March 23, 2015.Pierre Boulez.On March 26th we’ll celebrate the 90th birthday of Pierre Boulez, one of the most distinguished musical figures of the 20th century, a composer, conductor, writer, music entrepreneur and organizer, lecturer, professor – in short, a veritable one-man cultural phenomenon.It’s difficult to overestimate his influence on the development of classical music during the last 70 years.Boulez was born in 1925 in a small town of Montbrison in central France.As a boy he was equally interested in music and mathematics.He took courses in higher math in Lyon (his father, an industrialist, wanted Pierre to become an engineer) but a year later moved to the German-occupied Paris and, instead of going to Ecole Polytechnique, entered the Conservatory.His teacher in the harmony class was Olivier Messiaen, who helped Boulez to discover the new world of 12-tone music.Boulez’s first compositions, like Douze notations, which he wrote at the age of 20, were very much in the style of Anton Webern, though in the following years he developed a distinct, personal style.Boulez’s large Second piano sonata (1948) made him known internationally; one of the champions of Boulez’s music was the pianist Yvonne Loriod, the second wife of Messiaen; she premiered the Second Sonata in Darmstadt, Germany.After the war, the New Music Summer School in Darmstadt was a major center for innovative music.Boulez taught there, and that’s where he met his peers: Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, György Ligeti and many other leading modernists.With all this talent, Darmstadt served as an incubator for a new music style.Some of the ideas that influenced this style were not esthetic but rather ideological; in the aftermath of the war, young composers abhorred all “romantic,” nationalist aspects of music that could be co-opted by the state, as the Nazis did with Wagner and Beethoven.Instead, they developed a non-ideological, detached but not un-emotional, method called serialism, which expanded on the twelve-tone system created by Schoenberg and his pupils in Vienna some decades earlier.A major serialist work by Boulez was Structures, Book I, written in 1952.In 1961 he rewrote some of the material of the composition, creating Book II.Another idea that could be traced to Darmstadt of the early 1950s was aleatoric, or chance music.Boulez wrote several aleatoric pieces in the 60s and the 70s, one of them – Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna composed in memory of his friend, the Italian composer Bruno Maderna, also a regular visitor to Darmstadt, who died there at the age of 53 while rehearsing his opera, Satyricon.
In 1970, uponsuggestion by George Pompidou, the President of France, Boulez created IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), a major institution dedicated to research in electro-acoustical and modern music. Later, Boulez founded Ensemble InterContemporain, which is associated with IRCAM.The ensemble is a foremost advocate of modernist music.
Boulez started conducting in the late 1950s.Even though he never had formal training, he developed into one of the major conductors of the late-20th century.He served as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony, the Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony; he conducted all major orchestras of Europe and the US.He’s especially well known for his interpretation of modernist composers; at the same time, he’s one of the foremost Mahlerians of our days.He also conducted practically all of Wagner’s operas at Bayreuth, both of Berg’s operas – Wozzeck was one of his early triumphs, and Lulu, and many other operas.
Boulez’s music is often difficult, so we’ll confine ourselves to just two pieces, one for the piano, another – orchestral.Here’s Multiple (1965) from Boulez’s “project” Eclat/Multiple (he revised the original pieces several times).The composer conducts Ensemble InterContemporain.And here’s Chapter I of Book II of Structures.Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Florent Boffard are playing two pianos.
Pierre Boulez at 90
March 23, 2015. Pierre Boulez. On March 26th we’ll celebrate the 90th birthday of Pierre Boulez, one of the most distinguished musical figures of the 20th century, a composer, conductor, writer, music entrepreneur and organizer, lecturer, professor – in short, a veritable one-man cultural phenomenon. It’s difficult to overestimate his influence on the development of
classical music during the last 70 years. Boulez was born in 1925 in a small town of Montbrison in central France. As a boy he was equally interested in music and mathematics. He took courses in higher math in Lyon (his father, an industrialist, wanted Pierre to become an engineer) but a year later moved to the German-occupied Paris and, instead of going to Ecole Polytechnique, entered the Conservatory. His teacher in the harmony class was Olivier Messiaen, who helped Boulez to discover the new world of 12-tone music. Boulez’s first compositions, like Douze notations, which he wrote at the age of 20, were very much in the style of Anton Webern, though in the following years he developed a distinct, personal style. Boulez’s large Second piano sonata (1948) made him known internationally; one of the champions of Boulez’s music was the pianist Yvonne Loriod, the second wife of Messiaen; she premiered the Second Sonata in Darmstadt, Germany. After the war, the New Music Summer School in Darmstadt was a major center for innovative music. Boulez taught there, and that’s where he met his peers: Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, György Ligeti and many other leading modernists. With all this talent, Darmstadt served as an incubator for a new music style. Some of the ideas that influenced this style were not esthetic but rather ideological; in the aftermath of the war, young composers abhorred all “romantic,” nationalist aspects of music that could be co-opted by the state, as the Nazis did with Wagner and Beethoven. Instead, they developed a non-ideological, detached but not un-emotional, method called serialism, which expanded on the twelve-tone system created by Schoenberg and his pupils in Vienna some decades earlier. A major serialist work by Boulez was Structures, Book I, written in 1952. In 1961 he rewrote some of the material of the composition, creating Book II. Another idea that could be traced to Darmstadt of the early 1950s was aleatoric, or chance music. Boulez wrote several aleatoric pieces in the 60s and the 70s, one of them – Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna composed in memory of his friend, the Italian composer Bruno Maderna, also a regular visitor to Darmstadt, who died there at the age of 53 while rehearsing his opera, Satyricon.
In 1970, uponsuggestion by George Pompidou, the President of France, Boulez created IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), a major institution dedicated to research in electro-acoustical and modern music. Later, Boulez founded Ensemble InterContemporain, which is associated with IRCAM. The ensemble is a foremost advocate of modernist music.
Boulez started conducting in the late 1950s. Even though he never had formal training, he developed into one of the major conductors of the late-20th century. He served as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony, the Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony; he conducted all major orchestras of Europe and the US. He’s especially well known for his interpretation of modernist composers; at the same time, he’s one of the foremost Mahlerians of our days. He also conducted practically all of Wagner’s operas at Bayreuth, both of Berg’s operas – Wozzeck was one of his early triumphs, and Lulu, and many other operas.
Boulez’s music is often difficult, so we’ll confine ourselves to just two pieces, one for the piano, another – orchestral. Here’s Multiple (1965) from Boulez’s “project” Eclat/Multiple (he revised the original pieces several times). The composer conducts Ensemble InterContemporain. And here’s Chapter I of Book II of Structures. Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Florent Boffard are playing two pianos.