Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war
Western classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
.
Born in
Montbrison in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
with
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
, and privately with
Andrée Vaurabourg and
René Leibowitz
René Leibowitz (; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after ...
. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in
avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is music that is considered to be at the forefront of innovation in its field, with the term "avant-garde" implying a critique of existing aesthetic conventions, rejection of the status quo in favor of unique or original elemen ...
, playing an important role in the development of
integral serialism
In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were als ...
(in the 1950s),
controlled chance music (in the 1960s) and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time (from the 1970s onwards). His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as landmarks of twentieth-century music, such as ''
Le Marteau sans maître
''Le Marteau sans maître'' (; The Hammer without a Master) is a chamber cantata by French composer Pierre Boulez. The work, which received its premiere in 1955, sets surrealist poetry by René Char for contralto and six instrumentalists. It i ...
'', ''
Pli selon pli
''Pli selon pli'' (Fold by fold) is a piece of classical music by the French composer Pierre Boulez. It carries the subtitle ''Portrait de Mallarmé'' (Portrait of Mallarmé). It is scored for a solo soprano and orchestra and uses the texts of th ...
'' and ''
Répons
''Répons'' is a composition by French composer Pierre Boulez for a large chamber orchestra with six percussion soloists and live electronics. The six soloists play harp, cimbalom, vibraphone, glockenspiel/xylophone, and two pianos. It was prem ...
''. His uncompromising commitment to modernism and the trenchant,
polemic
Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...
al tone in which he expressed his views on music led some to criticise him as a dogmatist.
Alongside his activities as a composer, Boulez was one of the most prominent conductors of his generation. In a career lasting more than sixty years, he was music director of the
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic, officially the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., globally known as New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO) or New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, is a symphony orchestra based in New York City. It is ...
and the
Ensemble intercontemporain
The Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) is a French music ensemble, based in Paris, that is dedicated to contemporary music. Pierre Boulez founded the EIC in 1976 for this purpose, the first permanent organization of its type in the world.
Organi ...
, chief conductor of the
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. T ...
and principal guest conductor of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure ...
and the
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra, based in Cleveland, is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the " Big Five". Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Sev ...
. He made frequent appearances with many other orchestras, including the
Vienna Philharmonic
The Vienna Philharmonic (VPO; german: Wiener Philharmoniker, links=no) is an orchestra that was founded in 1842 and is considered to be one of the finest in the world.
The Vienna Philharmonic is based at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. It ...
, the
Berlin Philharmonic
The Berlin Philharmonic (german: Berliner Philharmoniker, links=no, italic=no) is a German orchestra based in Berlin. It is one of the most popular, acclaimed and well-respected orchestras in the world.
History
The Berlin Philharmonic was fo ...
and the
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's orchestras, symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's ...
. He was known for his performances of the music of the first half of the twentieth century—including
Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
and
Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
,
Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
and
Bartók, and the
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
—as well as that of his contemporaries, such as
Ligeti,
Berio and
Carter
Carter(s), or Carter's, Tha Carter, or The Carter(s), may refer to:
Geography United States
* Carter, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Carter, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
* Carter, Montana, a census-designated place
* Carter, ...
. His work in the opera house included the ''
Jahrhundertring
The ''Jahrhundertring'' (''Centenary Ring'') was the production of Richard Wagner's ''Ring Cycle'', ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'', at the Bayreuth Festival in 1976, celebrating the centenary of both the festival and the first performance of the comp ...
''—the production of
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
's
''Ring'' cycle for the centenary of the
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...
—and the world premiere of the three-act version of
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
's ''
Lulu
Lulu may refer to:
Companies
* LuLu, an early automobile manufacturer
* Lulu.com, an online e-books and print self-publishing platform, distributor, and retailer
* Lulu Hypermarket, a retail chain in Asia
* Lululemon Athletica or simply Lulu, a C ...
''. His recorded legacy is extensive.
He founded several musical institutions: the
Domaine musical
The Domaine musical was a concert society established by Pierre Boulez in Paris, which was active from 1954 to 1973. Composers represented at its concerts included Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, John Cage, Sylvano B ...
,
Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (IRCAM), Ensemble intercontemporain and
Cité de la Musique
The Cité de la Musique ("City of Music"), also known as Philharmonie 2, is a group of institutions dedicated to music and situated in the Parc de la Villette, 19th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was designed with the nearby Conservatoire d ...
in Paris, and the
Lucerne Festival Academy The Lucerne Festival Academy is an orchestra-sized educational institution devoted exclusively to the interpretation and performance of contemporary classical music. It has taken place each summer since 2003 in the Swiss city of Lucerne as part of ...
in Switzerland.
Biography
1925–1943: Childhood and school days
Pierre Boulez was born on 26 March 1925, in
Montbrison, a small town
in the
Loire department of east-central France, to Léon and Marcelle (''née'' Calabre) Boulez.
He was the third of four children: an older sister, Jeanne (1922–2018) and younger brother, Roger (b. 1936) were preceded by a first child, also called Pierre (b. 1920), who died in infancy. Léon (1891–1969), an engineer and technical director of a steel factory, is described by biographers as an authoritarian figure, but with a strong sense of fairness; Marcelle (1897–1985) as an outgoing, good-humoured woman, who deferred to her husband's strict Catholic beliefs, while not necessarily sharing them. The family prospered, moving in 1929 from the apartment above a pharmacy, where Boulez was born, to a comfortable detached house, where he spent most of his childhood.
From the age of seven Boulez went to school at the Institut Victor de Laprade, a Catholic seminary where the thirteen-hour school day was filled with study and prayer. By the age of eighteen he had repudiated Catholicism although later in life he described himself as an agnostic.
As a child, Boulez took piano lessons, played chamber music with local amateurs and sang in the school choir. After completing the first part of his
baccalaureate Baccalaureate may refer to:
* ''Baccalauréat'', a French national academic qualification
* Bachelor's degree, or baccalaureate, an undergraduate academic degree
* English Baccalaureate, a performance measure to assess secondary schools in England ...
a year early, he spent the academic year of 1940–41 at the Pensionnat St. Louis, a boarding school in nearby
Saint-Étienne
Saint-Étienne (; frp, Sant-Etiève; oc, Sant Estève, ) is a city and the prefecture of the Loire department in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
Saint-Étienne is the t ...
. The following year he took classes in advanced mathematics at the Cours Sogno in Lyon (a school established by the
Lazaristes) with a view to gaining admission to the
École Polytechnique
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
in Paris. His father hoped this would lead to a career in engineering. He was in
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...
when the
Vichy government
Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its terr ...
fell, the Germans took over and the city became a centre of the
resistance.
In Lyon, Boulez first heard an orchestra, saw his first operas (''
Boris Godunov
Borís Fyodorovich Godunóv (; russian: Борис Фёдорович Годунов; 1552 ) ruled the Tsardom of Russia as ''de facto'' regent from c. 1585 to 1598 and then as the first non-Rurikid tsar from 1598 to 1605. After the end of his ...
'' and ''
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
(; "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg"), WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is traditio ...
'') and met the well-known soprano
Ninon Vallin
Eugénie "Ninon" Vallin (8 September 1886 22 November 1961) was a French soprano who achieved considerable popularity in opera, operetta and classical song recitals during an international career that lasted for more than four decades.
Career ...
, who asked him to play for her. Impressed by his ability, she persuaded his father to allow him to apply to the
Conservatoire de Lyon
A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training, and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music academy, music faculty, college of music, music department (of a larger ins ...
. He was rejected but was determined to pursue a career in music. The following year, with his sister's support in the face of opposition from his father, he studied the piano and harmony privately with Lionel de Pachmann (son of the pianist
Vladimir
Vladimir may refer to:
Names
* Vladimir (name) for the Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak and Slovenian spellings of a Slavic name
* Uladzimir for the Belarusian version of the name
* Volodymyr for the Ukr ...
