Boulez 100

[vinteuil]

I remain convinced that, if and when we know more about his private life, we shall understand his music better...

Proust (following Bergson) would disagree : his objection to Sainte-Beuve’s biographical method of interpretation anticipated TS Eliot’s separation of “the man who suffers” from “the mind which creates.” For Proust these two entities were different kinds of self, the social moi extérieur and the moi profond who is the source of creativity. No analysis of the moi extérieur will provide any insight into the workings of the moi profond.

.

[edashtav]

No, Charles Koechlin was!

It’s a fun game but destined only to incite argument.
I what to nominate French composers of the 20thc. as a group. Think also of Messaien, Jolivet and Poulenc.
Do I not recall a flautist composer, who dedicated himself to teaching the flute at the Paris Conservatoire? Roger will name him. I sense his name started Gom……?

[Roger Webb]

It’s a fun game but destined only to incite argument.
I what to nominate French composers of the 20thc. as a group. Think also of Messaien, Jolivet and Poulenc.
Do I not recall a flautist composer, who dedicated himself to teaching the flute at the Paris Conservatoire? Roger will name him. I sense his name started Gom……?

...bert!*.....Gaubert is the ...bert who played/taught/wrote for the flute. I'm glad you mentioned Jolivet, he wrote a considerable number of works for flute, including that for the unique, and on the surface most unsuitable combination, his, Suite en Concert for Flute and Four Percussion! Anna Noakes made a wonderful disc for ASV (CD DCA 948) with other flute combinations excellently engineered by Mike Skeet.

One of my customers was Gareth Morris, one of the great exponents of the French flute repertoire (he gave the British premiere of Poulenc's Sonata with Poulenc at the piano), and we had many conversations about flute playing....when I saw him coming through the door I would put on what I thought an obscure piece of flute music, he would recognize it immediately, and then tell me a tale about his playing of it......and some juicy stories about conductors and his amazing adventures 'on the road' with the likes of Karajan, Schwarzkopf, Dennis Brain et al.....and the time he walked out on Callas!

Edit * Gombert actually the renaissance composer!

[edashtav]

Thanks, Roger, your memory is so much better and more vivid than mine.

[Roger Webb]

Thanks, Roger, your memory is so much better and more vivid than mine.

My memory fallibility caused me to edit, so probably not!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Proust (following Bergson) would disagree : his objection to Sainte-Beuve’s biographical method of interpretation anticipated TS Eliot’s separation of “the man who suffers” from “the mind which creates.” For Proust these two entities were different kinds of self, the social moi extérieur and the moi profond who is the source of creativity. No analysis of the moi extérieur will provide any insight into the workings of the moi profond.

.

I seem to have inadvertently sparked a very interesting multi faceted thread. Or rather it’s Boulez’s music that’s done that. Eliot also talked of the “impersonality of great art.” A phrase that Leavis energetically took up and it has much to commend it . Where it unravelled slightly was when it became clear that The Waste Land really was , at least partly , an intensely “personal poem” - the charting of Eliot’s own mental collapse albeit one done in a much more oblique way than Wordsworth’s poetic accounts of his own mental struggles where the word “I “crops up on every page.

Does knowing something of Eliot’s personal life contribute to your understanding - yes . Does it make the poem more rewarding as an experience? - maybe . Does it make it a better or worse poem ? Not really. I guess what Leavis and Eliot didn’t like was the indulgent heart and sleeve outpourings of some Romantic poets.

Proust is an interesting example that links the discussion between homosexuality and biography. Of course he was gay but all M’s loves are female - one of whom vehemently denies being gay - but is. I’m not a big fan of literary theories but Queer theory is quite useful in looking at ALRDTP. So much of it deals with hidden homosexuality with that surprisingly pejorative non PC term “inverts” that Proust adopts, The gay characters are generally pretty unpleasant and the portrait he paints is a distinctly unsympathetic one . There has to be some sort of psychological reason for that. Didn’t he once fight a duel when “accused” of being gay ?

I could go on for pages but I’m not sure any of this is relevant to Boulez. I’m pretty sure he was gay but I completely respect his reasons for keeping all that private.

He is the only really great musician I ever met face to face - at a Prom where I was working as a sound assistant for R3 . He thanked us after the performance- somewhat surprisingly I seemed to be one of the few on the technical side who had any enthusiasm for his music.

