Pierre Boulez, RIP

[Nick Armstrong]

Great photo, Stanfordian.

Oi ! Keep up at the back there!! http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...794#post532794

[MrGongGong]

Nothing to add
A sad day for music

http://www.ircam.fr

[Beef Oven!]

Oi ! Keep up at the back there!! http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...794#post532794

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Let's celebrate the man, rather than expressing shock about his death. As I know from my own parents' last few years, there are worse things than dying. Often, death can be a release.

We have much to celebrate in the case of Pierre Boulez - his compositions, his writings and his recordings. What a legacy!

[Petrushka]

Let's celebrate the man, rather than expressing shock about his death. As I know from my own parents' last few years, there are worse things than dying. Often, death can be a release.

We have much to celebrate in the case of Pierre Boulez - his compositions, his writings and his recordings. What a legacy!

Examination of my CD shelves reveals more Boulez recordings than I knew I had! Lots of Schoenberg, his complete Webern, complete Mahler, lots of Bartok and Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel and, of course, his own music.

[ahinton]

Let's celebrate the man, rather than expressing shock about his death. As I know from my own parents' last few years, there are worse things than dying. Often, death can be a release.

We have much to celebrate in the case of Pierre Boulez - his compositions, his writings and his recordings. What a legacy!

Indeed. His death has been long anticipated in the sense that he not only suffered a protracted illness but also seemed (as far as I am aware) to feel unable to compse after he put the finishing touches to the revised version (isn't there always one with him?!) of Dérive II.

[Alison]

Did Boulez take composition students?

[Serial_Apologist]

Did Boulez take composition students?

Gilbert Amy was one, I believe?

[Beresford]

Boulez said that Stockhausen was the greatest composer of the twentieth century, the only one he considered his peer. (Wikipedia) Together with Messiaen, they do appear to be giants - maybe even more than (say) Handel, Telemann, and Bach in their period.

[Jeffery135]

I still can’t forget my first Boulez concert. It was February 1964 and I had hitchhiked from Yorkshire, finding my way to the BBC Maida Vale studio. After Haydn’s London Symphony everyone including the BBC Symphony Orchestra burst into applause. Debussy’s Jeux in the second half was completely out of this world.
Later I was equally amazed by Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra and Stravinsky’s Nightingale and Symphonies of Wind Instruments. I moved to London and when Boulez conducted I was there. Berg’s Altenberg Lieder and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe were also superlative not to mention Gurrelieder and Bluebeard’s Castle.
For some years I have been facing the fact that never again would I have the electric feeling as he came to the rostrum and put a document in sound before the world.
But before ever hearing him conduct I had been persuaded by his composition Le Marteau san Maitre on an LP conducted by Robert Craft. Boulez was first of all a composer. I hazard to think his music will in future be heard as somewhere between Bach and Debussy recast in C21 terms.
I can think of no one else in my lifetime who has been at the cutting edge of creativity or anything useful through seven decades.

[Serial_Apologist]

I still can’t forget my first Boulez concert. It was February 1964 and I had hitchhiked from Yorkshire, finding my way to the BBC Maida Vale studio. After Haydn’s London Symphony everyone including the BBC Symphony Orchestra burst into applause. Debussy’s Jeux in the second half was completely out of this world.
Later I was equally amazed by Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra and Stravinsky’s Nightingale and Symphonies of Wind Instruments. I moved to London and when Boulez conducted I was there. Berg’s Altenberg Lieder and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe were also superlative not to mention Gurrelieder and Bluebeard’s Castle.
For some years I have been facing the fact that never again would I have the electric feeling as he came to the rostrum and put a document in sound before the world.
But before ever hearing him conduct I had been persuaded by his composition Le Marteau san Maitre on an LP conducted by Robert Craft. Boulez was first of all a composer. I hazard to think his music will in future be heard as somewhere between Bach and Debussy recast in C21 terms.
I can think of no one else in my lifetime who has been at the cutting edge of creativity or anything useful through seven decades.

For those of us who "cross over" to jazz and other genres (not only musical) there are equivalent figures of significance. (Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Miles Davis in jazz).

We have been exceptionally fortunate to have been born into generations who have been able to avail ourselves directly of these figureheads. Being now 70 I don't expect to see their like again within my lifetime, but they will be there when the need is.

[Beef Oven!]

Boulez said that Stockhausen was the greatest composer of the twentieth century, the only one he considered his peer. (Wikipedia) Together with Messiaen, they do appear to be giants - maybe even more than (say) Handel, Telemann, and Bach in their period.

[Beef Oven!]

I still can’t forget my first Boulez concert. It was February 1964 and I had hitchhiked from Yorkshire, finding my way to the BBC Maida Vale studio. After Haydn’s London Symphony everyone including the BBC Symphony Orchestra burst into applause. Debussy’s Jeux in the second half was completely out of this world.
Later I was equally amazed by Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra and Stravinsky’s Nightingale and Symphonies of Wind Instruments. I moved to London and when Boulez conducted I was there. Berg’s Altenberg Lieder and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe were also superlative not to mention Gurrelieder and Bluebeard’s Castle.
For some years I have been facing the fact that never again would I have the electric feeling as he came to the rostrum and put a document in sound before the world.
But before ever hearing him conduct I had been persuaded by his composition Le Marteau san Maitre on an LP conducted by Robert Craft. Boulez was first of all a composer. I hazard to think his music will in future be heard as somewhere between Bach and Debussy recast in C21 terms.
I can think of no one else in my lifetime who has been at the cutting edge of creativity or anything useful through seven decades.

[Quarky]

RIP Pierre Boulez.

I'm a big fan of Boulez, and of Classical Music. However, as freely stated , his death represents the end of an era. What era might that be, and what will or is replacing it?

Boulez clearly had the heart and soul of Classical music, musicians and listeners, as can be seen from this thread. May be his epitaph is "The last great Classicist".

May be the end which is being signalled is an end to an era of intensive introspective analytical approach to musical sounds - or at least the supremacy of that approach?

May be it is being replaced by a more open ended lateral approach to sound, noise and note combinations, which integrates the world of sound more clearly with other forms of art, and which will be of more interest to the public having a general interest in artistic matters

See for example the latest episode of Hear and Now, London Contemporary Music Festival; http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tw35f

(trying to be objective here, not expressing a personal view)

[richardfinegold]

Last night CSO concert contained an inset in the program notes as a memorial. No announcement from the stage itself, but I heard there was one on Thursday night.