Pierre Boulez has died
January 6, 2016 6:12 PM Subscribe
In June 1969, the stunning news broke that the New York Philharmonic had appointed Pierre Boulez to succeed Leonard Bernstein as its music director. The decision understandably rattled the classical music establishment. . . .
But I want to highlight his collaboration with someone you may not expect: Frank Zappa.
I remember being stunned after digging into his work by the extent to which my music education, which really only treated Boulez in the context of his activities as total serialist and aggressive polemicist, had failed to do the man justice. IRCAM, the NYP...an indisputable hero.
I'm going to step out and listen to Anthèmes II and have a smoke or five.
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posted by invitapriore at 6:30 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm going to step out and listen to Anthèmes II and have a smoke or five.
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posted by invitapriore at 6:30 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
While I do not believe in heaven, I still picture Boulez meeting Zappa up there. Boulez is happy to see his old friend and asks him:
What do we do here?
And Frank brings him to the heavenly choir and says, "Anything we want to, brother. Any fucking thing we want to."
And Boulez smiles.
posted by Splunge at 6:34 PM on January 6, 2016 [7 favorites]
What do we do here?
And Frank brings him to the heavenly choir and says, "Anything we want to, brother. Any fucking thing we want to."
And Boulez smiles.
posted by Splunge at 6:34 PM on January 6, 2016 [7 favorites]
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posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:36 PM on January 6, 2016
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:36 PM on January 6, 2016
so refusing to die doesn't work, I guess
posted by thelonius at 6:44 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 6:44 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
I hate to threadjack, but I love this story so I hope you don't mind if I put it here.
Ruth Underwood's Marimba story.
posted by Splunge at 6:48 PM on January 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
Ruth Underwood's Marimba story.
posted by Splunge at 6:48 PM on January 6, 2016 [5 favorites]
Boulez conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger
One of my very favorite recordings. You will be missed Mr. Boulez.
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posted by evilDoug at 6:48 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
One of my very favorite recordings. You will be missed Mr. Boulez.
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posted by evilDoug at 6:48 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by sleepingcbw at 6:51 PM on January 6, 2016
posted by sleepingcbw at 6:51 PM on January 6, 2016
My interest in Boulez started (like a lot of you) with his involvement with Zappa. It really became a thing in and of itself with this album and, I guess a good soaking in Paul Griffiths. I'm bummed. For me he was like The Iron Giant; alien and terrible and loveable all the same.
posted by cleroy at 7:21 PM on January 6, 2016
posted by cleroy at 7:21 PM on January 6, 2016
As a Zappa fan I am familiar with his association with Boulez, and don't find it at all surprising. Among other things, they were both influenced by Edgard Varese. Although I'm am less of an orchestral music fan, I appreciate the immense work and talent that composers, conductors, and performers put into it, and how wonderful it is that there are people like Mr. Boulez that continue to keep it fresh while still acknowledging the classics.
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posted by TedW at 7:27 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by TedW at 7:27 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
For me, his Rite of Spring was astonishing, and still is. Unstoppable, relentless, and unforgiving. And beautiful.
posted by swift at 7:32 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by swift at 7:32 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by threecheesetrees at 7:44 PM on January 6, 2016
posted by threecheesetrees at 7:44 PM on January 6, 2016
I wonder if anyone's written a "Boulez Is Dead" polemic yet. I like to think he'd take it in good humor.
posted by invitapriore at 7:53 PM on January 6, 2016
posted by invitapriore at 7:53 PM on January 6, 2016
Toronto Mefites - New Music Concerts is performing a Boulez and Bashaw recital on February 15th.
posted by stray at 8:10 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by stray at 8:10 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by Fibognocchi at 8:20 PM on January 6, 2016
posted by Fibognocchi at 8:20 PM on January 6, 2016
With the passing of known terrorist Pierre Boulez, all the opera houses are finally safe.
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posted by fremen at 8:32 PM on January 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
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posted by fremen at 8:32 PM on January 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
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posted by On the Corner at 12:59 AM on January 7, 2016
posted by On the Corner at 12:59 AM on January 7, 2016
With the passing of known terrorist Pierre Boulez, all the opera houses are finally safe.
