Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde

Book Description

Anthropologist Georgina Born presents one of the first ethnographies of a powerful western cultural organization, the renowned Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. As a year-long participant-observer, Born studied the social and cultural economy of an institution for research and production of avant-garde and computer music. She gives a unique portrait of IRCAM's composers, computer scientists, technicians, and secretaries, interrogating the effects of the cultural philosophy of the controversial avant-garde composer, Pierre Boulez, who directed the institute until 1992.
Born depicts a major artistic institution trying to maintain its status and legitimacy in an era increasingly dominated by market forces, and in a volatile political and cultural climate. She illuminates the erosion of the legitimacy of art and science in the face of growing commercial and political pressures. By tracing how IRCAM has tried to accomodate these pressures while preserving its autonomy, Born reveals the contradictory effects of institutionalizing an avant-garde.
Contrary to those who see postmodernism representing an accord between high and popular culture, Born stresses the continuities between modernism and postmodernism and how postmodernism itself embodies an implicit antagonism toward popular culture.

Customer Reviews:

Informative but constantly deprecates contemporary music.......2006-07-02

RATIONALIZING CULTURE is Georgina Born's ethnographical presentation of the Institut de Recherce et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), one of the world's foremost music research centres, located in Paris at the Centre George Pompidou. In 1984 Born, a musician-cum-ethnographer spent a year observing the institute, and this expanded version of her subsequent Ph.D thesis was published in 1995.

Fans of contemporary music--and I'm one--will be pleased to have the opportunity to learn something of the structure and day-to-day life of IRCAM. Born details the bureacratic hierarchy, the various types of employees, and the "squatters", composers entering after-hours to use the centre's equipment and hoping to be established workers there. She talks about typical visits by composers who come to be trained and to realise a piece at Ircam, and about the use of the fearsome 4X machine, IRCAM's early technological breakthrough. Born could not use real names in the preparation of her thesis, so instead people are referred to with random initials or with general attributes, but it's not particularly challenging to guess who is who. PL, the "black American composer" is Alvin Singleton, for example, and WOW is Jean-Baptiste Barriere. There are photos of IRCAM's hallways and offices, one containg a young Kaija Saariaho at work. Among the author's ethnographic themes are the phenomenon of the avant-garde (the "outsiders") becoming subsidized by the government ("the Establishment") and IRCAM's early shift from composer-scientist equality to scientists at the service of composers.

In spite of the book's informative presentative of IRCAM, it is fraught with problems. Born mixes what should be a dispassionate report about the sociology of IRCAM with her own opinions on contemporary music, which she seems to loathe immensely. Right from the beginning she writes that she left the conservatory to play in rock bands because she didn't like modern styles. In the chapter on music, while reporting the discussions of some composers on their inspirations, she even suggests that what they are doing isn't real music at all.

Throughout Born writes in such a way as to make the reader think that IRCAM is a worthless institution on the verge of being shut down. Granted, IRCAM took a while to get off the ground, and if one goes only by Born's 1984 chronicle, one might get the impression that it's not a terribly productive place. However, in the years following, many wonderful pieces came out of IRCAM, by such composers as Saariaho, Lindberg, Benjamin, and Eotvos. In 1984 all of the technology--a couple of huge servers--seems to be constantly on the fritz and without sufficient processing power for all users, but within a couple of years the centre transitioned to PCs and work gets along fine. Born does dedicate a few pages in the last chapter to later events in IRCAM, but she still ends the book in a critical fashion, not acknowledging any of the great achievements of the centre. Hand-in-hand with this are snipes at Boulez, whom Born seems to think a tyrant who holds music back instead of a benevolent dictator who has done so much to advance the art. At least there's little outright sniping at him here--on a recent radio BBC programme she accused him of "stealing" French music funds instead of really deserving them--but there is nonetheless a serious lack of respect.

