Boulez & composer-performers

[ahinton]

Whilst the dangers of attempting to discuss Boulez the activist as distinct (or even not!) from Boulez the artist are surely obvious, there can be no doubt that attributing the term "activist" to Boulez is hardly inappropriate; his elder compatriot Dutilleux, who has been very careful not to enmesh his remarks about this subject with value judgements on or even personal responses to the music of Boulez, has nevertheless railed against Boulez's surely undeniable dominance in French musical politics at a certain time. That said, however, Lebrecht's use of the term "before" might be open to some question, as despite the possibility that it might read as indicative of an assumption of precedence, it could as easily be taken to refer to Boulez's youth when his trenchant views on many things were very much to the fore as distinct from more recent times during which, even though the suggestion that he's "mellowed" is clearly an exaggeration, he's no longer trying to burn down opera houses with the dead Schönberg (or Schoenberg) inside them or indeed nailing his couleurs to the mast of the present and future at the expense of the past.

[heliocentric]

Another thought, occasioned by listening to Répons today.

Does Boulez view Pli selon pli as an extreme position within his own music and further developments in his music following a different direction? Or does he view it as emblematic or representative of his music and the place his music occupies in terms of contemporary classical music? ("as good as no further formal development, at least not in the direction ....").

It struck me that Répons comes across as having a "sonata-like" shape, beginning with a "first subject" in which the central orchestra sets out a sequence of rhythmic/harmonic/textural materials, followed by a "second subject" where the keyboards and electronics enter (both groups, as promised by the title, involving "antiphonal" features of different kinds), after which various "developmental" directions ensue; there isn't really anything that could be called a "recapitulation" but the closing minutes certainly seem to have a "coda"-like function. Without wanting to straitjacket Répons too much into a strict traditional framework, it does proceed in ways which would have been unthinkable to the more radically-minded composer of Pli selon pli.

Also, in a 1997 interview concerning Anthèmes, Boulez says:

"... in my youth, I thought that music could be athematic, completely devoid of themes. In the end, however, I am now convinced that music must be based on recognizable musical objects. These are not ‘themes’ in the classical sense, but rather entities which, even though they constantly change their form, have certain characteristics which are so identifiable that they cannot be confused with any other entity. This piece is replete with such entities, which can be identified very easily."

That's something else that the younger Boulez would have found irredeemably traditionalist. Comparing those more recent pieces with Pli selon pli the latter seems to articulate itself much more in terms of clear textural contrasts, whereas the later pieces have far fewer of these (hardly any in Dérive 2). So maybe it's possible to say that after Pli selon pli Boulez had exhausted what he saw as the possibilities of extreme contrasts and began to search for ways of creating his structures without them (as well as downplaying them in later revisions and performances of earlier works), which eventually involved some kind of reconciliation with pre-serial ways of thinking. Interestingly, Stockhausen also moved in the direction of a more "thematic" music from 1970 onwards, but in quite a different way, which he saw as a further stage in the evolution of serial thinking rather than a retreat from it.

[JohnSkelton]

Thanks, interesting. So there might be a sense in which his composing and conducting careers mirror one another - in a restatement of the more 'traditional' formal processes that the younger Boulez would have seen as irrevocably past. It might simply be as he suggests greater proficiency of the performers but each subsequent recording of the earlier music seems to make it more ... continuous.

IRCAM aside, is there something ... institutional about that? His becoming so closely a part of Classical Music (Vienna Philharmonic, etc.) that psychologically / practically Boulez's music had to rejoin Classical Music (with the capital letters)?

[heliocentric]

It might simply be as he suggests greater proficiency of the performers but each subsequent recording of the earlier music seems to make it more ... continuous.

And that continuousness seems strange if not inappropriate to those of us who've been listening to this music for decades, although maybe it always sounded the "continuous" way to the composer and only later did it actually become possible to play it that way. To the extent that each generation of composers asks performers to develop skills that weren't needed in earlier repertoire, a process that requires more time than does the uptake of that generation's innovations by the next generation, maybe each new generation of younger composers is influenced by "bad" performances of music by their elders ...

[Serial_Apologist]