Ah, those exciting and highly stupid post-9/11 days... Were we ever so young?
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:01 AM on January 7, 2016
Ah, those exciting and highly stupid post-9/11 days... Were we ever so young?
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:01 AM on January 7, 2016
I wonder if anyone's written a "Boulez Is Dead" polemic yet.
The subject line of the email I sent to a fellow composer was "Boulez iz Dead". The email was in sincere praise of the man and the title was meant in good humor.
Being a composer in the modernist/postmodernist tradition I have a complicated relationship with Boulez.
As a conductor and promoter of modernist music he was aces. His recording of the complete Webern is not to be missed.
As a composer things get weird. When I first discovered that I liked modernist music I created a mixed tape recorded off of the local NPR station (this would have been the early '90s). It had pieces by Boulez, Cage, Oliveros, Cowell, Stockhausen, and others (whom I've since forgotten). I adored and was in awe of every single work on that tape. An entire new universe of music was open to me and its beauty outshone the entirety of music history.
Boulez was a wild man behind the pen and his works (the few that there are) are all worth experiencing.
But then came the Cage v Boulez debates. The vast majority of people are unaware of this (most of it took place in private letters but there was the occasional bit that went public). Cage, the American, claimed that Boulez and the rest of the Europeans were stuck on early 20th century modernism (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern) and were just iterating on their ideas. Meanwhile in America Cage and the rest of the NY School (and others) were exploring new frontiers.
Where "aleatoric techniques" (chance techniques) were something that Boulez used in some of his pieces, the Americans did not just include them occasionally but made chance operations the entire work. For Boulez and the other Europeans this was too much. It removed too much of the Composer, the Great "Man", or the Ego of the Composer (as Cage put it) from the music. The NY School embraced this and continued on in that direction while most of the big names in Europe, including Boulez, rejected it.
We still feel the repercussions of this today.
If it wasn't clear above I sided with Cage (though 40 years too late). This doesn't mean I reject Boulez -- again, his music is superb -- it's just that as a composer thinking about music he was too early modernist and not enough late modernist/postmodernist. The avant-garde has to keep pushing till there's nothing left to push. Boulez (et al) weren't able to keep pushing.
With all this I was saddened to hear the news. He was a tireless and invaluable force in getting modernist music to the public. Forcing it on the public even and I will be forever in his debt.
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posted by bfootdav at 9:10 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
The subject line of the email I sent to a fellow composer was "Boulez iz Dead". The email was in sincere praise of the man and the title was meant in good humor.
Being a composer in the modernist/postmodernist tradition I have a complicated relationship with Boulez.
As a conductor and promoter of modernist music he was aces. His recording of the complete Webern is not to be missed.
As a composer things get weird. When I first discovered that I liked modernist music I created a mixed tape recorded off of the local NPR station (this would have been the early '90s). It had pieces by Boulez, Cage, Oliveros, Cowell, Stockhausen, and others (whom I've since forgotten). I adored and was in awe of every single work on that tape. An entire new universe of music was open to me and its beauty outshone the entirety of music history.
Boulez was a wild man behind the pen and his works (the few that there are) are all worth experiencing.
But then came the Cage v Boulez debates. The vast majority of people are unaware of this (most of it took place in private letters but there was the occasional bit that went public). Cage, the American, claimed that Boulez and the rest of the Europeans were stuck on early 20th century modernism (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern) and were just iterating on their ideas. Meanwhile in America Cage and the rest of the NY School (and others) were exploring new frontiers.
Where "aleatoric techniques" (chance techniques) were something that Boulez used in some of his pieces, the Americans did not just include them occasionally but made chance operations the entire work. For Boulez and the other Europeans this was too much. It removed too much of the Composer, the Great "Man", or the Ego of the Composer (as Cage put it) from the music. The NY School embraced this and continued on in that direction while most of the big names in Europe, including Boulez, rejected it.
We still feel the repercussions of this today.
If it wasn't clear above I sided with Cage (though 40 years too late). This doesn't mean I reject Boulez -- again, his music is superb -- it's just that as a composer thinking about music he was too early modernist and not enough late modernist/postmodernist. The avant-garde has to keep pushing till there's nothing left to push. Boulez (et al) weren't able to keep pushing.