If you're curious about IRCAM, I'd recommend seeking the book out at your university library. It can be informative. However, Born's bias against great music, which permeates the whole book, is infuriating and I wouldn't recommend purchasing RATIONALIZING CULTURE.

the 'Slamming' of the Avant Garde by the Next Regime.......2001-11-10

I first read this book before I became aquatinted with the "New Musicology" of cultural criticism. I assumed it to be a sociological report, rather than a musicological one. I did think it odd that this ?sociologist? took such as consistently hostile viewpoint of the musicians within I.R.C.A.M. and thought that some of the scholarship was not very rigorous. I assumed that this was because it was a sociologist ?out of her element,? discussing issues, with which she was not familiar. I figured that she must have had a passing bad experience with the modernists and gone to study them, while complaining about them in revenge.
Later, in the course of studies in musicology, I came upon the strange camp of ?cultural criticism. There is a bit of solipsism in this viewpoint; all there is for anyone is a viewpoint constructed of a culturally specific semiotic code, that we can only understand the world through that code, and that we are therefore always biased to the point of being unable to really know anything. Therefore, in this viewpoint there is no knowledge, only a culturally situated set of biases, and any attempt to assert truth is looked upon as merely some sort of cultural power play.
Georgina Born seems friendly to this philosophy. Her scholarship is good compared to many examples of the "cultural critic" literature, many of which are purposefully obscure and jargonistic (taking after Derrida et al), merely to intimidate the reader with rhetoric. This is a trick that they ironically picked up from academia (who largely did that unintentionally). However, when there is no truth, why not try to assert yourself over the others with whatever means? When there is no truth, there are no lies. Postmodern thought has recently spawned individuals who regard systems of logic as merely culturally situated (and oppressive, biased) semiotic codes, with no relation to reality. Georgina Born makes good arguments by comparison, but it should be noted that this research was probably inspired by the work of those others that I have just mentioned. One of the things that is necessary to pave the way for such criticism is the clearing aside of those pesky scholars that still think that it is possible to know something "objective." Or at the least, to create a study that presents data in a straightforward manner rather than as pointed polemic
This book seems primarily motivated as a ?slam? (to use such as vulgar colloquialism) on the avant garde. Part of the doctrine of the avant garde was that they were supposed to be bringing the ?future? and destiny of a civilization back to it; they were prophets or ?cutting edge.? This of course implies that there was something to bring back; the idea of truth is implicit in the statement. The postmoderns have spent a good deal of their time trying to discredit the bulwarks of the avant garde and the study of music theory. In my opinion, book is part of that endeavour. It does contain some interesting titbits and some food for thought. This study could have been so much more interesting if it incorperated more points of view on the issues raised by ICRAM as an institution. Instead, we get an overdose of the rhetoric of the scholars of deconstructionism, cultural criticism, postmodernism, etc...

