Wot? No comments on Boulez?

[Richard Barrett]

Ivan Hewett in the Telegraph, on the other hand, seems to suggest that Boulez was truer to his talents in his works for smaller forces

Ivan Hewett is a patronising hack who isn't fit to talk about Boulez's talents.

It really doesn't matter where the impact comes. What makes Boulez's music worth returning to is that it can be experienced and appreciated on many different levels. But over and above that I'm not sure I really know what it means for music to be appreciated "intellectually" as opposed to appreciated in some other way. The thing about music is that it's a domain of experience where distinctions like intellectual/sensual lose their applicability. You can talk about music in an intellectual way of course, which for some reason some people find weird or inappropriate, but to listen in an intellectual way...?

[Bryn]

As David Hockney sagely put it: "never believe what an artist says, only what he does."

Or:

[Serial_Apologist]

Or:

Are 4-letter words allowed on this forum?

[Bryn]

Are 4-letter words allowed on this forum?

"Blame not the speaker but be warned by his words."

[Honoured Guest]

People find music over-intellectual if they believe that it can only be properly appreciated on an intellectual level.

It really doesn't matter where the impact comes. What makes Boulez's music worth returning to is that it can be experienced and appreciated on many different levels. But over and above that I'm not sure I really know what it means for music to be appreciated "intellectually" as opposed to appreciated in some other way. The thing about music is that it's a domain of experience where distinctions like intellectual/sensual lose their applicability. You can talk about music in an intellectual way of course, which for some reason some people find weird or inappropriate, but to listen in an intellectual way...?

Who said anything about "listening in an intellectual way"?

Is my "music can ... be ... appreciated on an intellectual level" so very different from your "you can talk about music in an intellectual way of course"?

Does all music really achieve the "domain of experience" which you describe? Or is that an ideal, with the very best performed and composed music? And doesn't it also require the ideal listener, receptive to the particular composition and performance?

[Richard Barrett]

Who said anything about "listening in an intellectual way"?

I think it's often an assumption made about the music of Boulez and many other composers that for them it doesn't appeal in a sensual way, so there must be some "intellectual way" of listening (which I think doesn't really exist as such) which somehow must be the way of getting into it. As you say, "if people believe that it can only properly be appreciated on an intellectual level"... which is probably in the end a mistaken belief. All music can be talked about (and heard) in many different ways. I don't think music alone "achieves" anything except in contact with performers and listeners. Receptivity, like many other things, can be second nature, or it can be learned if there's an interest in doing so. I tend to think of something rather converse to the idea of an "ideal listener". I would put it this way: if a composer intensely involved in and excited by the music he/she has a part in creating, then it seems likely that this will be shared by at least some of the people who hear it, given that the composer must share some significant part of his/her humanity with fellow humans.

[ahinton]

I think it's often an assumption made about the music of Boulez and many other composers that for them it doesn't appeal in a sensual way, so there must be some "intellectual way" of listening (which I think doesn't really exist as such) which somehow must be the way of getting into it. As you say, "if people believe that it can only properly be appreciated on an intellectual level"... which is probably in the end a mistaken belief. All music can be talked about (and heard) in many different ways. I don't think music alone "achieves" anything except in contact with performers and listeners. Receptivity, like many other things, can be second nature, or it can be learned if there's an interest in doing so. I tend to think of something rather converse to the idea of an "ideal listener". I would put it this way: if a composer intensely involved in and excited by the music he/she has a part in creating, then it seems likely that this will be shared by at least some of the people who hear it, given that the composer must share some significant part of his/her humanity with fellow humans.

Exactly - especially your last sentence here. I don't even know what (if anything) is supposedly meant by "listening on an intellectual level" or how is might be distinguished from listening on any other level; does any listener, regardless of the extent or otherwise of his/her listening experience, choose a "level" upon which to listen, depending upon what's being listened to at any give time? The fact is that all that people who talk like that actually mean is that they believe that the music concerned required considerable intellect on the part of its composer to compose it and, as they don't like what they're listening to, they resort to accusing it of having nothing beyond mere intellectual content, as though the music is a mere intellectual exercise not designed to be felt, let alone to generate excitement in the listener.

Now I openly admit to finding very little with which I can engage in Boulez's piano sonatas, but by admitting that I'm merely saying that they don't really register with me other than as the music of a composer who really knows his way around the piano very well, not that it has nothing but intellectual - i.e. cerebral - content to offer more receptive listeners. That said, I can't think of any other Boulez works about which I feel that way (except Notations, which sound far better to me in orchestral garb). Others of his works, notably Pli selon pli (and Hewett's patronising comment about Boulez writing on a large scale is surely notable only for its sheer absurdity) have a vibrancy and expressivity that I'd have thought a listener would have to be both deaf and dense not to notice, even those to whom they might not necessarily appeal as such. The timing of events in Dérive II - which is arguably one of his most ambitious works after Pli selon pli - is immaculate and just when there might be a risk that the frequent hyperactivity begins to defeat itself, the work draws to the most spectacular close as the ensemble is pulled as if by some kind of gravitational force towards a unison A. Sadly, he seems to have written nothing since - and that's almost nine years ago now.

There's plenty in Boulez's output to appreciate in a sensual way (insofar as such a notion makes any sense at all); indeed, the more that he's written, the more I have come to appreciate him (although I do wish that he'd not been so sniffy for so many years about Dutilleux and had instead conducted more of his music!).

[Serial_Apologist]

There's plenty in Boulez's output to appreciate in a sensual way (insofar as such a notion makes any sense at all); indeed, the more that he's written, the more I have come to appreciate him (although I do wish that he'd not been so sniffy for so many years about Dutilleux and had instead conducted more of his music!).