With all this I was saddened to hear the news. He was a tireless and invaluable force in getting modernist music to the public. Forcing it on the public even and I will be forever in his debt.
.
posted by bfootdav at 9:10 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
> as a composer thinking about music he was too early modernist and not enough late modernist/postmodernist. The avant-garde has to keep pushing till there's nothing left to push. Boulez (et al) weren't able to keep pushing.
I don't understand this view of art at all. Artists should do the art they are suited to; if they can do "early modernist" superbly, let them do it. Your attitude seems to imply that art is moving along a path with a destination, and once that's reached presumably it has to shut up shop. That's nonsense: art doesn't progress any more than history does, it just keeps zigging and zagging. Do what you want, but don't slag other people for doing what they want.
Also:
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posted by languagehat at 9:33 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't understand this view of art at all. Artists should do the art they are suited to; if they can do "early modernist" superbly, let them do it. Your attitude seems to imply that art is moving along a path with a destination, and once that's reached presumably it has to shut up shop. That's nonsense: art doesn't progress any more than history does, it just keeps zigging and zagging. Do what you want, but don't slag other people for doing what they want.
Also:
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posted by languagehat at 9:33 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
First:
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Do what you want, but don't slag other people for doing what they want.
This, absolutely. It's where I always have found Boulez and his work problematic--though he seemed to have mellowed somewhat in his later years, the dogmatism of 'this is the kind of music you ought to be making' has been actively destructive to concert music for at least a century now. (Not that Boulez is solely responsible for that, but hurf durf Darmstadt School etc.)
Having said that, bless this man for his work and gifts to the rest of us. His music-making (compositions and performance recordings) really is astonishing.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:46 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
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Do what you want, but don't slag other people for doing what they want.
This, absolutely. It's where I always have found Boulez and his work problematic--though he seemed to have mellowed somewhat in his later years, the dogmatism of 'this is the kind of music you ought to be making' has been actively destructive to concert music for at least a century now. (Not that Boulez is solely responsible for that, but hurf durf Darmstadt School etc.)
Having said that, bless this man for his work and gifts to the rest of us. His music-making (compositions and performance recordings) really is astonishing.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:46 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't understand this view of art at all. Artists should do the art they are suited to; if they can do "early modernist" superbly, let them do it.
Perhaps I didn't explain the context well enough. Both sides of the pond were trying to keep pushing art, trying to be the most modern of the modernists. Boulez would have freaked out if someone had said that his music was stuck in early 20th century modernism. He thought his brand of modernism was the way forward and what Cage et al were doing was an aberration.
It's never easy to judge these things even something like which fugue, the one I just wrote or the one my neighbor wrote, is the most Bach-like. Arguments can be made but most importantly interesting discussions can be had. Likewise, we'll never be able to judge which group, which path, was the best at continuing on the modernist tradition of exploration but interesting discussions can be had. In the end composers in the modernist tradtition generally find themselves falling into either of these camps.
Of course artists can do what they want and how they want to. I have zero problem with that and I didn't mean to imply I thought any differently. I was speaking more to our theoretical understandings of the art itself.
posted by bfootdav at 10:36 AM on January 7, 2016
Perhaps I didn't explain the context well enough. Both sides of the pond were trying to keep pushing art, trying to be the most modern of the modernists. Boulez would have freaked out if someone had said that his music was stuck in early 20th century modernism. He thought his brand of modernism was the way forward and what Cage et al were doing was an aberration.
It's never easy to judge these things even something like which fugue, the one I just wrote or the one my neighbor wrote, is the most Bach-like. Arguments can be made but most importantly interesting discussions can be had. Likewise, we'll never be able to judge which group, which path, was the best at continuing on the modernist tradition of exploration but interesting discussions can be had. In the end composers in the modernist tradtition generally find themselves falling into either of these camps.
Of course artists can do what they want and how they want to. I have zero problem with that and I didn't mean to imply I thought any differently. I was speaking more to our theoretical understandings of the art itself.
posted by bfootdav at 10:36 AM on January 7, 2016
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I put together a memorial playlist yesterday. While putting it together I was amazed at how many amazing recordings Boulez has left us.
posted by mountmccabe at 11:24 AM on January 7, 2016
I put together a memorial playlist yesterday. While putting it together I was amazed at how many amazing recordings Boulez has left us.
posted by mountmccabe at 11:24 AM on January 7, 2016
For me, his Rite of Spring yt was astonishing, and still is. Unstoppable, relentless, and unforgiving. And beautiful.