the avant-garde is no longer outside barking like a dog. . ........1998-06-21

The edifice of IRCAM, Insitut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique, an underground mecca for the new in Paris, well Europe is to foster a marriage between the current potentialities in technology and creativity,music composition. Pierre Boulez its founder and developer said so much in 1976, as part of the publicity. "The creator's intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention. It is necessary for him to collaborate with scientific research worker inorder to envision the distant future." This is the first in English at least, profile of this historic institutionalization of new music, or the avant-garde. Although any of these terms are meaningless today. Who can define anymore, what a progressive endeavor is with the fragmentation of culture. Ms Born lived at IRCAM, it is housed in the lower bowels of the Pompidou Centre, the well-thought out royal blue and bright red smokestacks of architect Renzo Piano punctuating the 19th century ambience which is Paris. The red light area of Rue St Denis is walking distance and composers from all over Europe who work by invitation at IRCAM never fail to find inspiration away from the sterility of their work in composition. Ms Born is quite interesting for she projects the agenda here as a social one. She sees a larger frame than the music itself by drawing on thoughts of noted sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu has done so much as eqaute how, who and why listens to new creations in music. And we learn it is now and perhaps will always remain an elitist cadre of those who follow and nourish themselves with culture. We learn through MsBorn, how a composer works and how she/he makes proposals,structures for a work with the scientific aid of someone who specializes in the electronic/computer end of music. There is many times a fine line which separates the two. Each the composer for one must have some knowledge of the computer potentialities and the technician should be versed in the history of c! omposition, the achievements the avnat-garde has made since the end of the War. We find quite fascinating work with multiphonics, where a soloist, say a flutist or trombonist, sings and plays simultaneously. The result varies in an out-of-tune (at least to the traditional Beethoven ear) chord, quite arresting in its effectation. All these materials have been amply indexed, the composer merely chooses, from a table,and can hear the result from an in-house musician,vigorously versed in all the extended techniques. Ms.Born also reveals the dirty laundry at IRCAM the lack of a stable agenda at times, in the beginning years the politics, jettisoning founding members as Vinko Globokar, an equally gifted composer/trombonist. And Boulez the ultimate composer. He does stand well above anyone in Europe today. I should say did ,the Seventies and Eighties were the Boulez years of high power. Now he has retired, not even conducting as much the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a select ensemble of virtuosi,who have toured the world with IRCAM's message. And what might that be? Ms Born it's quite bizarre, she doesn't mentioned specific names in her wonderful profile. She was told not to, or perhaps the insights she received might result in retributions at higher levels, a guillotine might fall unexpectedly. So as you read through this book, composers and personnel are encripted in code. Quite mysteriously haunting. Foucualt in an interview with Boulez in the early Eighties said that music (and Foucault was not one to speak of music) that music of all the arts has certainly kept pace with technology. And that's wonderful except that IRCAM seems to be an elitist endeavor. It received the lion's share of all funding for all the arts in France. And when you consider that Paris houses 70% of French composers, yet only a handfull actually receive the knighted honor to work at IRCAM, it seems the avant-garde wastes no time in acquiring the kings robes to encript its content. Of all the music I've heard from IRCAM, I can't say I can ! distinguish one composer from another. All seem magnetized toward the use of metal instruments, percussion, very cold gestures. Peter Eotvos, Boulez first conductor-successor was the first to realize the severity at IRCAM didn't make interesting music. SO Mr.Eotvos turned an ear toward the accessible yet not obviously so. His "Chinese Opera" for the Ensemble is quite powerful and evocative. It seems the avant-garde cannot cope with the real world, Just like the wood the ancestors of Venice once brought in 550 AD to buttress their city which is now Venice. The wood will not rot as long as it remains submerged,as oxygen hits it, the real social world, it rots. Ms Born in one chapter the "Social Problems of Production" draws light on IRCAM's social problems. Also there is a generous accompaniment of photographs of the instruments and computer systems used. As for the future of music and IRCAM well it will persist as long as it remains submerged ,cloistered away from the vagaries of the real world.

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Pierre Boulez
Dominique Jameux
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 057113744X

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humble orientations

Notes of an Apprenticeship
Pierre Boulez
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0394438671

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humble orientations.......2005-02-22

reading through these essays and analyses,was the young Boulez coming to terms with modernity, the value here is his analysis of the cell-rhythmic distribution in Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" something he did with Messiaen, and the concept simply stayed with Boulez. There is also encyclpedic like entries on the Grand Auteurs of modernity, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Debussy, Ravel, Bartok, and Messiaen. These are general like descriptions but now and then Boulez let's go with some flash, some bursting, (eclatante) of illumination on some structural principle or one of balance, or the materials developed within a work, and we get the for the times typical diatribes of the Masters here not allowing themselves to go far enough into the realms of the unknowns.Still these materials here are worth a good read,to see the excitement one did find with the potentialities of modernity.