As for my random flute remark which has sparked a sub strand worthy of its own. I meant “greatest writer “ for ensemble flute not solo. Time and again on Sunday I was struck how wonderfully that instrument was integrated into the ensemble and how it coloured the texture - the comparison with Ravel was linked in my mind to the Introduction and Allegro and Daphnis,

[Roger Webb]

As for my random flute remark which has sparked a sub strand worthy of its own. I meant “greatest writer “ for ensemble flute not solo. Time and again on Sunday I was struck how wonderfully that instrument was integrated into the ensemble and how it coloured the texture - the comparison with Ravel was linked in my mind to the Introduction and Allegro and Daphnis,

With the flute integrated into the texture, and not in the spotlight in mind, perhaps Mahler ought to be mentioned....Das Lied von der Erde and the last movt. of 10th Symphony, for example. Boulez being such a wonderful Mahler conductor with his careful handling of texture, his Das Lied with VPO being a case in point....I don't think he did a complete 10th..shame!

[oliver sudden]

I could go on for pages but I’m not sure any of this is relevant to Boulez. I’m pretty sure he was gay but I completely respect his reasons for keeping all that private.

…

- the comparison with Ravel…

I think your comparison with Ravel was do to with the flute writing (and musically speaking I find the Boulez-Ravel connection rather more stimulating than the Boulez-Debussy connection) but the similarity between their very private private lives is surely also striking? And similarly I don’t feel deprived of any enjoyment of Ravel’s music by not knowing anything significant about his non-musical life. (I will undermine that by admitting that a trip around his house certainly did reveal interesting symmetries with L’Enfant… but again none of the things that were interesting in that context had anything to do with the bedroom.)

As far as flute writing goes: is there an ensemble sound more spectacularly mid-20th-c-modernism than Le Marteau, and has anyone ever done an instrument a bigger favour than Boulez did for the alto flute by making it part of that lineup?

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think your comparison with Ravel was do to with the flute writing (and musically speaking I find the Boulez-Ravel connection rather more stimulating than the Boulez-Debussy connection) but the similarity between their very private private lives is surely also striking? And similarly I don’t feel deprived of any enjoyment of Ravel’s music by not knowing anything significant about his non-musical life. (I will undermine that by admitting that a trip around his house certainly did reveal interesting symmetries with L’Enfant… but again none of the things that were interesting in that context had anything to do with the bedroom.)

As far as flute writing goes: is there an ensemble sound more spectacularly mid-20th-c-modernism than Le Marteau, and has anyone ever done an instrument a bigger favour than Boulez did for the alto flute by making it part of that lineup?

Very good point re Marteau.

Re composer’s bedrooms . I did find interesting (in a non prurient way) that Pears and Britten had separate bedrooms and ,more crucially , had separate Steinways. Both are key to a successful long term relationship perhaps - or at the least the possibility . But I what found really interesting was that Britten had a photo of Frank Bridge by his bed. I even asked whether it was placed there by the staff . No it had been there for years - clearly the debt Britten owed to his teacher and mentor was immense.

[Serial_Apologist]

As far as flute writing goes: is there an ensemble sound more spectacularly mid-20th-c-modernism than Le Marteau, and has anyone ever done an instrument a bigger favour than Boulez did for the alto flute by making it part of that lineup?

Many have cited Der kranke mond from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire as a likely inspiration; there's a coincidental Ravel link via, of all places, the soprano/flute duet in L'enfant et les sortilèges too!

[vinteuil]

I did find interesting (in a non prurient way) that Pears and Britten had separate bedrooms ...

... 'separate bedrooms' was - and still is - also the norm for heterosexualist couples in a certain class of society

[Ein Heldenleben]

... 'separate bedrooms' was - and still is - also the norm for heterosexualist couples in a certain class of society

Indeed. It’s amazing they have so many children really.

[oliver sudden]

Many have cited Der kranke mond from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire as a likely inspiration; there's a coincidental Ravel link via, of all places, the soprano/flute duet in L'enfant et les sortilèges too!

Absolutely re Der kranke Mond—I would be surprised if Boulez hadn’t cited it himself (and by making one movement a voice/flute duo he practically did).

I was thinking specifically of the alto flute though. It was almost inevitable given that he seems to have decided to put all the pitched members of the ensemble (voice included) in the alto range. (Yes, the xylophone sounds an octave higher and the guitar an octave lower, but the alto range is where they’re written and debatably also perceived!) It’s such a crucial part of Le Marteau’s sound world and before Le Marteau I can’t think of anything remotely as influential that uses it as the flautist’s main (only!) instrument—in Rite of Spring or Daphnis and Chloe it’s very striking but still just a special colour.

[gurnemanz]

Some interesting Boulez reminiscences from Simon McBurney on Private Passions. He visited him near the end of his life when he was an invalid, nearly blind and his memory was confused. McBurney found one crossed-thread utterance distressing, yet beautiful, whereby Boulez suddenly smiled and recalled with delight a two piano piece called Structures which Stravinsky
had written for him and Yvonne Loriod during the war. Structures is a work by Boulez himself.

[vinteuil]

Some interesting Boulez reminiscences from Simon McBurney on Private Passions...

... in fact his brother Gerard McBurney