). "Our parents were strong, but finally we were stronger than they", Boulez later said. In fact, when he moved to Paris in the autumn of 1943, hoping to enrol at the
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
, Léon accompanied him, helped him to find a room (in the
7th arrondissement) and subsidised him until he could earn a living.
1943–1946: Musical education
In October 1943, he auditioned unsuccessfully for the advanced piano class at the Conservatoire, but he was admitted in January 1944 to the preparatory harmony class of
Georges Dandelot
Georges Édouard Dandelot (2 December 1895 – 17 August 1975) was a French composer and teacher.
Biography
Dandelot was born in Paris. His father was Alfred Dandelot, and his mother was the daughter of a piano maker. Dandelot studied at the Pari ...
. He made such fast progress that, by May 1944, Dandelot described him as "the best of the class".
Around the same time he was introduced to
Andrée Vaurabourg, wife of the composer
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger (; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. A member of Les Six, his best known work is probably ''Antigone'', composed between 1924 and 1927 to ...
. Between April 1944 and May 1946 he studied counterpoint privately with her. He greatly enjoyed working with her and she remembered him as an exceptional student, using his exercises as models until the end of her teaching career. In June 1944 he approached
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
, who wrote in his diary: 'Likes modern music. Wants to study harmony with me from now on.' Boulez began to attend the private seminars which Messiaen gave to selected students; in January 1945, he joined Messiaen's advanced harmony class at the Conservatoire.
Boulez moved to two small attic rooms in the
Marais
Marais (, meaning "marsh") may refer to:
People
* Marais (given name)
* Marais (surname)
Other uses
* Le Marais, historic district of Paris
* Théâtre du Marais, the name of several theatres and theatrical troupes in Paris, France
* Marais (c ...
district of Paris, where he lived for the next thirteen years. In February 1945 he attended a private performance of Schoenberg's
Wind Quintet
A wind quintet, also known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players (most commonly flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn and bassoon).
Unlike the string quartet (of 4 string instruments) with its homogeneous blend of sound color, the in ...
, conducted by
René Leibowitz
René Leibowitz (; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after ...
, the composer and follower of Schoenberg. Its strict use of
twelve-tone technique
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
was a revelation to him and he organised a group of fellow students to take private lessons with Leibowitz. It was here that he also discovered the music of
Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...
. He eventually found Leibowitz's approach too doctrinaire and broke angrily with him in 1946 when Leibowitz tried to criticise one of his early works.
In June 1945, Boulez was one of four Conservatoire students awarded ''premier prix''. He was described in the examiner's report as "the most gifted—a composer". Although registered at the Conservatoire for the academic year 1945–46, he soon boycotted
Simone Plé-Caussade's counterpoint and fugue class, infuriated by what he described as her "lack of imagination", and organised a petition that Messiaen be given a full professorship in composition. Over the winter of 1945–46 he immersed himself in
Balinese and
Japanese music
In Japan, music includes a wide array of distinct genres, both traditional and modern. The word for "music" in Japanese is 音楽 (''ongaku''), combining the kanji 音 ''on'' (sound) with the kanji 楽 ''gaku'' (music, comfort). Japan is the world ...
and
African drumming
Sub-Saharan African music is characterised by a "strong rhythmic interest" that exhibits common characteristics in all regions of this vast territory, so that Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980) has described the many local approaches as constit ...
at the
Musée Guimet
The Guimet Museum (full name in french: Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet; MNAAG; ) is an art museum located at 6, place d'Iéna in the XVIe arrondissement, 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. Literally translated into English, its ful ...
and the
Musée de l'Homme
The Musée de l'Homme ( French, "Museum of Mankind" or "Museum of Humanity") is an anthropology museum in Paris, France. It was established in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 ''Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne' ...
in Paris: "I almost chose the career of an
ethnomusicologist
Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...
because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time."
1946–1953: Early career in Paris
On 12 February 1946 the pianist Yvette Grimaud gave the first public performances of Boulez's music (''Douze Notations'' and ''Trois Psalmodies'') at the Concerts du Triptyque. Boulez earned money by giving mathematics lessons to his landlord's son.
He also played the
ondes Martenot
The ondes Martenot ( ; , "Martenot waves") or ondes musicales ("musical waves") is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. A player o ...
(an early electronic instrument), improvising accompaniments to radio dramas and occasionally deputising in the pit orchestra of the
Folies Bergère
The Folies Bergère () is a cabaret music hall, located in Paris, France. Located at 32 Rue Richer in the 9th Arrondissement, the Folies Bergère was built as an opera house by the architect Plumeret. It opened on 2 May 1869 as the Folies Trév ...
. In October 1946 the actor and director
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Bernard Barrault (; 8 September 1910 – 22 January 1994) was a French actor, director and mime artist who worked on both screen and stage.
Biography
Barrault was born in Le Vésinet in France in 1910. His father was 'a Burgundia ...
engaged him to play the ondes for a production of ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
'' for the new company he and his wife,
Madeleine Renaud
Lucie Madeleine Renaud (; 21 February 1900 – 23 September 1994) was a French actress best remembered for her work in the theatre. She did though appear in several films directed by Jean Grémillon including ''Remorques'' (''Stormy Waters'' ...
, had formed at the
Théâtre Marigny
The Théâtre Marigny is a theatre in Paris, situated near the junction of the Champs-Élysées and the Avenue Marigny in the 8th arrondissement.
It was originally built to designs of the architect Charles Garnier for the display of a panoram ...
. Boulez was soon appointed music director of the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, a post he held for nine years. He arranged and conducted incidental music, mostly by composers whose music he disliked (such as
Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...
and
Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
), but it gave him the chance to work with professional musicians, while leaving time to compose during the day.
His involvement with the company also broadened his horizons: in 1947 they toured to Belgium and Switzerland ("absolutely ''
pays de cocagne'', my first discovery of the big world");
in 1948 they took ''Hamlet'' to the second
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is an annual arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, spread over the final three weeks in August. Notable figures from the international world of music (especially classical music) and the performing arts are i ...
; in 1951 they gave a season of plays in London, at the invitation of
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director who, along with his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, was one of a trio of male actors who dominated the Theatre of the U ...
; and between 1950 and 1957 there were three tours to South America and two to North America. Much of the music he wrote for the company was lost during the student occupation of the
Théâtre de l'Odéon in 1968.
The period between 1947 and 1950 was one of intense compositional activity for Boulez. New works included the
first two piano sonatas and initial versions of two cantatas on poems by
René Char
René Émile Char (; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance.
Biography
Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile ...
, ''
Le Visage nuptial
''Le Visage nuptial'' (''The Nuptial Face'') is a secular cantata for soprano, contralto, choir of women and orchestra by Pierre Boulez. Originally composed in 1946–47 on a poem by René Char for two voices, two ondes Martenot, piano and percu ...
'' and ''
Le Soleil des eaux
''Le Soleil des eaux'' (''The Sun of Waters'') is a two-movement cantata for soprano, choir and orchestra by Pierre Boulez, based on two poems by René Char, and having a total duration of about nine minutes.
Background
Boulez first encountered C ...
''. In October 1951 a substantial work for eighteen solo instruments, ''
Polyphonie X
''Polyphonie X'' (1950–51) is a three- movement composition by Pierre Boulez for eighteen instruments divided into seven groups, with a duration of roughly fifteen minutes. Following the work's premiere, Boulez withdrew the score, stating that it ...
'', caused a scandal at its premiere at the
Donaueschingen Festival
The Donaueschingen Festival (german: Donaueschinger Musiktage, links=no) is a festival for new music that takes place every October in the small town of Donaueschingen in south-western Germany. Founded in 1921, it is considered the oldest festiva ...