You. Must. Get. The Deutsche Gramophon album "Pétrouchka / Le Sacre du Printemps" directed by Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra. (It's a recording from 1992, not the same as the previously-linked video.)
As a kid, "Firebird" was the first ballet I saw. I was six and fell in love with Stravinsky on the spot. A year or two later I saw "The Rite of Spring" and was blown away. In my mind it's forever linked with my love of mythology.
Fast-forward to being a poor university student, and my best friend loaned me his CD of Boulez directing Pétrouchka and Le Sacre du Printemps (that same DG one). I had always returned loans. Always. But not this one. My poor friend ended up having to make an appeal to my fundamental humanity before I would return it nearly a year later. As soon as I could afford it, I got myself a copy. It's still my favorite next to Bartók's Wooden Prince and Cantata Profana, directed by... Pierre Boulez :) Cantata Profana - The Nine Splendid Stags. (If your volume is already set properly, do not turn it up at the start. Boulez knows how to direct dynamics.)
posted by fraula at 12:20 PM on January 7, 2016 [3 favorites]
You. Must. Get. The Deutsche Gramophon album "Pétrouchka / Le Sacre du Printemps" directed by Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra. (It's a recording from 1992, not the same as the previously-linked video.)
As a kid, "Firebird" was the first ballet I saw. I was six and fell in love with Stravinsky on the spot. A year or two later I saw "The Rite of Spring" and was blown away. In my mind it's forever linked with my love of mythology.
Fast-forward to being a poor university student, and my best friend loaned me his CD of Boulez directing Pétrouchka and Le Sacre du Printemps (that same DG one). I had always returned loans. Always. But not this one. My poor friend ended up having to make an appeal to my fundamental humanity before I would return it nearly a year later. As soon as I could afford it, I got myself a copy. It's still my favorite next to Bartók's Wooden Prince and Cantata Profana, directed by... Pierre Boulez :) Cantata Profana - The Nine Splendid Stags. (If your volume is already set properly, do not turn it up at the start. Boulez knows how to direct dynamics.)
posted by fraula at 12:20 PM on January 7, 2016 [3 favorites]
I momentarily confused Pierre Boulez with Pierre Boulle and thought "so he wrote Planet of the Apes and composed the music and then played with Zappa? That's a full life."
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 1:17 PM on January 7, 2016
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 1:17 PM on January 7, 2016
was an aberration
It's this framing that I think is poisonous to creative art and culture. Where I've always parted ways with Boulez (et al) is not their specific ideas about music and music-making, but rather the framing within which they made their work: that music ought to be certain ways and not others.
Fundamentally, there is no objectively correct or good in creative work of any kind. Art is a human experience first and an object of some kind only second, and all experience is individually subjective, thus.... (While there are more objective markers that signify excellent creative work--e.g., craft--the basic, first value is the experience of it, which is why it has been and will always be ubiquitous and fundamental in human activity of all kinds, not only musical.)
What has always seemed kind of tragic to me is that this framing limited the work of many, many excellent artists. Especially if you read the testimonies of the second-generation Darmstadt composers, who were young and impressionable at its most fervent (like Hans Werner Henze, frantically changing notes on the train en route to classes, because his pitches weren't serial enough), they are quite open now about how emotionally and creatively damaging all that dogma ended up being (I mean, c'mon: you should never play the same rhythm twice? Tonality is a disgusting and out-dated, facile system? How was that ever taken seriously??).
The legacy of that framing is still yet to be shaken off by many, especially by institutions, and it's not something that has been exactly pro-music for a long, long time. Having said that, I reiterate my profound respect for Boulez and his work, and I have no doubt that he softened philosophically a great deal as he aged, as his recording catalog attests. I simply wish that our musical culture inherited from his generation(s) can better learn to be more joyful and less dogmatic, and realize that music is first an experience, that needs to speak clearly, sincerely and convincingly to those who hear it, and only second a thing, an object that maybe should be more one way and less another.