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wonderful sets of questions,more on point than previous

Boulez on Conducting
Pierre Boulez
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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wonderful sets of questions,more on point than previous.......2005-08-08

"I began composing the works, and then found the technique to conduct them"
Boulez's activism, his affinity for modernity always had a content, an aspect of directedness, of finding/locating the shortest distance between two points. And Cecile Gilly's questions here seem commonplace yet they excite quite provocative answers. Of course one must see a work in rehearsal with Boulez in order to find this "sortest distance" ourselves, as those available with his own"Notations" being prepared. But short of that. . .
Here the interviews have a chronology,and we learn for Boulez with his youthful beginnings in the Fifties it engaged the presentation of the best possible performance of the products of modernity,of activism as well for the cause of the new.He speaks here of his learning processes acquired/formulated quite directly in attendance of rehearsals of Hans Rosbaud and Roger Desormiere, later Otto Klemperer in his last years in London. Klemperer actually phoned Boulez requesting permission to attend a Boulez rehearsal of his works.Boulez's humanism is wonderful to think about that he openly admits he had no orchestral technique of writing effectively for the orchestra during the earlier part of this career. Now he has the maturity,experience and retrospection to re-vise these works, as the "Le Visage Nuptial" and "Les Soliel Des Eaux". These were works that had an "overdetermined" polyphony.
We encounter these problems today in learning the modernist language for there still is a shortage of interpreters of the New.The last part here is "Transmitting knowledge" which is really the content of conducting and learning music as well. There is a section on young conductors where the skills during a Master Class become readily apparent. Boulez says, young conductors are first and foremost are concerned with themselves, not the work, their own means and work habits. Go after the problems of the work,appreciate the timbre and the structure, Why is it unique and interesting? not how one will interpret it.
For conducting we know that there was no work within the modernist repertoire that Boulez did not dare to try.This is how he claimed territory,and acquired technique. No others cared to have this affinity for the new for the Star-System of conductors was in place throughout the Fifties and Sixties...at least in the USA.But there is a modest appraisal of time and place that emerges here in these interviews, that of problems of performance,the technique of it, of balance of orchestral forces and timbre. Boulez says here that most conductors don't have a deep appreciation for the timbre of things, of the music, more the gesture,its effect on the populace,and music is finding solutions of interpretation of projecting timbre, sound colours , and finding them takes time and emerges only within a process of change and contemplation. The first performances of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" for example in Paris, where some 31 rehearsals were requested by Boulez, or Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande",the repertoire of Webern, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.On Schoenberg and the problems there Boulez says(to paraphrase) yes Schoenberg had known the effects of timbre, but in his music it is more a function of the motive, where it goes and its demise within the orchestra. Whereas Stravinsky loved sound, just to hear it,regardless of where it went.
Other high points discussed here was Wagner's "Parsifal", then the "Ring" itself with Patrick Chereau in the Mid-Seventies. Boulez relates a story of Klemperer asked Boulez(referring to Parsifal)"How do you deal with all this religiousness? and Boulez's response was "He(I) ignore it, and deal with pure technique, the long sheaths of time,slow tempi,and the most mature work within Wagner's oeuvre.Here Cecile Gilly requests basic necessities, but these interviews are more squarely on target, more technical in content on conducting than ones I've read previously. "Should a conductor be a composer?", she asks, and where,who have been successful composer-conductors?. or "What were your artistic aims at that time? What sort of programmes did you wish to conduct?, and a little later, "Were these concerts well attended?
There are also a traversing over quite traditional materials, as Berlioz the great orchestrator,19th Century music, the evolution of the orcehstra and Wagner as composer and conductor himself. But Boulez has wonderful things to say as " Orchestral imagination is a particular gift."Again the simplicity is misleading,for there are those genius composers who really could not orchestrate as Brahms,Chopin, Mussorgsky,Schumann,Scriabin.However Berlioz, had other shortcomings, ones of viable structure, of form in music becoming completely dependant on a narrative,yet still relatively naive in his approach, he founded the modern sounding orchestra with "Symphonie fantastique". The "voicings" of chords for example are all conmmonplace root position triads, yet when the contrabasses pluck these"commonplace" chords they are more percussive and brilliant sounding within the "acoustical illusion" of the orchestra.