, some audience members disrupting the performance with hisses and whistles.
Around this time, Boulez met two composers who were to be important influences:
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
and
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
. His friendship with Cage began in 1949 when Cage was visiting Paris. Cage introduced Boulez to two publishers (
Heugel and Amphion) who agreed to take his recent pieces; Boulez helped to arrange a private performance of Cage's ''
Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano''. When Cage returned to New York they began an intense, six-year correspondence about the future of music. In 1952 Stockhausen arrived in Paris to study with Messiaen.
[Barbedette, 214.] Although Boulez knew no German and Stockhausen no French, the rapport between them was instant: "A friend translated
ndwe gesticulated wildly ... We talked about music all the time—in a way I've never talked about it with anyone else."
Towards the end of 1951, a tour with the Renaud-Barrault company took him to New York for the first time, where he met Stravinsky and
Varèse.
He stayed at Cage's apartment but their friendship was already cooling as he could not accept Cage's increasing commitment to compositional procedures based on chance and he later broke off contact with him.
In July 1952, Boulez attended the International Summer Course for New Music in
Darmstadt
Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...
for the first time. As well as Stockhausen, Boulez was in contact there with other composers who would become significant figures in contemporary music, including
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...
,
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music.
Biography
Early years
Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...
,
Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer.
Life
Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.Interview with Maderna‘s thr ...
, and
Henri Pousseur
Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist.
Biography
Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to ...
. Boulez quickly became one of the leaders of the post-war modernist movement in the arts. As the music critic
Alex Ross
Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which he collaborated wi ...
observed: "at all times he seemed absolutely sure of what he was doing. Amid the confusion of postwar life, with so many truths discredited, his certitude was reassuring."
1954–1959: Le Domaine musical
In 1954, with the financial backing of Barrault and Renaud, Boulez started a series of concerts at the Petit Marigny theatre. They became known as the
Domaine musical
The Domaine musical was a concert society established by Pierre Boulez in Paris, which was active from 1954 to 1973. Composers represented at its concerts included Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, John Cage, Sylvano B ...
. The concerts focused initially on three areas: pre-war classics still unfamiliar in Paris (such as Bartók and Webern), works by the new generation (Stockhausen, Nono) and neglected masters from the past (
Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to ...
,
Gesualdo)—although for practical reasons the last category fell away in subsequent seasons. Boulez proved an energetic and accomplished administrator and the concerts were an immediate success. They attracted musicians, painters and writers, as well as fashionable society, but they were so costly that Boulez had to turn to wealthy private patrons for support.
Key events in the Domaine's history included a Webern festival (1955), the European premiere of Stravinsky's ''
Agon'' (1957) and first performances of Messiaen's ''
Oiseaux exotiques
''Oiseaux exotiques'' (''Exotic birds'') is a piece for piano and small orchestra by Olivier Messiaen. It was written between 5 October 1953 and 3 January 1956 and was commissioned by Pierre Boulez. It is dedicated to Yvonne Loriod, the composer ...
'' (1955) and ''Sept Haïkaï'' (1963). The concerts moved to the
Salle Gaveau
The Salle Gaveau, named after the French piano maker Gaveau, is a classical concert hall in Paris, located at 45-47 rue La Boétie, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. It is particularly intended for chamber music.
Construction
The plans for th ...
(1956–1959) and then to the Théâtre de l'Odéon (1959–1968). Boulez remained director until 1967, when Gilbert Amy succeeded him.
On 18 June 1955,
Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud (22 July 1895 – 29 December 1962) was an Austrian conductor, particularly associated with the music of the twentieth century.
Biography
Rosbaud was born in Graz. As children, he and his brother Paul Rosbaud performed with their ...
conducted the first performance of Boulez's best-known work, ''
Le Marteau sans maître
''Le Marteau sans maître'' (; The Hammer without a Master) is a chamber cantata by French composer Pierre Boulez. The work, which received its premiere in 1955, sets surrealist poetry by René Char for contralto and six instrumentalists. It i ...
'', at the ISCM Festival in Baden-Baden. A nine-movement cycle for alto voice and instrumental ensemble based on poems by René Char,
[ it was an immediate, international success. ]William Glock
Sir William Frederick Glock, CBE (3 May 190828 June 2000) was a British music critic and musical administrator who was instrumental in introducing the Continental avant-garde, notably promoting the career of Pierre Boulez.
Biography
Glock was bor ...
wrote: "even at a first hearing, though difficult to take in, it was so utterly new in sound, texture and feeling that it seemed to possess a mythical quality like that of Schoenberg's ''Pierrot lunaire''." When Boulez conducted the work in Los Angeles in early 1957, Stravinsky—who described it as "one of the few significant works of the post-war period of exploration"—attended the performance. Boulez dined several times with the Stravinskys and (according to Robert Craft
Robert Lawson Craft (October 20, 1923 – November 10, 2015) was an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate professional relationship with Igor Stravinsky, on which Craft drew in producing numerous recordings and books.
...
) "soon captivated the older composer with new musical ideas, and an extraordinary intelligence, quickness and humour". Relations soured somewhat the following year over the first Paris performance of Stravinsky's '' Threni'' for the Domaine musical. Poorly planned by Boulez and nervously conducted by Stravinsky, the performance broke down more than once.
In January 1958, the ''Improvisations sur Mallarmé (I et II)'' were premiered, forming the kernel of a piece which would grow over the next four years into a vast, five-movement "portrait of Mallarmé", ''Pli selon pli
''Pli selon pli'' (Fold by fold) is a piece of classical music by the French composer Pierre Boulez. It carries the subtitle ''Portrait de Mallarmé'' (Portrait of Mallarmé). It is scored for a solo soprano and orchestra and uses the texts of th ...
''. It received its premiere in Donaueschingen in October 1962.
Around this time, Boulez's relations with Stockhausen grew increasingly tense as (according to the biographer Joan Peyser
Joan Peyser (June 12, 1930 – April 24, 2011) was an American musicologist and writer, particularly known for her writing on 20th-century music and for her biographies of George Gershwin, Pierre Boulez and Leonard Bernstein. Her biography of Be ...
) he saw the younger man supplanting him as the leader of the avant-garde.
1959–1971: International conducting career
In 1959, Boulez left Paris for Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the states of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos (river), Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the ...
, where he had an arrangement with the South-West German Radio orchestra to work as composer-in-residence and to conduct some smaller concerts, as well as access to an electronic studio where he could work on a new piece (''Poésie pour pouvoir''). He moved into, and eventually bought, a large hillside villa, which was his main residence for the rest of his life.
During this period, he turned increasingly to conducting. His first engagement as an orchestral conductor had been in 1956, when he conducted the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra while on tour with Barrault. In Cologne he conducted his own ''Le Visage nuptial'' in 1957 and—with Bruno Maderna and the composer—the first performances of Stockhausen's ''Gruppen
''Gruppen'' (german: Groups) for three orchestras (1955–57) is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. ''Gruppen'' is "a landmark in 20th-century m ...
'' in 1958. His breakthrough came in 1959 when he replaced the ailing Hans Rosbaud at short notice in demanding programmes of twentieth-century music at the Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...
and Donaueschingen Festivals. This led to debuts with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw
The Royal Concertgebouw ( nl, Koninklijk Concertgebouw, ) is a concert hall in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch term "concertgebouw" translates into English as "concert building". Its superb acoustics place it among the finest concert halls i ...
, Bavarian Radio Symphony
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (german: Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, BRSO) is a German radio orchestra. Based in Munich, Germany, it is one of the city's four orchestras. The BRSO is one of two full-size symphony orchestr ...
and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. In 1963 he conducted the Orchestre National de France
The Orchestre national de France (ONF; literal translation, ''National Orchestra of France'') is a French symphony orchestra based in Paris, founded in 1934. Placed under the administration of the French national radio (named Radio France since ...
in the 50th anniversary performance of Stravinsky's ''The Rite of Spring'' at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, where the piece had had its riotous premiere.[
That same year, he conducted his first opera, Berg's '']Wozzeck
''Wozzeck'' () is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama ''Woyzeck'', which the German playwright Georg Büchner left incomplete at h ...