Too much focus on means and not enough on experiences, man.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:42 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's this framing that I think is poisonous to creative art and culture. Where I've always parted ways with Boulez (et al) is not their specific ideas about music and music-making, but rather the framing within which they made their work: that music ought to be certain ways and not others.
Fundamentally, there is no objectively correct or good in creative work of any kind. Art is a human experience first and an object of some kind only second, and all experience is individually subjective, thus.... (While there are more objective markers that signify excellent creative work--e.g., craft--the basic, first value is the experience of it, which is why it has been and will always be ubiquitous and fundamental in human activity of all kinds, not only musical.)
What has always seemed kind of tragic to me is that this framing limited the work of many, many excellent artists. Especially if you read the testimonies of the second-generation Darmstadt composers, who were young and impressionable at its most fervent (like Hans Werner Henze, frantically changing notes on the train en route to classes, because his pitches weren't serial enough), they are quite open now about how emotionally and creatively damaging all that dogma ended up being (I mean, c'mon: you should never play the same rhythm twice? Tonality is a disgusting and out-dated, facile system? How was that ever taken seriously??).
The legacy of that framing is still yet to be shaken off by many, especially by institutions, and it's not something that has been exactly pro-music for a long, long time. Having said that, I reiterate my profound respect for Boulez and his work, and I have no doubt that he softened philosophically a great deal as he aged, as his recording catalog attests. I simply wish that our musical culture inherited from his generation(s) can better learn to be more joyful and less dogmatic, and realize that music is first an experience, that needs to speak clearly, sincerely and convincingly to those who hear it, and only second a thing, an object that maybe should be more one way and less another.
Too much focus on means and not enough on experiences, man.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:42 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
Patti Smith name-checked Boulez in her song Elegie during her Portland concert last night. She mused that we should all be so lucky to be doing awesome things at 90.
posted by terooot at 2:12 PM on January 7, 2016
posted by terooot at 2:12 PM on January 7, 2016
The legacy of that framing is still yet to be shaken off by many, especially by institutions, and it's not something that has been exactly pro-music for a long, long time. Having said that, I reiterate my profound respect for Boulez and his work, and I have no doubt that he softened philosophically a great deal as he aged,
You've nailed it nicely in your comment. From what I've read it was a fairly toxic environment both at the Darmstadt school and just being around the younger Boulez. This attitude did migrate to America and infected the schools there as well. I don't know how dominant the Cage/NY School philosophy ever became but would be interested in finding out. I suspect that it was almost always relegated as a curiosity (except at a few schools such as Black Mountain College, famously).
But in spite of that, Boulez was still an important figure in modernist classical music. From what I can see, cynically, perhaps, is that his rhetoric softened each time he picked up the baton.
I simply wish that our musical culture inherited from his generation(s) can better learn to be more joyful and less dogmatic, and realize that music is first an experience, that needs to speak clearly, sincerely and convincingly to those who hear it, and only second a thing, an object that maybe should be more one way and less another.
I think there's actually an important third way here. It's tricky for me to express as I've only recently come to think of it this way, but I think the point of the modernist movement (in music, at least) was to create music that was no longer based on trying to appeal to any aesthetic sensitivities of existing audiences. That the expectation was that instead of "pandering" (to put it cynically) to their tastes it was time for audiences to become more sophisticated.
My thesis is that this defined early 20th century music (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, etc) and was formally declared when Schoenberg came up with his 12 Tone Method of Composing in 1921. This approach was fundamentally radical and challenged a fundamental assumption that had been part of art basically forever: that the existing audience aesthetic sensibilities mattered.
Cage and the NY School challenged two more fundamental assumptions about art/music which I won't go into here. But my point is that I'm not sure that your ideal is actually in line with the point of early modernism.
But I do definitely agree that there should be no "should" in music. Here's a great anecdote about Feldman (as told by Cage):
posted by bfootdav at 3:03 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
You've nailed it nicely in your comment. From what I've read it was a fairly toxic environment both at the Darmstadt school and just being around the younger Boulez. This attitude did migrate to America and infected the schools there as well. I don't know how dominant the Cage/NY School philosophy ever became but would be interested in finding out. I suspect that it was almost always relegated as a curiosity (except at a few schools such as Black Mountain College, famously).