In a radio interview some years back I recall Boulez, without further comment, negative or positive, citing Dutilleux as representing a continuation of the French symphonic tradition as previously represented by Franck and Roussel. He had earlier cited Debussy as doing something in La Mer that marked a partial departure from that tradition, and therefore, presumably (think I) because not genuinely symphonic in Boulez's terms, transgressive in a positive sense. I suppose it is in Dutilleux's adherence to the tradition, as Boulez sees it, and because he thinks writing symphonies historically redundant, that leads him to ignore him.

I now remember - this was part of a programme in which Boulez was asked about a symphony which he agreed that he had himself composed, sometime around the time of the first Piano Sonata, the score of which had been abandoned on a train, iirc, whose details were too far in the past to be recalled, erm.

[Honoured Guest]

I don't even know what (if anything) is supposedly meant by "listening on an intellectual level"

No one said "listening on an intellectual level", except for Richard Barrett who raised it: "but to listen in an intellectual way...?" as a straw man to attack.

I said: "appreciated on an intellectual level" and I did NOT mean what you claim I meant, (as a fact!!!)

The fact is that all that people who talk like that actually mean is that they believe that the music concerned required considerable intellect on the part of its composer to compose it and, as they don't like what they're listening to, they resort to accusing it of having nothing beyond mere intellectual content, as though the music is a mere intellectual exercise not designed to be felt, let alone to generate excitement in the listener.

I was talking about music where it seems to the listener that "intellectual content" is the principal feature, or music which might be heard as being "conceptual music". Not much concern for the extent of compositional intellect deployed! No intent to diminish the music by calling it an "exercise"! Don't really know why I'm bothering to explain what I mean - you obviously believe you know I mean something different.

[ahinton]

In a radio interview some years back I recall Boulez, without further comment, negative or positive, citing Dutilleux as representing a continuation of the French symphonic tradition as previously represented by Franck and Roussel. He had earlier cited Debussy as doing something in La Mer that marked a partial departure from that tradition, and therefore, presumably (think I) because not genuinely symphonic in Boulez's terms, transgressive in a positive sense. I suppose it is in Dutilleux's adherence to the tradition, as Boulez sees it, and because he thinks writing symphonies historically redundant, that leads him to ignore him.

Well, he did conduct Métaboles at least once, but that's about all that he's ever done for HD other than act and speak dismissively about him although, apparently, relations between them became far more cordial later on and PB did send Dutilleux a very nice card of wellwishing when he was entering what was to be his final illness. The irony in Boulez using his view that "writing symphonies (was/is) historically redundant" as a kind of implicit weapon with which to beat Dutilleux is that Dutilleux only wrote two of them and outlived completion of the latter one by well over half a century.

I now remember - this was part of a programme in which Boulez was asked about a symphony which he agreed that he had himself composed, sometime around the time of the first Piano Sonata, the score of which had been abandoned on a train, iirc, whose details were too far in the past to be recalled, erm.

I didn't know about that; there is evidence of the one-time existence of a Symphonie concertante for piano and orchestra dating from 1947, i.e. between the first two piano sonatas but no evidence that I'm aware of as to how it supposedly came to be "lost"...

[ahinton]

No one said "listening on an intellectual level", except for Richard Barrett who raised it: "but to listen in an intellectual way...?" as a straw man to attack.

I said: "appreciated on an intellectual level" and I did NOT mean what you claim I meant, (as a fact!!!)

As what I wrote applies equally to that (not least because one cannot properly and fully "appreciate" a piece of music without "listening" to it), "listening" and "appreciating" are effectively synonymous in this context.

I was talking about music where it seems to the listener that "intellectual content" is the principal feature

But which listener/s, what is the "intellectual content" concerned (as though it can somehow be hived off from the whole) and how is, or might, it be determined that such content is the "principal feature" of a piece of music?

or music which might be heard as being "conceptual music".

By which you mean what? - and "heard" by whom? I can't quite imagine how a piece of music can come into being, whether composed (in the sense of writing it down) or improvised, without it having been "conceived"...

Not much concern for the extent of compositional intellect deployed!

Concern on whose part? Your chosen listener/s'?

No intent to diminish the music by calling it an "exercise"! Don't really know why I'm bothering to explain what I mean - you obviously believe you know I mean something different.

Au contraire, I really don't actually know what you mean, although your efforts to explain it reveal little beyond some doubt as to whether you yourself know what you mean!

[eighthobstruction]

....I enjoy Boulez....I do not find it a difficult challenge to listen to it [except in large quanties, where there is hardly a chance to evaluate each peice ; before another piece is being played]....I see it as clever music produced by an intelligent being....I don't have any need to analyse it past that (If others want to analyse it more....so be it)....BUT, I like it best when presented in a 'Late Junction ' manner interspersed amongst other good music (amongst an eclectic mix)...

[Honoured Guest]

Au contraire, I really don't actually know what you mean, although your efforts to explain it reveal little beyond some doubt as to whether you yourself know what you mean!

Earlier, you said that you knew "as a fact" what I meant. Okay, I won't respond to you again.

[ahinton]

Earlier, you said that you knew "as a fact" what I meant. Okay, I won't respond to you again.

You have no need to bother. You have not explained what you mean and how you arrive at the conclusions that you have formed - not just to me but to others here who seem not to have any better idea of what you're talking about than I do.

[Sydney Grew]

We're all different.

As Wilde (the master of us all) pointed out, the essential quality of a work of Art is that it remain the same regardless of the attitude of him to whom it is presented. And let it be said that poor old B, being such an aggressive personality (the war you know), and unwilling to cultivate his aesthetic sense, never did very well as an artist. His attempts at musical composition do not amount to much at all, and most of them have airy-fairy titles. So, recognizing his limitations, he turned to conducting and made a living conducting Shostakoafish in places like America. He never married.