'' at the Opéra National de Paris
The Paris Opera (, ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be k ...
, directed by Barrault. The conditions were exceptional, with thirty orchestral rehearsals instead of the usual three or four, the critical response was favourable and after the first performance the musicians rose to applaud him. He conducted ''Wozzeck'' again in April 1966 at the Frankfurt Opera in a new production by Wieland Wagner
Wieland Wagner (5 January 1917 – 17 October 1966) was a German opera director, grandson of Richard Wagner. As co-director of the Bayreuth Festival when it re-opened after World War II, he was noted for innovative new stagings of the operas, depa ...
.
Wieland Wagner had already invited Boulez to conduct Wagner's ''Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' ...
'' at the Bayreuth Festival later in the season, and Boulez returned to conduct revivals in 1967, 1968 and 1970. He also conducted performances of Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was compose ...
'' with the Bayreuth company at the Osaka Festival in Japan in 1967, but the lack of adequate rehearsal made it an experience he later said he would rather forget.[ By contrast, his conducting of the new production (by ]Václav Kašlík
Václav Kašlík (28 September 1917 – 4 June 1989) was a Czech composer, opera director and conductor, known for his operas, both on the stage and on television.
Biography
Kašlík was born in Poličná in Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now part of ...
) of Debussy's '' Pelléas et Mélisande'' at Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist si ...
in 1969 was praised for its combination of "delicacy and sumptuousness".
In 1965, the Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is an annual arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, spread over the final three weeks in August. Notable figures from the international world of music (especially classical music) and the performing arts are i ...
staged the first full-scale retrospective of Boulez as composer and conductor. In 1966, he proposed a reorganisation of French musical life to the then minister of culture, André Malraux
Georges André Malraux ( , ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (Man's Fate) (1933) won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed by P ...
, but Malraux instead appointed the conservative Marcel Landowski
Marcel François Paul Landowski (18 February 1915 – 23 December 1999) was a French composer, biographer and arts administrator.
Biography
Born at Pont-l'Abbé, Finistère, Brittany, he was the son of French sculptor Paul Landowski and gre ...
as head of music at the Ministry of Culture. Boulez expressed his fury in an article in the ''Nouvel Observateur'', announcing that he was "going on strike with regard to any aspect of official music in France."
The previous year, in March 1965, he had made his orchestral debut in the United States with the Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra, based in Cleveland, is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the " Big Five". Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Sev ...
. He became its principal guest conductor in February 1969, a post he held until the end of 1971. After the death of George Szell
George Szell (; June 7, 1897 – July 30, 1970), originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer. He is widely considered one of the twentieth century's greatest condu ...
in July 1970, he took on the role of music advisor for two years, but the title was largely honorary, owing to his commitments in London and New York. In the 1968–69 season, he also made guest appearances in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Apart from ''Pli selon pli'', the only substantial new work to emerge in the first half of the 1960s was the final version of Book 2 of his ''Structures'' for two pianos. Midway through the decade, however, Boulez appeared to find his voice again and produced a number of new works, including ''Éclat'' (1965), a short and brilliant piece for small ensemble, which by 1970 had grown into a substantial half-hour work, ''Éclat/Multiples''.
1971–1977: London and New York
Boulez first conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. T ...
in February 1964, at Worthing
Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hov ...
, accompanying Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (russian: Влади́мир Дави́дович Ашкена́зи, ''Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazi''; born 6 July 1937) is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He ...
in a Chopin piano concerto. Boulez recalled the experience: "It was terrible, I felt like a waiter who keeps dropping the plates."
His appearances with the orchestra over the next five years included his debuts at the Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...
and at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
(1965) and tours to Moscow and Leningrad, Berlin and Prague (1967). In January 1969 William Glock, controller of music at the BBC, announced his appointment as chief conductor.[Glock, 139.]
Two months later, Boulez conducted the New York Philharmonic for the first time. His performances so impressed both orchestra and management that he was offered the chief conductorship in succession to Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...
. Glock was dismayed and tried to persuade him that accepting the New York position would detract both from his work in London and his ability to compose but Boulez could not resist the opportunity (as Glock put it) "to reform the music-making of both these world cities" and in June the New York appointment was confirmed.
His tenure in New York lasted between 1971 and 1977 and was not an unqualified success. The dependence on a subscription audience limited his programming. He introduced more key works from the first half of the twentieth century and, with earlier repertoire, sought out less well-known pieces. In his first season, for example, he conducted Liszt's ''The Legend of Saint Elizabeth'' and ''Via Crucis''. Performances of new music were comparatively rare in the subscription series. The players admired his musicianship but came to regard him as dry and unemotional by comparison with Bernstein, although it was widely accepted that he improved the standard of playing.[Heyworth (1986), 36.] He returned on only three occasions to the orchestra in later years.
His time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was altogether happier. With the resources of the BBC behind him, he could be bolder in his choice of repertoire. There were occasional forays into the nineteenth century, particularly at the Proms (Beethoven's ''Missa solemnis
{{Audio, De-Missa solemnis.ogg, Missa solemnis is Latin for Solemn Mass, and is a genre of musical settings of the Mass Ordinary, which are festively scored and render the Latin text extensively, opposed to the more modest Missa brevis. In French ...
'' in 1972; the Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
'' German Requiem'' in 1973), but for the most part he worked intensively with the orchestra on the music of the twentieth century. He conducted works by the younger generation of British composers—such as Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Birtwistle (15 July 1934 – 18 April 2022) was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include ''Th ...
and Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (8 September 1934 – 14 March 2016) was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music.
As a student at both the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music ...
—but Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
and Tippett were absent from his programmes. His relations with the musicians were generally excellent. He was chief conductor between 1971 and 1975, continuing as chief guest conductor until 1977. Thereafter he returned to the orchestra frequently until his last appearance at an all- Janáček Prom in August 2008.
In both cities, Boulez sought out venues where new music could be presented more informally: in New York he began a series of "Rug Concerts"—when the seats in Avery Fisher Hall
David Geffen Hall is a concert hall in New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The 2,200-seat auditorium opened in 1962, and is the home of the New York Philharmonic.
The facility, designe ...
were taken out and the audience sat on the floor—and a contemporary music series called "Prospective Encounters" in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. In London he gave concerts at the Roundhouse, a former railway turntable shed which Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook (21 March 1925 – 2 July 2022) was an English theatre and film director. He worked first in England, from 1945 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from 1947 at the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shak ...
had also used for radical theatre productions. His aim was "to create a feeling that we are all, audience, players and myself, taking part in an act of exploration".
During this period, the music of Ravel came to the forefront of his repertoire. Between 1969 and 1975, he recorded the orchestral works with the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra[ and in 1973 he made studio recordings for the BBC of the two one-act operas (]L'enfant et les sortilèges
''L'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties'' (''The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts'') is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his first be ...
and L'heure espagnole
''L'heure espagnole'' is a French one-act opera from 1911, described as a ''comédie musicale'', with music by Maurice Ravel to a French libretto by Franc-Nohain, based on Franc-Nohain's 1904 play ('comédie-bouffe') of the same nameStoullig E. '' ...
).
In 1972, Wolfgang Wagner
Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 191921 March 2010) was a German opera director. He is best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's ...
, who had succeeded his brother Wieland as director of the Bayreuth Festival, invited Boulez to conduct the 1976 centenary production of Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the '' Nibe ...
''. The director was Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau (; 2 November 1944 – 7 October 2013) was a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor and producer. In France he is best known for his work for the theatre, internationally for his films '' La Reine Margot'' and ...