But in spite of that, Boulez was still an important figure in modernist classical music. From what I can see, cynically, perhaps, is that his rhetoric softened each time he picked up the baton.
I simply wish that our musical culture inherited from his generation(s) can better learn to be more joyful and less dogmatic, and realize that music is first an experience, that needs to speak clearly, sincerely and convincingly to those who hear it, and only second a thing, an object that maybe should be more one way and less another.
I think there's actually an important third way here. It's tricky for me to express as I've only recently come to think of it this way, but I think the point of the modernist movement (in music, at least) was to create music that was no longer based on trying to appeal to any aesthetic sensitivities of existing audiences. That the expectation was that instead of "pandering" (to put it cynically) to their tastes it was time for audiences to become more sophisticated.
My thesis is that this defined early 20th century music (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, etc) and was formally declared when Schoenberg came up with his 12 Tone Method of Composing in 1921. This approach was fundamentally radical and challenged a fundamental assumption that had been part of art basically forever: that the existing audience aesthetic sensibilities mattered.
Cage and the NY School challenged two more fundamental assumptions about art/music which I won't go into here. But my point is that I'm not sure that your ideal is actually in line with the point of early modernism.
But I do definitely agree that there should be no "should" in music. Here's a great anecdote about Feldman (as told by Cage):
There are people who say, "If music's that easy to write, I could do it." Of course they could, butI like this a lot. There is so much to do and ideally we would all be doing it together.
they don't. I find Feldman's own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some
place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily.
Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, "Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do."
And then he went back to sleep.
posted by bfootdav at 3:03 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Boulez–Cage Correspondence is really worth a read.
I would guess Boulez's extreme positions mostly grew out of a need for attention, as a young composer with no secure position trying to make it in an academic world, rather than dogmatism for its own sake. And pushing total serialism to its limits really worked for him for a while.
It's a pity if his attitude in the 50s helped stifle any younger composers. In his letters to Cage, he comes across as a friendly but ultimately somewhat cold and aloof guy who you can't imagine tapping into anything like the intensely personal religiosity of Messiaen or the playful Zen of Cage. (Whom he did admire for the inventiveness of his prepared piano pieces.) It seems like he needed structure to justify what he wrote, and the idea of some Webern-to-the-nth unified theory of Serious Music was strangely alluring at the time. (Never mind Schoenberg's creepy "ensuring the supremacy of German music" quote and just having been through the war.)
posted by mubba at 3:18 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
I would guess Boulez's extreme positions mostly grew out of a need for attention, as a young composer with no secure position trying to make it in an academic world, rather than dogmatism for its own sake. And pushing total serialism to its limits really worked for him for a while.
It's a pity if his attitude in the 50s helped stifle any younger composers. In his letters to Cage, he comes across as a friendly but ultimately somewhat cold and aloof guy who you can't imagine tapping into anything like the intensely personal religiosity of Messiaen or the playful Zen of Cage. (Whom he did admire for the inventiveness of his prepared piano pieces.) It seems like he needed structure to justify what he wrote, and the idea of some Webern-to-the-nth unified theory of Serious Music was strangely alluring at the time. (Never mind Schoenberg's creepy "ensuring the supremacy of German music" quote and just having been through the war.)
posted by mubba at 3:18 PM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Boulez–Cage Correspondence is really worth a read.
It's the only thing of Cage's that I haven't read yet. I'm dying to get my hands on a copy.
I would guess Boulez's extreme positions mostly grew out of a need for attention, as a young composer with no secure position trying to make it in an academic world, rather than dogmatism for its own sake.
I've kind of always assumed this to be the case. There was so much going on musically in all directions and in order to ride that wave to the top one needed to self-promote. Cage did this very well. Boulez did too but did so with a different attitude.
posted by bfootdav at 3:26 PM on January 7, 2016
It's the only thing of Cage's that I haven't read yet. I'm dying to get my hands on a copy.
I would guess Boulez's extreme positions mostly grew out of a need for attention, as a young composer with no secure position trying to make it in an academic world, rather than dogmatism for its own sake.