Boulez in his terse, yet expansive when needed answers, always places the materials, the "musical text" as he refers to it, within a context. One example was the largesse of amplitude of the growing Romantic orchestra, the sound of the overbearing augmentation of the orchestra, due to larger halls, where Beethoven's philosophy(in the last years of the 19th Century) needed Tubas in order to not make flimsy and miniturize the content of his explosive 'Symphonies', Even Mahler got in on this aesthetic of filling the stage with persona,to no great end actually. For the music,not its conception does not change only those who perform and listen to it,they have needs and requirements for realizations that changes.

There are also many questions on the founding of IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the administrative problems encountered. Boulez usually had resolved one problem with the experience(s) from another place. Like the "teaching" aspect of IRCAM came from his early experiences with Georg Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, where Szell rendered a highly professional ensemble from what was rather mediocre in performance abilities as an ensemble. And Boulez says here you need to get an ensemble to think the same,explain things to them, each musician is quite accomplished on their own, they know their instrument, but then that means very little when placed within the context of learning a new work for example, or the problems of balance and listening as in Berg's "Three Pieces for Orchestra".
Boulez's creative work is discussed as well and we learn is founded in certain aspects on tradition,(something he would never have admitted in the Fifties,again the Boulez aesthetic is/was formulated in process of acquistion) as Wagner and the projection of "acoustical illusion" this in relation to Boulez's orchestral realizations of "Notations" 12 youthful piano solos,use as "seeds" for really ;etudes; for orchestra.
My favorite moments here are those under "Illusions and kaleidoscopes",Gilly askes, "In explosante-fixe/. . . . you tried in particualr to develop instrumental transformations of sound", and Boulez's response was "Yes, it is a kind of puzzle with musical segments that alternates more or less rapidly and ina more or less predicatable manner." Then another question." You attempt to short-circuit perception". Quite interesting set of interviews here. Those prior seemed too general much of the time, although those with Rocco di Petri those where on composition more than conducting, and those with Jean Vermeil from the Seventies was of a general traversing over points in Boulez entire career,less on technical sets of problematics.Those of Celestine Deliege were from the Sixties, although quite more on compositions.

Points de repere (Collection Musique/Passe/Present)

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Points de repere (Collection Musique/Passe/Present)
Pierre Boulez
Manufacturer: C. Bourgois
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 2267012863

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Destined for Obscurity
modernist compendium of a composer/conductor
The essential tome of the modernist musical dialectic.
An essential insight into the cutting edge of composition
A difficult, though highly rewarding look at music.

Orientations: Collected Writings
Pierre Boulez
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0674643763

Customer Reviews:

Destined for Obscurity.......2001-06-18

This book is an interesting collection of writings and speeches by conductor and erstwhile composer Pierre Boulez.

It has three parts. The first (200 pages) consists of pieces that deal with Boulez' attitudes and philosophy about composing and music. His theories are intellectually interesting, but devoid of musical inspiration. It seems that his low reputation as composer is well deserved.

The second part (also 200 pages) is the most edifying. He displays a deep understanding of the intricacies of the orchestra, and the interpretation of other composer's works. It demonstrates why he is such a reliable conductor.

The third part (100 pages) is the least interesting. It is a collection of personal memories and reminisces.

As a writer, one admires his courage in tackling subjects (like artistic taste) that so obviously open him up to ridicule. Few composers have explained their thought processes in a way so clearly understandable to the layman better than Boulez.