. Highly controversial in its first year, according to Barry Millington by the end of the run in 1980 "enthusiasm for the production vastly outweighed disapproval". It was televised around the world.
A small number of new works emerged during this period, of which perhaps the most important is ''Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
''Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna'' (1974–75) is a composition for orchestra in eight groups by Pierre Boulez. Biographer Dominique Jameux wrote that the piece has "obvious audience appeal", and that it represented a desire to establish "immedi ...
'' (1975).
1977–1992: IRCAM
In 1970 Boulez was asked by President Pompidou to return to France and set up an institute specialising in musical research and creation at the arts complex—now known as the Centre Georges Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
—which was planned for the Beaubourg district of Paris. The Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM
IRCAM (French: ''Ircam, '', English: Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music. It is ...
) opened in 1977.
Boulez’s model was the Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
, which had been a meeting place for artists and scientists of all disciplines. IRCAM's aims included research into acoustics, instrumental design and the use of computers in music.[ The original building was constructed underground, partly to isolate it acoustically (an above-ground extension was added later). The institution was criticised for absorbing too much state subsidy, Boulez for wielding too much power.][ At the same time he founded the ]Ensemble Intercontemporain
The Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) is a French music ensemble, based in Paris, that is dedicated to contemporary music. Pierre Boulez founded the EIC in 1976 for this purpose, the first permanent organization of its type in the world.
Organi ...
, a virtuoso ensemble which specialised in twentieth-century music and the creation of new works.
In 1979, Boulez conducted the world premiere of the three-act version of Alban Berg's ''Lulu
Lulu may refer to:
Companies
* LuLu, an early automobile manufacturer
* Lulu.com, an online e-books and print self-publishing platform, distributor, and retailer
* Lulu Hypermarket, a retail chain in Asia
* Lululemon Athletica or simply Lulu, a C ...
'' at the Paris Opera
The Paris Opera (, ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be ...
in Friedrich Cerha’s completion, and in Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau (; 2 November 1944 – 7 October 2013) was a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor and producer. In France he is best known for his work for the theatre, internationally for his films '' La Reine Margot'' and ...
's production. Otherwise he scaled back his conducting commitments to concentrate on IRCAM. Most of his appearances during this period were with his own Ensemble intercontemporain—including tours to the United States (1986), Australia (1988), the Soviet Union (1990) and Canada (1991)—although he also renewed his links in the 1980s with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
By contrast, he composed significantly more during this period, producing a series of pieces which used the potential, developed at IRCAM, electronically to transform sound in real time. The first of these was ''Répons
''Répons'' is a composition by French composer Pierre Boulez for a large chamber orchestra with six percussion soloists and live electronics. The six soloists play harp, cimbalom, vibraphone, glockenspiel/xylophone, and two pianos. It was prem ...
'' (1981–1984), a 40-minute work for soloists, ensemble and electronics. He also radically reworked earlier pieces, including ''Notations I-IV'', a transcription and expansion of tiny piano pieces for large orchestra (1945–1980)[Barbedette, 221.] and his cantata on poems by René Char, ''Le Visage nuptial'' (1946–1989).[Samuel (2002), 421—422.]
In 1980, the five original directors of the IRCAM departments, including the composer Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...
, resigned. Although Boulez declared these changes "very healthy", it clearly represented a crisis in his leadership.
Retrospectives of his music were mounted in Paris (Festival d'Automne, 1981), Baden-Baden (1985) and London (BBC, 1989).[Samuel (2002), 419–20.] From 1976 to 1995, he held the Chair in ''Invention, technique et langage en musique'' at the Collège de France
The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...
. In 1988 he made a series of six programmes for French television, ''Boulez XXe siècle'', each of which focused on a specific aspect of contemporary music (rhythm, timbre, form etc.) He also bought a flat on the 30th floor of a building in the Front de Seine
Front de Seine is a development in the district of Beaugrenelle in Paris, France, located along the river Seine in the 15th arrondissement at the south of the Eiffel Tower. It is, with the 13th arrondissement, one of the few districts in th ...
district of Paris.[Boulez (2017), 117 (note).]
1992–2006: Return to conducting
In 1992, Boulez gave up the directorship of IRCAM and was succeeded by Laurent Bayle.[Barbedette, 223.] He was composer in residence at that year's Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival (german: Salzburger Festspiele) is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer (for five weeks starting in late July) in the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amad ...
.
The previous year he began a series of annual residencies with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1995 he was named principal guest conductor in Chicago, only the third conductor to hold that position in the orchestra's history. He held the post until 2005, when he became conductor emeritus. His 70th birthday in 1995 was marked by a six-month retrospective tour with the London Symphony Orchestra, taking in Paris, Vienna, New York and Tokyo. In 2001 he conducted a major Bartók cycle with the Orchestre de Paris.
This period also marked a return to the opera house, including two productions with Peter Stein: Debussy's ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' (1992, Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera (WNO) ( cy, Opera Cenedlaethol Cymru) is an opera company based in Cardiff, Wales; it gave its first performances in 1946. It began as a mainly amateur body and transformed into an all-professional ensemble by 1973. In its ...
and Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris); and Schoenberg's ''Moses und Aron
''Moses und Aron'' (English: ''Moses and Aaron'') is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto is by the composer after the Book of Exodus. Hungarian composer Zoltán Kocsis completed the last act w ...
'' (1995, Dutch National Opera
The Dutch National Opera (DNO; formerly De Nederlandse Opera, now De Nationale Opera in Dutch) is a Dutch opera company based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its present home base is the Dutch National Opera & Ballet housed in the Stopera building, a m ...
and Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival (german: Salzburger Festspiele) is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer (for five weeks starting in late July) in the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amad ...
). In 2004 and 2005 he returned to Bayreuth to conduct a controversial new production of ''Parsifal'' directed by Christoph Schlingensief
Christoph Maria Schlingensief (24 October 1960 – 21 August 2010) was a German theatre director, performance artist, and filmmaker. Starting as an independent underground filmmaker, Schlingensief later staged productions for theatres and festivals ...
.
The two most substantial compositions from this period are '' ...explosante-fixe...'' (1993), which had its origins in 1972 as a tribute to Stravinsky and which again used the electronic resources of IRCAM, and '' sur Incises'' (1998), for which he was awarded the 2001 Grawemeyer Prize for composition.
He continued to work on institutional organisation. He co-founded the Cité de la Musique
The Cité de la Musique ("City of Music"), also known as Philharmonie 2, is a group of institutions dedicated to music and situated in the Parc de la Villette, 19th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was designed with the nearby Conservatoire d ...
, which opened in La Villette on the outskirts of Paris in 1995.[ Consisting of a modular concert hall, museum and mediatheque—with the Paris' Conservatoire on an adjacent site—it became the home to the ]Ensemble Intercontemporain
The Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) is a French music ensemble, based in Paris, that is dedicated to contemporary music. Pierre Boulez founded the EIC in 1976 for this purpose, the first permanent organization of its type in the world.
Organi ...
and attracted a diverse audience. In 2004, he co-founded the Lucerne Festival Academy The Lucerne Festival Academy is an orchestra-sized educational institution devoted exclusively to the interpretation and performance of contemporary classical music. It has taken place each summer since 2003 in the Swiss city of Lucerne as part of ...
, an orchestral institute for young musicians, dedicated to music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For the next ten years he spent the last three weeks of summer working with young composers and conducting concerts with the Academy's orchestra.
2006–2016: Last years
Boulez's last major work was ''Dérive 2'' (2006), a 45-minute piece for eleven instruments. He left a number of compositional projects unfinished, including the remaining ''Notations'' for orchestra.[
He remained active as a conductor over the next six years. In 2007 he was re-united with Chéreau for a production of Janáček's '']From the House of the Dead
''From the House of the Dead'' () is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček. The libretto was translated and adapted by the composer from the 1862 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was the composer's last opera, premiered on 12 April 1930 at ...