I've kind of always assumed this to be the case. There was so much going on musically in all directions and in order to ride that wave to the top one needed to self-promote. Cage did this very well. Boulez did too but did so with a different attitude.
posted by bfootdav at 3:26 PM on January 7, 2016
It's tricky for me to express as I've only recently come to think of it this way, but I think the point of the modernist movement (in music, at least) was to create music that was no longer based on trying to appeal to any aesthetic sensitivities of existing audiences. That the expectation was that instead of "pandering" (to put it cynically) to their tastes it was time for audiences to become more sophisticated.
Schoenberg states as much explicitly in a number of sources, a number of which I'm certain were written prior to his development of serialism. The closest to such an instance I have on hand is from Harmonielehre, where he writes:
posted by invitapriore at 3:43 PM on January 7, 2016
Schoenberg states as much explicitly in a number of sources, a number of which I'm certain were written prior to his development of serialism. The closest to such an instance I have on hand is from Harmonielehre, where he writes:
[The method of preparing a modulation to a major key through a more closely-related minor key on the same tonic] is found so frequently in the classical literature, especially where a major key is the goal, that we have to regard it as the most important. There it serves mostly to lead to the new key by circuitous routes, as for example in transitional passages and the so-called 'return'. The advantage of this method is that through the visit to the minor key of the same name the ear is prepared for the tonic of the major key to be introduced, yet when the major key finally appears we are still assured of as much surprise as the change of mode can offer. Prepared, yet surprising, expected, and nevertheless new; that is what the listener's faculties of perception and taste require, and no artist can completely escape this [requirement]. Yet there lurks a piece of self-deception here: the listener wants only what he expects to happen, what he can thus guess and predict; but then he wishes to be surprised. Is it pride in the successful prediction, pride that is enhanced by the justified doubt of an ever wavering self-confidence, is this pride the reason why the appearance of the expected will be found so surprising? However that may be, it is to be kept in mind that the listener expects the fulfilment of these two requirements even in that which is new. He wants new works of art, but only such as he expects to hear; and what he expects is, fundamentally, a new arrangement of old components. But not a completely new arrangement; and the components may not be all too old. 'Modern, but not hypermodern' – artists who know how to work this hocus-pocus satisfy the public for a short while and save it from the dilemma of its opposing wishes; but after a short while the public has enough of these artists and thereby proves, if indirectly, that it has some instinct for the good, even if it does turn this instinct almost exclusively against the good.Not quite an explicit articulation of an abject refusal to create music with regard to the audience's expectations, but I think that notion is largely what led him towards the initial step of free atonality in the first place, as much as his own rhetoric would have one believe that it was merely a case of him taking the logic of extended tonality to its natural conclusion.
posted by invitapriore at 3:43 PM on January 7, 2016
Not quite an explicit articulation of an abject refusal to create music with regard to the audience's expectations, but I think that notion is largely what led him towards the initial step of free atonality in the first place,
Thanks for that extended quote, it's really very telling (and I'm going to add it to my collection). I had based my idea on other quotes from Schoenberg. I couldn't find anything that explicitly makes my thesis but I think my interpretation works well. I cannot necessarily speak to his (or any other's) intentions but I can, perhaps, look at the significance of what he did and the overall effect which was, in my mind, to reject the audiences tastes in a way that hadn't been done before (without trying to shock the audiences for the sake of, but to create a new kind of beauty).
posted by bfootdav at 3:51 PM on January 7, 2016
Thanks for that extended quote, it's really very telling (and I'm going to add it to my collection). I had based my idea on other quotes from Schoenberg. I couldn't find anything that explicitly makes my thesis but I think my interpretation works well. I cannot necessarily speak to his (or any other's) intentions but I can, perhaps, look at the significance of what he did and the overall effect which was, in my mind, to reject the audiences tastes in a way that hadn't been done before (without trying to shock the audiences for the sake of, but to create a new kind of beauty).
posted by bfootdav at 3:51 PM on January 7, 2016
Yeah, I'm curious to look through my other books when I get home. I hadn't really previously thought about tracing the history of his thought there and how it interacted with his thinking about musical systems, but it's fun to try to piece together how the two strains influenced each other and when.