In summary, one comes to the conclusion that Boulez will be remembered, if he is remembered at all, as a conductor who produced some top notch recordings of Stravinsky and Debussy, and some mediocre Wagner operas.

modernist compendium of a composer/conductor.......2000-04-07

I cannot add much to the other reviews, this is the full weight of Boulez from both worlds as conductor and creator of theory and music. Boulez always found inroads into the theory of his works, like the indeterminate, aleatoric Third Piano Sonata which includes an analysis here, great reading from tis documentary value. Also reflections on Debussy's Jeux, a seminal work for the post-war generation of composers, the epiphanic, the slow introduction of materials and their appraisal. The problem is that Boulez writes quite tersivily, in short bursts, much like the sonic poet he is. Also the work on Wagner's Ring is discussed quite well, the approach to faster tempi, and Wagner's free form almost leitmotiv, where these musical ideas float through. There is also much on administration, on creating IRCAM, and reflections on where Booulez came from, profiles of Desormiere,Hans Rosbaud, Hermann Scherchen. Boulez would frequent their rehearsals, a hands-on non credit education.

The essential tome of the modernist musical dialectic........1999-08-07

For anyone even remotely interested in the world of contemporary music and the volcanic changes that Pierre Boulez spearheaded in that conservative world from the 50's to the present, this is the essential book--a manifesto outlining the hopes, ideals, problems and successes that we face in the modern musical world. Every subject is covered here; from extensive essays and polemics to recording sleeve notes to interviews and tributes to musical colleagues and friends, Boulez leaves no subject untouched. What may seem at first dry and forbidding turns out to be, upon powerful and deep immersion, an inspiring and even moving text and 'calling' for the modern musician.

An essential insight into the cutting edge of composition.......1999-04-20

Orientations provides unique and fascinating insight into the ideas of Pierre Boulez over 4 decades. With the recent release of Repons on Deutsche Grammophon, listeners will be delighted to examine the thought behind the highly beautiful, shimmering sound of his recent works. We learn here that Boulez has set out to break down the barrier between the composer and the audience, a crusade which he continues to fulfill in a characteristically exemplary manner. It is particularly interesting to observe the persistance of particular problems and solutions in the composer's work (such as spatialisation, the setting of texts, the integration of technology), and to bear in mind how these ideas have developed, from works such as Poesie pour pouvoir, to the 1993 version of explosante-fixe.

A sort of modernist bible, Orientations deserves to be re-printed. Indeed, it is to be hoped that the composer will produce a new volume in the near future which will include discussion of Repons, explosante/fixe, and Sur incise, and perhaps take stock of the whole gamut of postmodernism, the minimalists and the like.

A difficult, though highly rewarding look at music........1998-07-19

Boulez's Orientations is a substantial collection of essays, liner notes, and reviews written over several decades. His prose is clear and concise (much like his conducting) and his topics cover a wide range. He discusses topics from Beethoven to Stockhausen and even "the elliptical geometry of utopia." Though frequently a tad verbose and difficult to comprehend, this book provides hours of stimulation and intellectual challenge for the hardcore musician and the layman alike.

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Boulez on Music Today

Boulez on Music Today
Pierre Boulez
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0674080068

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Boulez on Music Today.......2001-02-05

This must be the most faithful representation of Boulez' thinking processes but is very hard to come to terms with due to much use of now defunct 1950's terminology and the abstract nature of his theoretical approach. However it is a must for anyone with a keen interest in post-war serialism and remains one of the most important treatises in the theoretical archives. It must come back into print!

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Only goes up to the late 70s, but a suprisingly good intro in a concise format

Boulez (Oxford Study of Composers)
Paul Griffiths
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Only goes up to the late 70s, but a suprisingly good intro in a concise format.......2005-11-28

Paul Griffith's overview of Boulez's music, an entry in the Oxford Studies of Composers series, covers the great French composer's work up to 1978. Though only 60 pages on, it packs in a lot of musicological analysis and lots of cool quotations from scores.

The book is divided into five chapters, covering Boulez's early work, the era of total serialization, "Le Marteau sans maitre", his chance works, and finally "works in progress." I found the fourth chapter (titled "Alea") the most eye-expanding, as it elucidates the serial writing of "Constellation"/"Constellation-Miroir" and "Pli selon pli". The works then in progress discussed in the last chapter include "Messagequisse", "Rituel", "...explosante-fixe...", and "Eclat"/"Eclat-Multiples".