Boulez has long stressed his wish to compose for professionals, (read, in my interpretation, the principle of professionalism embedded in the Western orchestral model); in one radio interview he implicitly criticised composers of works entailing the importation of instruments from other musical cultures. I've wondered, from that pov would he criticise a composer nominally, at any rate initially, outwith that tradition, eg Takemitsu, who has? A friend of mine immediately named Debussy's sonata for flute, viola and harp when I asked her, what work from the past does "Memoriale" most immediately remind you of? It does seem consistent with identifying with a certain lineage that Boulez uses poetic analogies especially from French poetry and literature to make his music, and, with Boulez, position understandable, even if that lineage in his case more and more goes back only as far as Debussy and his Symbolist contemporaries. The notion of serialism with a certain spin on it representing the ultimate summation of the Western artistic/intellectual heritage going back, in musical terms, through either Messiaen or Webern, and Debussy or Mahler, to Wagner, and then back at least to Bach by way of Beethoven and Mozart has apparently been dropped - namely, that serialist ideal of modernism he had once envisaged had been optimally encapsulated in Webern as a sort of Bauhaus machine-age functionalist in all but temperament propelled through processes as ineluctably embedded in serialism as historical determinism in the passage to socialism. (Webern's ideal in that respect was much closer to Mahler's paradise than the Futurists, whose nearest equivalent may well have been Varese, whom the serialists name-checked for inclusion). Professionalism has also come to mean music that is playable, less subject to inaccuracies inevitably arising from the degree of complexity, and concomitantly overdemanding accuracy, written into the early serial scores such as "Le Visage Nuptiale"; yet, at the time of "Le Marteau" Boulez had come to see attempts at serially totally pre-ordered musical universes as drug-like protection against the spur of invention, worlds in which the dreams could never be miraculous; so one can imagine, through the course of a 65-year career that has taken on presenting and conducting, first, the works of his contemporaries in spirit, then, with discrimination regarding eligibility, the broadening range of repertoire, and not least the "legitimation" of state support lived out through IRCAM, that the perspective has shifted. But perhaps, in the end, it is from the latter perspective that the changes in Boulez's musical language, are, after all, most readily understood, as others have here implied.

[JohnSkelton]

I need to think about all this - thanks helio and S_A.

" ... maybe it always sounded the continuous way to the composer ...." That would require an uncanny dissociation of the composer's mental states from the person living a life, perhaps? (so maybe possible in Boulez's case!)

S_A: I was struck by the proximity of Boulez's remark about Dadaist games with language and his insistence that Mallarmé's poetry exhausted its own formal possibilities (or no one picked up on them) because they are certainly there in Apollinaire and in Dada; and in the case of Hugo Ball so is Mallarmé's sympathetic magic and ritual. So precisely one formal development of that poetic is somewhere Boulez discounts. What you say about the Utopian aspect is fascinating. Did Boulez ever have much time for Nono?

[heliocentric]

at the time of "Le Marteau" Boulez had come to see attempts at serially totally pre-ordered musical universes as drug-like protection against the spur of invention, worlds in which the dreams could never be miraculous

One could however (speaking as a serial apologist) think of this the other way around - that those "musical universes", like Boulez's Structures, Stockhausen's Klavierstücke I-IV and others, opened up a world of sonic and structural potential for composers' dreams and imaginations which might not otherwise have come to light. As for what "playable" actually means, Boulez's views on this are only one of many possibilities...

[Serial_Apologist]

One could however (speaking as a serial apologist) think of this the other way around - that those "musical universes", like Boulez's Structures, Stockhausen's Klavierstücke I-IV and others, opened up a world of sonic and structural potential for composers' dreams and imaginations which might not otherwise have come to light.

I have always felt that way about the integral serial period works, too - new realms of expressive and formal possibility was always "the point" of innovation, even if only in hindsight; ref. Varese's famous comment about the artist not being ahead of "his" time, but most people being behind theirs.

As for what "playable" actually means, Boulez's views on this are only one of many possibilities...

I think I see what you're getting at, helio!

[Serial_Apologist]

I need to think about all this - thanks helio and S_A.

" ... maybe it always sounded the continuous way to the composer ...." That would require an uncanny dissociation of the composer's mental states from the person living a life, perhaps? (so maybe possible in Boulez's case!)

S_A: I was struck by the proximity of Boulez's remark about Dadaist games with language and his insistence that Mallarmé's poetry exhausted its own formal possibilities (or no one picked up on them) because they are certainly there in Apollinaire and in Dada; and in the case of Hugo Ball so is Mallarmé's sympathetic magic and ritual. So precisely one formal development of that poetic is somewhere Boulez discounts. What you say about the Utopian aspect is fascinating. Did Boulez ever have much time for Nono?

Hmmm. I really would like to be able to answer either of those points, JS; this is where knowledge limitations come into play...

[heliocentric]

" ... maybe it always sounded the continuous way to the composer ...." That would require an uncanny dissociation of the composer's mental states from the person living a life, perhaps? (so maybe possible in Boulez's case!)

I don't think I was quite clear, because I meant something a bit simpler - for "sounded" read "was intended to sound" - in the same way that I imagine the rhythms of the Sacre du printemps must always have "sounded" to Stravinsky as we're now used to hearing them (especially since it was composed at the piano!), while in 1913 I don't expect they sounded much like that!

Going back to my cryptic comment about "playability", it depends on how simplistic one wants to be about the relation between notation and performance. If you look for example at a book of jazz standards, everything's notated in quite an approximate way, with the element of swing and syncopation to be understood by anyone who plays it. Just "playing the notes" and nothing but the notes, which I think is what Boulez likes his players to do, isn't enough. Conversely, in pieces like Evryali or Nomos gamma by Xenakis, you can't approach the acore in that way even if you want to because there are "impossible" things in them. Boulez might say they're "unplayable", but, like the jazz standards but the other way around, "just playing the notes" is consequently not a helpful approach to take. I hope that doesn't sound too convoluted.

[JohnSkelton]

Hmmm. I really would like to be able to answer either of those points, JS; this is where knowledge limitations come into play...

