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Boulez
Pierre A Symposium
254 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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July 20, 2007
PIERRE BOULEZ: A Symposium, edited by William Glock, is a mid-1980s collection of seven essays about the great French composer, conductor, and theorist. The work appeared too early to cover many of Boulez's recent exciting works like the two "Derive" pieces and "Sur Incises", and some of the essays were finished years before the 1986 publishing of the book, but for any Boulez fan there is a lot of interesting information here.
The collection opens with Peter Heyworth's "The first fifty years", a 40-page biography of the composer which originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1973. It was updated with a mere two new pages to cover Boulez's controversial appearance at Beyreuth in 1976 and the 1978 opening of IRCAM. While the biography is unobjectionable, it covers no ground that other portrayals of the composer have.
The next several essays are musicological. They abound in quotations from scores, and require some knowledge of music theory to appreciate. Gerald Bennet's "The early works" describes a number of pieces Boulez wrote while still at the conservatory, the great majority long since withdrawn from his catalogue. Here one can track Boulez's growth from a somewhat traditional student of Messiaen, to his discovery of Webern which changed everything, to the confidence of such pieces as "Le visage nuptial" and "Le soleil des eaux". Charles Rosen's following "The piano music" is a short description of the three piano sonatas, with especialy enlightening coverage of the hitherto-published movements of the third sonata. It is, however, a pity that Rosen doesn't write about that notable piano work of Boulez' youth, the 12 Notations.
"The convergence of two poetic systems" by Celestin Deliege is an argument at Boulez's compositional technique, especially where harmony is concerned, is highly influenced by the poetic stylings of Mallarme. It is a bold claim, and often convincing, but one might also argue that Boulez' found Mallarme's poetry so pleasing because he had already arrived at such an aesthetic philosophy himself. Susan Bradshaw's "The instrumental and vocal music", the longest of the essays here, was for me the most useful. It is a description of the theory behind all of Boulez's mature non-piano work up to the early version of "Repons". Many of the works described here, such as "...explosante-fixe..." and "Pli selon pli" have been subsequently revised and expanded, but the main points of Bradshaw's analysis still hold true.
Glock's "With Boulez at the BBC" is a short personal perspective of Boulez's tenure as conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, describing the strategy behind his programming and what he wanted to share with the London audiences. The last piece present is Johnathan Harvey's "IRCAM", a brief history and description of the French institute for musical and acoustic research founded by Boulez' initiative. While it can't compare with Georgina Born's book-length work RATIONALIZING CULTURE, it is still a useful piece and its favourable tone balances the scepticism and dislike of Boulez in Born's thesis.
One major complaint I have about the book is that the vast majority of musical examples are not properly engraved, but rather are written by hand with often illegible results. To make full use of the musicological essays, the reader might want to separately obtain the scores to the works discussed. Nonetheless, PIERRE BOULEZ: A Symposium is a work sure to delight fans of Boulez, and I learned a lot here.
The collection opens with Peter Heyworth's "The first fifty years", a 40-page biography of the composer which originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1973. It was updated with a mere two new pages to cover Boulez's controversial appearance at Beyreuth in 1976 and the 1978 opening of IRCAM. While the biography is unobjectionable, it covers no ground that other portrayals of the composer have.
The next several essays are musicological. They abound in quotations from scores, and require some knowledge of music theory to appreciate. Gerald Bennet's "The early works" describes a number of pieces Boulez wrote while still at the conservatory, the great majority long since withdrawn from his catalogue. Here one can track Boulez's growth from a somewhat traditional student of Messiaen, to his discovery of Webern which changed everything, to the confidence of such pieces as "Le visage nuptial" and "Le soleil des eaux". Charles Rosen's following "The piano music" is a short description of the three piano sonatas, with especialy enlightening coverage of the hitherto-published movements of the third sonata. It is, however, a pity that Rosen doesn't write about that notable piano work of Boulez' youth, the 12 Notations.
"The convergence of two poetic systems" by Celestin Deliege is an argument at Boulez's compositional technique, especially where harmony is concerned, is highly influenced by the poetic stylings of Mallarme. It is a bold claim, and often convincing, but one might also argue that Boulez' found Mallarme's poetry so pleasing because he had already arrived at such an aesthetic philosophy himself. Susan Bradshaw's "The instrumental and vocal music", the longest of the essays here, was for me the most useful. It is a description of the theory behind all of Boulez's mature non-piano work up to the early version of "Repons". Many of the works described here, such as "...explosante-fixe..." and "Pli selon pli" have been subsequently revised and expanded, but the main points of Bradshaw's analysis still hold true.
Glock's "With Boulez at the BBC" is a short personal perspective of Boulez's tenure as conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, describing the strategy behind his programming and what he wanted to share with the London audiences. The last piece present is Johnathan Harvey's "IRCAM", a brief history and description of the French institute for musical and acoustic research founded by Boulez' initiative. While it can't compare with Georgina Born's book-length work RATIONALIZING CULTURE, it is still a useful piece and its favourable tone balances the scepticism and dislike of Boulez in Born's thesis.
One major complaint I have about the book is that the vast majority of musical examples are not properly engraved, but rather are written by hand with often illegible results. To make full use of the musicological essays, the reader might want to separately obtain the scores to the works discussed. Nonetheless, PIERRE BOULEZ: A Symposium is a work sure to delight fans of Boulez, and I learned a lot here.
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