It's a pity that the book has not been updated to cover Boulez's big comeback in the late 1980s, when "Repons" was completed and "...explosante-fixe..." dramatically reworked. The book's age shows in its discounting of "Notations"; the author could hardly be aware that Boulez would return to this early music to orchestrate it. Still, the work is useful for those interested in Boulez's early music. Also check out Jarmeux's biography-cum-analysis published by Oxford in 1991.

Conversations with Boulez: Thoughts on Conducting

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layman's guide to Boulez
you can never get enough Boulez ,I expected depths,insights

Conversations with Boulez: Thoughts on Conducting
Jean Vermeil
Manufacturer: Amadeus Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

A giant of postwar music and the most powerful figure in the contemporary French music scene, Pierre Boulez talks about his career as one of the world's most controversial conductors and daring programmers of musical text. These candid interviews give us vintage Boulez: his bold views, enigmatic wit, practical wisdom, and uncompromising beliefs.

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layman's guide to Boulez.......2000-09-28

Both the Kirkus and other Amazon review are on the mark with this book. I read this book as a great admirer of the composer and conductor and welcome any further knowledge into his 'larger than life presence' as an artist. The book which is divided into chapters separated by various topics and developed as a Q &A format. Whereas other books on Boulez ("Orientations" or Lev Koblyakov's Analysis of Le Marteau) deal with pitch analysis (almost exclusively in the latter), this book REALLY gives you insight into the inner-workings of the former conductor of the New York Phil and LSO. You become privy to his sense of programming, which of the 'dead' composers work get programmed and why, why the predilection for French composers (berlioz and ravel). Following the interview chapters are a pretty comprehensive list of all of the programs Boulez had done through 1995. It is definitely geared toward those who want to know more about this amazing conductor. You don't need to have a huge music background to understand this book, albeit some of the 'name' references of particular scores may be a bit confusing for the non-musical layman (for ex. referring to the Dance of the Earth, some might not know this as the last movement of Part I of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring) These are minor points but shouldn't discourage possible readers. Thank you Camille Naish for getting it into English for the rest of us!

you can never get enough Boulez ,I expected depths,insights.......1998-06-11

A man with a formidable intellect as Boulez can discuss musical topics especially the inner depths of orchestral sound like no one else, quite literally. If you happen to be conversant in French and German, as well as English, well there is no shortage of fascinating reflections on the great modernist works of this century: Debussy,Berg,Schoenberg,Varese,Webern,Berio. Boulez knows each with a ferocious intimacy. These interviews are quite old, 1986 .Mr.Vermeil visited Boulez at his state-like home outside Baden-Baden,long a refuge for Boulez from the late Fifties, although now he's a mandarin not a bohemian serialist, as he once arrived. Vermeil is good at tracing many categories, Chapter headings and parts I found fascinating were "Choosing Works", "Rehearsing", "On Gestures", "Colleagues". There's more but it seems Mr.Vermeil never gets down deep into the discourse of the subject. He stays on the surface which is all right with me. We need anything today discussed on modernist music, a dead,dying language yet institutionalized,all which makes historical sense. Well it has been Boulez who has kept it (music)alive, extending its implications, much like Habermas might find agreeable. I guess what I'm looking for is "Boulez in rehearsal" what he focuses upon, his pace, his structure of the rehearsal, what musical problems are attacked first, orchestral balance, tempi,quality of sonority. And we never get that with Vermeil firing the questions. In this English translation however it includes a reprint from a seminar in New York at Carnegie Hall in 1993 with the Cleveland Orchestra,by seasoned new music writer Paul Griffiths. Mr.Griffiths I like very much, for he brings us right through onto to stage, close to the rehearsal proceedings with apprentice conductors. And Boulez has them try out their chops(technique) on "Chronochromie" by Messiaen and "Jeux" by Debussy, two problematic scores. "Jeux" you have a nuanced line o! f changing timbres. Also Boulez never discusses the real live composers who he admires, Ligeti,Berio,Birtwistle, I thought he might discuss their work and bring us up-to-date on the state of aesthetic strategy. I thought the French if nothing else are incestuous on their own cultural products and ideamaker/mongers. Boulez hardly mentions the young composers who have worked with him at IRCAM in Paris, the multimillion dollar center. Composers, Dufourt,Bonnet or Manoury are quite interesting,quite evocative and powerful in their works.Yet Vermeil asks no questions on the Parisian new music scene. I thought that would be a first hit. Still Vermeil did cover soemwhat untrodden ground with Boulez. I would equally thank Amadeus Press who translated it,wrenching it out of French mothballs for eternity.