My knowledge limitations have already lapped me several times, S_A (OMG: Olympic reference) .

I found this http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article1423

HUMA: At the time you had extremely different political, social or philosophical views. Stockausen inclined to some kind of mysticism, Berio and Nono had an interest in politics that you do not share. But still there is the same fire in the works you compose.

BOULEZ: There are deep divergences even about and in the music. I have never written music as reflexive as Stockhausen’s, my music rather originates in the act of composing itself. Berio is more heterogeneous. Nono’s austerity was extremely rigorous. And even though he was a member of the communist party, this did not make him fall in line with socialist realism and all that stuff. That was what I respected about him. He remained faithful to his ideas and tried to pass them on, independently of the party machinery.





(I hope you will not mind my saying that when Nono discovered what the USSR was really like, it killed him. At least he did not recover from the blow. The meaning he gave to his life collapsed

can't be historically correct, surely?)

"I don't think I was quite clear, because I meant something a bit simpler - for 'sounded' read 'was intended to sound' - in the same way that I imagine the rhythms of the Sacre du printemps must always have 'sounded' to Stravinsky as we're now used to hearing them (especially since it was composed at the piano!), while in 1913 I don't expect they sounded much like that!" I understand. Though even given an inner sense of great acuity just hearing them over time grow to be closer to that inner sense is some kind of modification? Or, at least that sense of them might subtly change because of their more accurate realisation. But that's probably beside the point, or plain wrong.

[Serial_Apologist]

My knowledge limitations have already lapped me several times, S_A (OMG: Olympic reference) .

I found this http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article1423

HUMA: At the time you had extremely different political, social or philosophical views. Stockausen inclined to some kind of mysticism, Berio and Nono had an interest in politics that you do not share. But still there is the same fire in the works you compose.

BOULEZ: There are deep divergences even about and in the music. I have never written music as reflexive as Stockhausen’s, my music rather originates in the act of composing itself. Berio is more heterogeneous. Nono’s austerity was extremely rigorous. And even though he was a member of the communist party, this did not make him fall in line with socialist realism and all that stuff. That was what I respected about him. He remained faithful to his ideas and tried to pass them on, independently of the party machinery.





(I hope you will not mind my saying that when Nono discovered what the USSR was really like, it killed him. At least he did not recover from the blow. The meaning he gave to his life collapsed

can't be historically correct, surely?)

"I don't think I was quite clear, because I meant something a bit simpler - for 'sounded' read 'was intended to sound' - in the same way that I imagine the rhythms of the Sacre du printemps must always have 'sounded' to Stravinsky as we're now used to hearing them (especially since it was composed at the piano!), while in 1913 I don't expect they sounded much like that!" I understand. Though even given an inner sense of great acuity just hearing them over time grow to be closer to that inner sense is some kind of modification? Or, at least that sense of them might subtly change because of their more accurate realisation. But that's probably beside the point, or plain wrong.

Thanks, JS - I never realised that about Nono; I suppose it's quite possible to conceive that he might never have got over facing those irrefutable facts. Did you know that Nono and Henze had a big falling out? It was in 1958, apparently, all over Henze's "Nachtstucke und Arien" - a very beautiful orchestral song cycle, in which Henze's definitive departure from serialism in his own music for an idiom much more obviously in the Mahler-Berg lineage became fully apparent. In a fairly recent radio interview Henze expressed his sadness at that breach, and the fact that it had never been repaired, given that their political views had not seemed so far apart, from his point of view, as much as for the fact that he (Henze) had never felt himself to have been in his words a slave to any kind of musical theoretical dogma, but always been a free spirit.

[Bryn]

http://promsmusicwalk.co.uk/assets/download.php?download=Alvin-Curran-DJ-Albert-Spins-Cage-and-Cardew.mp3

[heliocentric]

he (Henze) had never felt himself to have been in his words a slave to any kind of musical theoretical dogma, but always been a free spirit.

Much as I admire some of Henze's work, he's one of those people who counterpose "serial dogmatist" with being a "free spirit" in a way that suggests that these are the only possibilities, which in turn suggests an inability or unwillingness really to engage with what his colleagues found so important about the serial concept, which was by no means the same thing - Stockhausen, Boulez and Nono, to name only these, understood serial thinking in quite radically different ways.

I know one or two people who were personally acquainted with Nono, and they speak of him as a deeply inspiring personality.

I wonder what Boulez means by "reflexive" with reference to Stockhausen... that word old seem to me to be more applicable to Boulez himself! since so much of his music has this involuted, self-reflexive quality, while for Stockhausen there was always a search outwards for untried possibilities, from the 1950s right up to his last years. But thanks for the L'Humanité link, that was very interesting to read.

[ahinton]

I wonder what Boulez means by "reflexive" with reference to Stockhausen... that word old seem to me to be more applicable to Boulez himself! since so much of his music has this involuted, self-reflexive quality, while for Stockhausen there was always a search outwards for untried possibilities, from the 1950s right up to his last years. But thanks for the L'Humanité link, that was very interesting to read.

And for whom did Carter write his Réflexions?...