'' (Theater an der Wien, Amsterdam and Aix). In April of the same year, as part of the Festtage in Berlin, Boulez and Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim (; in he, דניאל בארנבוים, born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin. He has been since 1992 General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera and "Staatskapellmeist ...
gave a cycle of the Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin
The Staatskapelle Berlin () is a German orchestra and the resident orchestra of the Berlin State Opera, Unter den Linden. The orchestra is one of the oldest in the world. Until the fall of the German Empire in 1918 the orchestra's name was ''Kön ...
, which they repeated two years later at Carnegie Hall. In late 2007 the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble Intercontemporain presented a retrospective of Boulez's music and in 2008 the Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
mounted the exhibition ''Pierre Boulez, Œuvre: fragment''.
His appearances became more infrequent after an eye operation in 2010 left him with severely impaired sight. Other health problems included a shoulder injury resulting from a fall.[WQXR Staff, "Pierre Boulez Breaks His Shoulder, Cancels in Lucerne"](_blank)
, 6 August 2013. Retrieved 6 January 2016. In late 2011, when he was already quite frail, he led the combined Ensemble Intercontemporain and Lucerne Festival Academy, with the soprano Barbara Hannigan, in a tour of six European cities of his own ''Pli selon pli''. His final appearance as a conductor was in Salzburg on 28 January 2012 with the Vienna Philharmonic
The Vienna Philharmonic (VPO; german: Wiener Philharmoniker, links=no) is an orchestra that was founded in 1842 and is considered to be one of the finest in the world.
The Vienna Philharmonic is based at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. It ...
Orchestra and Mitsuko Uchida
is a classical pianist and conductor, born in Japan and naturalised in Britain, particularly noted for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert.
She has appeared with many notable orchestras, recorded a wide repertory with several labels, w ...
in a programme of Schoenberg (''Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene'' and the Piano Concerto), Mozart (Piano Concerto No.19 in F major K459) and Stravinsky (''Pulcinella Suite
''Pulcinella'' is a one-act ballet by Igor Stravinsky based on an 18th-century play, ''Quatre Polichinelles semblables'' ("Four identical Pulcinellas"). Pulcinella is a stock character originating from ''commedia dell'arte''.
The ballet premier ...
''). Thereafter he cancelled all conducting engagements.
Later in 2012, he worked with the Diotima Quartet, making final revisions to his only string quartet, ''Livre pour quatuor'', begun in 1948. In 2013 he oversaw the release on Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...
of ''Pierre Boulez: Complete Works'', a 13-CD survey of all his authorised compositions. He remained Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy until 2014, but his health prevented him from taking part in the many celebrations held across the world for his 90th birthday in 2015. These included a multi-media exhibition at the Musée de la Musique in Paris, which focused in particular on the inspiration Boulez had drawn from literature and the visual arts.
Boulez died on 5 January 2016 at his home in Baden-Baden. He was buried on 13 January in Baden-Baden's main cemetery following a private funeral service at the town's Stiftskirche. At a memorial service the next day at the Church of Saint-Sulpice
, image = Paris Saint-Sulpice Fassade 4-5 A.jpg
, image_size =
, pushpin map = Paris
, pushpin label position =
, coordinates =
, location = Place Saint-Sulpice 6th arrond ...
in Paris, eulogists included Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim (; in he, דניאל בארנבוים, born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin. He has been since 1992 General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera and "Staatskapellmeist ...
, Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (20 ...
, and Laurent Bayle, then president of the Philharmonie de Paris
The Philharmonie de Paris () ( en, Paris Philharmonic) is a complex of concert halls in Paris, France. The buildings also house exhibition spaces and rehearsal rooms. The main buildings are all located in the Parc de la Villette at the northeaste ...
, whose large concert hall had been inaugurated the previous year, thanks in no small measure to Boulez's influence.
Compositions
Juvenilia and student works
Boulez's earliest surviving compositions date from his school days in 1942–43, mostly songs on texts by Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fro ...
, Gautier and Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...
. Gerald Bennett describes the pieces as "modest, delicate and rather anonymous mployinga certain number of standard elements of French salon music of the time—whole-tone scales, pentatonic scales and polytonality".
As a student at the Conservatoire Boulez composed a series of pieces influenced first by Honegger and Jolivet (''Prelude, Toccata and Scherzo'' and ''Nocturne'' for solo piano (1944–45)) and then by Messiaen (''Trois psalmodies'' for piano (1945) and a Quartet for four ondes Martenot (1945–46)). The encounter with Schoenberg—through his studies with Leibowitz—was the catalyst for his first piece of serial music, the ''Thème et variations'' for piano, left hand (1945). Peter O'Hagan describes it as "his boldest and most ambitious work to date".
''Douze notations'' and the work in progress
It is in the ''Douze notations'' for piano (December 1945) that Bennett first detects the influence of Webern. In the two months after the composition of the piano ''Notations'' Boulez attempted an (unperformed and unpublished) orchestration of eleven of the twelve short pieces. Over a decade later he re-used two of them in instrumental interludes in ''Improvisation I sur Mallarmé''. Then in the mid-1970s he embarked on a further, more radical transformation of the ''Notations'' into extended works for very large orchestra, a project which preoccupied him to the end of his life, nearly seventy years after the original composition.
This is only the most extreme example of a lifelong tendency to revisit earlier works: "as long as my ideas have not exhausted every possibility of proliferation they stay in my mind." Robert Piencikowski characterises this in part as "an obsessional concern for perfection" and observes that with some pieces (such as ''Le Visage nuptial'') "one could speak of successive distinct versions, each one presenting a particular state of the musical material, without the successor invalidating the previous one or vice versa"—although he notes that Boulez almost invariably vetoed the performance of previous versions.
First published works
Before the rehabilitation of the ''Notations'', the ''Sonatine'' for flute and piano (1946–1949) was the first work Boulez acknowledged. A serial work of great energy, its single-movement form was influenced by Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1
The Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 9 (also known by its title in German Kammersymphonie, für 15 soloinstrumente, or simply as Kammersymphonie) is a composition by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.
Schoenberg's first chamber symphony w ...
. Bennett finds in the piece a tone new to Boulez's writing: "a sharp, brittle violence juxtaposed against an extreme sensitivity and delicacy". In the Piano Sonata No. 1 (1946–49) the biographer Dominique Jameux
Dominique Jameux (24 December 1939 – 2 July 2015) was a French musicologist, radio producer and writer.
Biography
Dominique Jameux collaborated with the ' created by on France Culture and hosted ''La Musique prend la parole''. He later joine ...
highlights the sheer number of different kinds of attack in its two short movements—and the frequent accelerations of tempo in the second movement—which together create a feeling of "instrumental delirium".
There followed two cantatas based on the poetry of René Char
René Émile Char (; 14 June 1907 – 19 February 1988) was a French poet and member of the French Resistance.
Biography
Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of the four children of Emile ...
. Of ''Le Visage nuptial'' Paul Griffiths observes that "Char's five poems speak in hard-edged surrealist imagery of an ecstatic sexual passion", which Boulez reflected in music "on the borders of fevered hysteria". In its original version (1946–47) the piece was scored for small forces (soprano, contralto, two ondes Martenot, piano and percussion). Forty years later Boulez arrived at the definitive version for soprano, mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra (1985–1989). ''Le Soleil des eaux'' (1948) originated in incidental music for a radio drama by Char. It went through three further versions before reaching its final form in 1965 as a piece for soprano, mixed chorus and orchestra. The first movement (''Complainte du lézard amoureux'') is a love song addressed by a lizard to a goldfinch in the heat of a summer day; the second (''La Sorgue'') is a violent, incantatory protest against the pollution of the river Sorgue
The Sorgue is a river in Southeastern France lying between the foothills of the Alps and the Rhône. It is long. Its source is near the town of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, Vaucluse department. It is the biggest spring in France and the fifth biggest ...