Pierre Boulez: A World of Harmony (Contemporary Music Studies, Vol 2)

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a dissection of an avant-garde masterwork

Pierre Boulez: A World of Harmony (Contemporary Music Studies, Vol 2)
Lev Koblyakov
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3718605538

Book Description

In this significant study of the music of Pierre Boulez, Dr. Koblyakov provides a complete analysis of Le Marteau sand Maître and deals with the development of serial music in the twentieth century and the problems of serial organization in general. He reaches stimulating conclusions about serial thinking and harmony in themusic of Pierre Boulez, thus enabling an understanding of the intricacies of this major composer's compositional techniques.

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a dissection of an avant-garde masterwork.......2000-05-03

Le Marteau sans Maitre, or The Hammerless Master was after the Surreal poet Rene Char, he was part of the Resistance to the Nazis during World War 2. Boulez was the first to realize the creative implications of the dodecaphonic language begun by Arnold Schoenberg later Anton Webern. Serialism was a vigorous extension of the utilization of the profound number of 12, all of the tones in the tempered system. This 12 was extended to rhythm,duration, articulation and dynamics, so not only pitch was a point of organization.What this created was a situation where sound could now be projected in an infinite variety of shapes and designs. Serialism was a brief epoch like any epoch with a beginning middle and end, and it came to a marvelous end around the late Fifties. Its demise can be explained by the exhaustion of the language, of its music materials. Each work was an excursion into eradicating itself. Boulez, of his gneration was always the most musical, always with tangible gestures and emotive threads traceable to Debussy,or Webern or Messiaen, wheras composers like Stockhausen, or Nono, Berio,tried to erase this connection. Boulez brought an informed musical sensibility, an aesthetic of the sensuous, the exotic, and mysterious to his music,informed by World Music as well, as the instrumental constitution that Marteau suggests. Serialism had its problems however, structurally, it couldn't extend itself into larger forms,orchestration was also problematical, and there was a point where the complexity the density of the phrase existed purely for itself, for no one could hear it. Marteau however is a classic precisily because it harbored modest expressive goals, albeit within an incredibly complex structural plan.Koblyakov discusses Boulez's use of harmony, a concept others of his generation might well dismiss. And the fascination here is the analysis of points,and simultanaeities of density, how they function within locally from note to note and from movement to movement, how harmonies are constructed, their gradations and shape.Marteau unfolds as the three poems Boulez selected in three discreet sections composed of shorter movements, with what is now a classic avant-garde instrumental combination of voice, viola, alto flute, guitar and a large array of handheld percussion&(vibraphone).As a tribute to this works profundity, there were countless works by Boulez contemporaries with this identical set after. Boulez's aesthetic always sought the means toward multiplication, how a germ of an idea can sustain, refigure and reproduce itself. This is done here with reiteration of the materials of the serialized 12, with harmonies accreting and diminishing as the work progresses.How pitch reproductions can exist on alocal level within each movement and on a global level, within the entire work. Koblyakov impeccably traces these complex transformations of pitch with wonderful graphic tables equally exhaustive as the work. A full score of the work projected into screens defining the works relationships is also provided here.

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