Music Matters: Boulez Special

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Looking forward to this. I think that Tom Service is the natural heir to the late Michael Oliver as an interviewer of composers: intelligent and infectiously enthusiastic but (with the exception of last year's Ades embarrassment, over which it would be most charitable to draw a polite veil!) tenaciously questioning. I loved his Birtwistle special earlier this year, not letting Sir Harry get away with his customary vagueness ("Oh, come on! You must know how you did that!") and provoking Birtwistle to comment "You should be a composer!" after one of his insights.

I trust he won't allow Boulez to deliver his usual "minimalist" interview (the one he first gave to Célestin Deliège and has been repeating ever since) but will actually push the great man into revealing new insights into his remarkable imagination.

12:15, Saturday Afternoon (straight after CD Review).

[Roehre]

I'll definitely listen to it too.

[Chris Newman]

I am hoping that PB will open up and talk about himself and his music as enthusiastically as he does on other composers.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, he got as close as he ever will, Chris! As Griffiths pointed out, just when it seemed as if he was about to make an "emotional" comment on his Music, he caught himself and changed the subject to "conducting".

Another good Service interview: his style combines Paxman with Steiff! PB was allowed 10 mins to give his usual interview (fair enough, this was a programme for the "general Music lover" and there may be a few who haven't heard Boulez's views on Sch♫nberg* and Stravinsky) before Service got him onto the sensuous/emotional aspects of his work. Even the slight detour on "decadence" proved useful to hear PB baffled by a criticism not normally aimed at his Music!

I played ... esplosante/fixe ... immediately after listening to the programme: Paul Griffiths is so wrong to say that Boulez' Music "lacks wit"!

Best Wishes.


(*= look what happens when your finger misses the 8 when typing the "Alt" for "umlaut o"!)

[Serial_Apologist]

It was a good interview imv, and I'm looking forward to hearing it again later. Nothing very enlightening on how Boulez structures his music nowadays in any overarching way: he once extolled the virtues of serialism, whether of the extended or non-extended kinds, and it would have been good to know whether the serial principle still operates as the main, or indeed, any form of pre-governing aspect of how his music is structured.

S-A

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Nothing very enlightening on how Boulez structures his music nowadays in any overarching way: he once extolled the virtues of serialism, whether of the extended or non-extended kinds, and it would have been good to know whether the serial principle still operates as the main, or indeed, any form of pre-governing aspect of how his music is structured.

I agree: perhaps it wasn't thought appealing to the "general Music lover"?

Do you have access to Tempo, S-A? There's been a four-issue "serialization" (no pun intended) in this year's "volume": the January edition was PB doing his usual stuff, but the April and July (the final part is coming in October) "installments" have been fascinating. The interviewer (Erling E Guldbransen, who is a little too pleased with himself!) gets Boulez to comment on the way he composes in depths I've never encountered before. A couple of tasters:

... the serialism of Schönberg and Webern [was] not mine at all. ... I always tried to distort [the] logic, or to bring the logic to a kind of absurd point where it does not mean anything any more. ... you twist the logic to give you the result you want.

... I do some practical exercise, derivatives of things like that, which seem very arid, even. Then when I have all these objects in front of me I start to combine them to see what an object is able to do, and I choose only one or maybe two of them among 15 or 20. They begin to have a life of their own.

... that's completely beyond seriality. The criterion is simply the meaning of the line. The phrasing. The relationship of the intervals. What they mean Musically ... and that's it.
... Once I have these objects in front of me I am absolutely free.

The whole of Repons is based on six notes ... I began to work on that to derive chords and so on and the whole of Repons comes out of that. Of course, the [six notes] have become completelt engulfed in the Music.

Great stuff!

Best Wishes.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the reply, Ferney! Very interesting comments from PB, albeit somewhat incomplete.

I haven't ever actually read Tempo - I can probably get a copy of the latest edition next time I'm in the West End.