.
The Second Piano Sonata (1947–48) is a half-hour work which requires formidable technical prowess from the performer. Its four movements follow the standard pattern of a classical sonata but in each of them Boulez subverts the traditional model. For Griffiths the violent character of much of the music "is not just superficial: it is expressive of … a need to obliterate what had gone before".[Griffiths (1978), 16.] Boulez played the work for Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
, who asked: "But must we start a revolution all over again?"—"Yes, mercilessly", Boulez replied.
Total serialism
That revolution entered its most extreme phase in 1950–1952, when Boulez developed a technique in which not only pitch but other musical parameters—duration, dynamics, timbre and attack—were organised according to serial principles, an approach known as total serialism
In music, serialism is a method of Musical composition, composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other elements of music, musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, thou ...
or punctualism
Punctualism (commonly also called "pointillism" or "point music") is a style of musical composition prevalent in Europe between 1949 and 1955 "whose structures are predominantly effected from tone to tone, without superordinate formal concepti ...
. Messiaen had already made an experiment in this direction in his ''Mode de valeurs et d'intensités'' for piano (1949). Boulez's first sketches towards total serialism appeared in parts of ''Livre pour quatuor'' (Book for Quartet, 1948–49, revised 2011–12), a collection of movements for string quartet from which the players may choose at any one performance, foreshadowing Boulez's later interest in variable form.[Hopkins and Griffiths.]
In the early 1950s Boulez began to apply the technique rigorously, ordering each parameter into sets of twelve and prescribing no repetition until all twelve had sounded. According to the music critic Alex Ross the resulting surfeit of ever-changing musical data has the effect of erasing at any given point previous impressions the listener may have formed: "the present moment is all there is". Boulez linked this development to a desire by his generation to create a ''tabula rasa'' after the war.
His works in this idiom are ''Polyphonie X
''Polyphonie X'' (1950–51) is a three- movement composition by Pierre Boulez for eighteen instruments divided into seven groups, with a duration of roughly fifteen minutes. Following the work's premiere, Boulez withdrew the score, stating that it ...
'' (195051; withdrawn) for 18 instruments, the two ''musique concrète
Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, ...
'' ''étude
An étude (; ) or study is an instrumental musical composition, usually short, designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidl ...
s'' (1951–52; withdrawn), and '' Structures, Book I'' for two pianos (1951–52). Speaking of ''Structures, Book I'' in 2011 Boulez described it as a piece in which "the responsibility of the composer is practically absent. Had computers existed at that time I would have put the data through them and made the piece that way. But I did it by hand...It was a demonstration through the absurd." Asked whether it should still be listened to as music, Boulez replied: "I am not terribly eager to listen to it. But for me it was an experiment that was absolutely necessary."
''Le Marteau sans maître'' and ''Pli selon pli''
''Structures, Book I'' was a turning point for Boulez. Recognising a lack of expressive flexibility in the language (described in his essay "At the Limit of Fertile Land..."), Boulez loosened the strictness of total serialism into a more supple and strongly gestural music: "I am trying to rid myself of my thumbprints and taboos", he wrote to Cage. The most significant result of this new freedom was ''Le Marteau sans maître
''Le Marteau sans maître'' (; The Hammer without a Master) is a chamber cantata by French composer Pierre Boulez. The work, which received its premiere in 1955, sets surrealist poetry by René Char for contralto and six instrumentalists. It i ...
'' (1953–1955), described by Griffiths and Bill Hopkins as a "keystone of twentieth-century music". Three short poems by Char form the starting-point for three interlocking cycles. Four movements are vocal settings of the poems (one is set twice), the other five are instrumental commentaries. According to Hopkins and Griffiths the music is characterised by abrupt tempo transitions, passages of broadly improvisatory melodic style and exotic instrumental colouring. The piece is scored for contralto soloist with alto flute, xylorimba
The xylorimba (sometimes referred to as xylo-marimba or marimba-xylophone) is a pitched percussion instrument similar to an extended-range xylophone with a range identical to some 5-octave celestas or 5-octave marimbas, though typically an octave ...
, vibraphone, percussion, guitar and viola. Boulez said that the choice of these instruments showed the influence of non-European cultures, to which he had always been attracted.
For the text of his next major work, ''Pli selon pli
''Pli selon pli'' (Fold by fold) is a piece of classical music by the French composer Pierre Boulez. It carries the subtitle ''Portrait de Mallarmé'' (Portrait of Mallarmé). It is scored for a solo soprano and orchestra and uses the texts of th ...
'' (1957–1989), Boulez turned to the symbolist poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...
, attracted by its extreme density and radical syntax. At seventy minutes, it is his longest composition. Three ''Improvisations''—of increasing complexity—on individual sonnets are framed by two orchestral movements, into which fragments of other poems are embedded. Boulez's word-setting, which in the first ''Improvisation'' is straightforwardly syllabic, becomes ever more melisma
Melisma ( grc-gre, μέλισμα, , ; from grc, , melos, song, melody, label=none, plural: ''melismata'') is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referr ...
tic, to the point where the words cannot be distinguished. Boulez's stated aim was to make the sonnets ''become'' the music at a deeper, structural level. The piece is scored for soprano and large orchestra, often deployed in chamber groups. Boulez described its sound-world, rich in percussion, as "not so much frozen as extraordinarily 'vitrified. The work had a complex genesis, reaching its definitive form in 1989.
Controlled chance
From the 1950s Boulez experimented with what he called "controlled chance" and he developed his views on aleatoric music
Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word ''alea'', meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the ...
in the articles "Aléa" and "Sonate, que me veux-tu?", in which he wrote of "the investigation of a relative world, a permanent 'discovering' rather like the state of 'permanent revolution.
Peyser observes that Boulez's use of chance is different from John Cage’s. In Cage's music the performers are often free to create unforeseen sounds, with the aim of removing the composer's intention from the music; in Boulez's music they choose between possibilities that have been written out by the composer. When applied to the order of sections, this is sometimes described as "mobile form", a technique devised by Earle Brown
Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since ...
, who was inspired by the mobile sculptures of Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his ...
. Brown and Cage introduced Boulez to Calder when Boulez was visiting New York in 1952.
Boulez employed variants of the technique in a number of works over the next two decades: in the Third Piano Sonata (1955–1957, revised 1963) the pianist may choose different routes through the score and in one movement (''Trope'') has the option of omitting certain passages altogether; in ''Éclat'' (1965), the conductor triggers the order in which each player joins the ensemble; in ''Domaines'' (1961–1968) it is the soloist who dictates the order in which the sections are played by his movement around the stage. In later works, such as ''Cummings ist der Dichter'' (1970, revised 1986)—a chamber cantata for 16 solo voices and small orchestra using a poem by E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings, who was also known as E. E. Cummings, e. e. cummings and e e cummings (October 14, 1894 - September 3, 1962), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobi ...
—the conductor is given choice as to the order of certain events but there is no freedom for the individual player. In its original version ''Pli selon pli'' also contained elements of choice for the instrumentalists, but much of this was eliminated in later revisions.
By contrast '' Figures—Doubles—Prismes'' (1957–1968) is a fixed work with no chance element. Piencikowski describes it as "a great cycle of variations whose components interpenetrate each other instead of remaining isolated in the traditional manner". It is notable for the unusual layout of the orchestra, in which the various families of instruments (woodwind, brass etc.) are scattered across the stage rather than being grouped together.
