fixe..., effectively a flute concerto with electronics, was first written in the 1970s and completely revised in the 1990s. His early work Notations for piano (1945), which consisted of short miniatures, is in the process today of being fleshed out as a piece for orchestra, with its tiny piano movements metamorphosed into a monolithic orchestral cycle. At least seven movements of this project have been completed. He has made these kind of continuations of his works throughout his career, other examples include the Structures II continuation of Structures I a few years later, Anthémes for solo violin reworked with electronics as Anthémes 2, and Incises for solo piano exploded into Sur Incises for three percussion groups.

He also began to work more with electronics in his music in the 1970s. Following the lead of figures such as Pierre Schaeffer and Edgard Varèse, he and his colleagues (even Olivier Messiaen) had experimented with electronics in the 1950's, but had given it up after an unsatisfying attempt (though Karlheinz Stockhausen was fantastically successful with this medium, and had gone on to make many important advances between the 50s and the 70s). In 1970 president Georges Pompidou asked Boulez to create and direct an institution for the exploration and development of modern music. This became IRCAM. There, Boulez made pioneering advances in classical electronic music and computer music, and promoted the idea that composers should work with technological assistants, who would attempt to realize the musical intentions of the composer. An example of this sort of relationship can be found in his major electronic work, Répons, for orchestra and electronics. Boulez worked with Andrew Gerzso to create a work where the resonance and spatialization of sounds created by the ensemble, were processed in real time (electronic music was usually laboriously created in controlled situations, and then recorded to tape, and thus 'fixed' in place for a performance). Boulez remained director of the IRCAM until 1992. As of 2004 he still has an office in the IRCAM. The IRCAM has become one of the most successful and notorious centers of musical modernism.

Recent Years

Today, Boulez was and is one of the leaders of the post-World War II musical modernism. His compositions have enriched musical culture, and his advocacy of modern and postmodern music has been decisive for many. Boulez continues to conduct and compose as of 2006. From 1976-1995, Boulez held the Chair in "Invention, technique et langage en musique" at the prestigious Collège de France. In 2002 he was awarded the prestigious Glenn Gould Prize for his contributions.

Boulez as a conductor

Boulez is also a world-famous conductor, having directed most of the world's leading symphony orchestras and ensembles since the late fifties. He served both as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1971-1975, and Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 1971-1977. He is currently the Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and will continue the following season as Conductor Emeritus. Boulez is particularly famed for his polished interpretations of twentieth century classics - Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Anton Webern and Edgard Varèse - as well as for numerous performances of contemporary music. Clarity, precision, rhythmic agility and a respect for the composers' intentions as notated in the musical score are the hallmarks of his conducting style. In 1984 he collaborated with Frank Zappa and conducted the Ensemble Intercontemporain, who performed three of Zappa's pieces. He never uses a baton, conducting with his hands alone. His nineteenth century repertoire focuses upon Ludwig van Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann and especially Richard Wagner.

Boulez as a writer

Boulez is also an articulate, perceptive and sweeping writer on music. Some articles - notably the notorious "Schoenberg is Dead," (1951) were deliberately provocative and veered towards polemic. Others dealt with questions of technique and aesthetics in a deeply reflective if sometimes elliptical manner. These writings have mostly been republished under the titles "Notes of an Apprenticeship", "Orientations: Collected Writings", and "Boulez on Music Today", as well as within reprints of the journal of the Darmstadt composers of the time, "Die Reihe."

Selected list of compositions

References

External links

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