posted by invitapriore at 3:56 PM on January 7, 2016
posted by invitapriore at 3:56 PM on January 7, 2016
Let me know what you find. The weakest part of my essay is this particular section on Schoenberg and his significance. This general attitude (breaking the connection with the audience) was already in the air but giving him the credit because he formalized the atonal (a-audience) approach with his 12-Tone system feels like it needs some help.
posted by bfootdav at 5:00 PM on January 7, 2016
posted by bfootdav at 5:00 PM on January 7, 2016
"the framing within which they made their work: that music ought to be certain ways and not others"
For a certain type of creator, this may be a necessary way of thinking. Such a type may be drastically unfitted to serve as a critic or to teach anyone of different sensibilities, but I'm not sure this framing actually harms the work itself.
"That the expectation was that instead of "pandering" (to put it cynically) to their tastes it was time for audiences to become more sophisticated."
Proust says:
"The time, moreover, that a person requires—as I required in the matter of this sonata—to penetrate a work of any depth is merely an epitome, a symbol, one might say, of the years, the centuries even that must elapse before the public can begin to cherish a masterpiece that is really new. So that the man of genius, to shelter himself from the ignorant contempt of the world, may say to himself that, since one's contemporaries are incapable of the necessary detachment, works written for posterity should be read by posterity alone, like certain pictures which one cannot appreciate when one stands too close to them. But, as it happens, any such cowardly precaution to avoid false judgments is doomed to failure; they are inevitable. The reason for which a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It was Beethoven's Quartets themselves (the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth) that devoted half a century to forming, fashioning and enlarging a public for Beethoven's Quartets, marking in this way, like every great work of art, an advance if not in artistic merit at least in intellectual society, largely composed to-day of what was not to be found when the work first appeared, that is to say of persons capable of enjoying it. What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art. It is essential that the work ... shall create its own posterity." (Within a Budding Grove)
posted by praemunire at 5:42 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
For a certain type of creator, this may be a necessary way of thinking. Such a type may be drastically unfitted to serve as a critic or to teach anyone of different sensibilities, but I'm not sure this framing actually harms the work itself.
"That the expectation was that instead of "pandering" (to put it cynically) to their tastes it was time for audiences to become more sophisticated."
Proust says:
"The time, moreover, that a person requires—as I required in the matter of this sonata—to penetrate a work of any depth is merely an epitome, a symbol, one might say, of the years, the centuries even that must elapse before the public can begin to cherish a masterpiece that is really new. So that the man of genius, to shelter himself from the ignorant contempt of the world, may say to himself that, since one's contemporaries are incapable of the necessary detachment, works written for posterity should be read by posterity alone, like certain pictures which one cannot appreciate when one stands too close to them. But, as it happens, any such cowardly precaution to avoid false judgments is doomed to failure; they are inevitable. The reason for which a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It was Beethoven's Quartets themselves (the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth) that devoted half a century to forming, fashioning and enlarging a public for Beethoven's Quartets, marking in this way, like every great work of art, an advance if not in artistic merit at least in intellectual society, largely composed to-day of what was not to be found when the work first appeared, that is to say of persons capable of enjoying it. What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art. It is essential that the work ... shall create its own posterity." (Within a Budding Grove)
posted by praemunire at 5:42 PM on January 7, 2016 [2 favorites]
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Great composer and director. A figure almost drawn from a novel. Passionate, combative, if a bit assholy at times (esp. towards Messiaen, Dutilleux and Cage). If you can get it, his box set of Le Domaine Musicale concerts is a must anthology of postwar classical music.
I first heard his name in an irresistibly punchy review of his recording of the Bruckner's Eighth Symphony by Thomas May :
When word got out that Pierre Boulez was planning to record the mammoth Eighth Symphony of Anton Bruckner, the reaction in some quarters was akin to the announcement that a leading Marxist intellectual had accepted the CEO position at General Motors. While Boulez has already acclimated the music world to his latter-day interest in the core symphonic repertory with his recent performances of Mahler, the sense of incongruity with Bruckner's mystical solemnity seemed too great a leap to expect from the famous apostle of the avant-garde.
posted by Omon Ra at 6:26 PM on January 6, 2016 [2 favorites]