Middle-period works
Jonathan Goldman identifies a major aesthetic shift in Boulez's work from the mid-1970s onwards, characterised variously by the presence of thematic writing, a return to vertical harmony and to clarity and legibility of form. Boulez himself said: "the ''envelope'' is simpler. The contents are not ... I think in my recent work it is true that the first approach is more direct, and the gesture is more obvious, let's say." The works from this period are amongst his most frequently performed.
For Goldman, ''Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
''Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna'' (1974–75) is a composition for orchestra in eight groups by Pierre Boulez. Biographer Dominique Jameux wrote that the piece has "obvious audience appeal", and that it represented a desire to establish "immedi ...
'' (1974–75) marks the beginning of this development. Boulez wrote this twenty-five minute work as an epitaph for his friend and colleague, the Italian composer and conductor, who died in 1973 at the age of 53. The piece is divided into fifteen sections, the orchestra into eight groups. The odd-numbered sections are conducted; in the even-numbered sections the conductor merely sets each group in motion and its progress is regulated by a percussionist beating time. In his dedication Boulez described the work as "a ritual of disappearance and survival"; Griffiths refers to the work's "awesome grandeur".
''Notations I–IV'' (1980) are the first four transformations of piano miniatures from 1945 into pieces for very large orchestra. In his review of the New York premiere, Andrew Porter wrote that the single idea of each original piece "has, as it were, been passed through a many-faceted bright prism and broken into a thousand linked, lapped, sparkling fragments", the finale "a terse modern ''Rite'' ... which sets the pulses racing".
''Dérive 1
''Dérive 1'' (originally entitled ''Dérive'', from the French word meaning ''derivative'' or ''drift'') is a composition for six-part instrumental ensemble by French composer Pierre Boulez. It was composed in 1984.
Composition
This short co ...
'' (1984), dedicated to William Glock
Sir William Frederick Glock, CBE (3 May 190828 June 2000) was a British music critic and musical administrator who was instrumental in introducing the Continental avant-garde, notably promoting the career of Pierre Boulez.
Biography
Glock was bor ...
on his retirement from the Bath Festival, is a short quintet in which the piano takes the lead. The material is derived from six chords and, according to Ivan Hewett, the piece "shuffles and decorates these chords, bursting outwards in spirals and eddies, before returning to its starting point". At the end the music "shivers into silence".
Works with electronics
Boulez compared the experience of listening to pre-recorded electronic music in the concert hall to a crematorium ceremony. His real interest lay in the instantaneous transformation of instrumental sounds but the technology was not available until the founding of IRCAM in the 1970s. Before then he had produced ''Deux Etudes'' (1951) for magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
for Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innov ...
's Groupe Recherche de la Radiodiffusion Française, as well as a large-scale piece for live orchestra with tape, ''Poésie pour pouvoir'' (1958). He was dissatisfied with both pieces and withdrew them.
The first piece completed at IRCAM was ''Répons
''Répons'' is a composition by French composer Pierre Boulez for a large chamber orchestra with six percussion soloists and live electronics. The six soloists play harp, cimbalom, vibraphone, glockenspiel/xylophone, and two pianos. It was prem ...
'' (1980–1984). In this forty-minute work an instrumental ensemble is placed in the middle of the hall, while six soloists surround the audience: two pianos, harp, cimbalom, vibraphone and glockenspiel/xylophone. It is their music which is transformed electronically and projected through the space. Peter Heyworth
Peter Lawrence Frederick Heyworth (3 June 1921 – 2 October 1991) was an American-born British music critic and biographer. He wrote a two-volume biography of Otto Klemperer and was a prominent supporter of avant-garde music.
Life and career
Pet ...
described the moment when they enter, some ten minutes into the piece: "it is as though a great window were thrown open, through which a new sound world enters, and with it a new world of the imagination. Even more impressive is the fact that there is no longer a schism between the worlds of natural and electronic sounds, but rather a continuous spectrum."
''Dialogue de l'ombre double
''Dialogue de l'ombre double'' (Dialogue of the double shadow) is a mixed work by Pierre Boulez for clarinet and electroacoustic device composed in 1985. The play is dedicated to Luciano Berio for his sixtieth birthday. There exists a version fo ...
'' (1982–1985) for clarinet and electronics grew out of a fragment of ''Domaines'' and was a gift for Luciano Berio on his 60th birthday. Lasting around eighteen minutes, it is a dialogue between a solo clarinet (played live, though sometimes reverberated through an offstage piano) and its double (in passages pre-recorded by the same musician and projected around the hall). Boulez approved transcriptions of the piece for bassoon (in 1995) and for recorder (in 2011).
In the early 1970s he had worked on an extended chamber piece called ''…explosante-fixe…'' for eight solo instruments, electronically transformed by a machine called a halophone, but the technology was still primitive and he eventually withdrew it. He re-used some of its material in other works, including a later piece with the same name. This definitive version, recorded commercially, was composed at IRCAM between 1991 and 1993 for MIDI-flute and two accompanying flutes with ensemble and live electronics. By this time the technology was such that the computer could follow the score and respond to triggers from the players. According to Griffiths, "the principal flute is caught as if in a hall of mirrors, its line imitated in what the other flutes play, and then in the contributions of the larger ensemble.". Hopkins and Griffiths describe it as "music characteristically caught between thrill and desperation".
'' Anthèmes II'' for violin and electronics (1997) grew out of a piece for solo violin ''Anthèmes I'' (1991), which Boulez wrote for the Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition in Paris and which in turn derived from material in the original ''…explosante-fixe…''[ The virtuoso writing for the instrument is captured by the electronic system, transformed in real time and propelled around the space to create what Jonathan Goldman calls a "hyper-violin". Although this gives rise to effects of speed and complexity which no violinist could achieve, Boulez restricts the palette of electronic sounds so that their source, the violin, is always recognisable.
]
Last works
In later works Boulez relinquished electronics, although Griffiths suggests that in '' sur Incises'' (1996–1998) the choice of like but distinct instruments, spread across the platform, enabled Boulez to create effects of harmonic, timbral and spatial echo for which he previously used electronic means. The piece is scored for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists (including steel drums) and grew out of ''Incises'' (1993–2001), a short piece written for a piano competition. In an interview in 2013 he described it as his most important work—"because it is the freest".
''Notation VII'' (1999), marked "hieratic" in the score, is the longest of the orchestral ''Notations''. According to Griffiths: "what was abrupt in 1945 is now languorous; what was crude is now done with a lifetime's experience and expertise; what was simple is fantastically embellished, even submerged."
''Dérive 2'' started out in 1988 as a five-minute piece, dedicated to Elliott Carter on his 80th birthday; by 2006 it was a 45-minute work for eleven instruments and Boulez's last major composition. According to Claude Samuel
Claude Samuel (23 June 1931 – 14 June 2020) was a French music critic and radio personality.
Biography
Born in Paris, after medical studies and graduating as a dental surgeon, Samuel chose to devote himself to classical music journalism. He ...
, Boulez wanted to explore rhythmic shifts, tempo changes and superimpositions of different speeds, inspired in part by his contact with the music of György Ligeti. Boulez described it as "a sort of narrative mosaic".[Samuel (2013).]
Unfinished works
A distinction may be made between works which Boulez was actively progressing and those which he put to one side despite their potential for further development. In the latter category, the archives contain three unpublished movements of the Third Piano Sonata and further sections of ''Éclat/Multiples'' which, if performed, would practically double its length.
As for works Boulez was known to be working on in his later years, the premieres of two more orchestral ''Notations'' (''V'' and ''VI'') were announced by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for May 2006, but postponed. He was in the process of developing ''Anthèmes 2'' into a large-scale work for violin and orchestra for Anne-Sophie Mutter and spoke of writing an opera based on Beckett's '' Waiting for Godot''.[ Ross, Alex (25 January 2016)]
"The Magus"
. ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
''. Retrieved 26 March 2016. None of these projects came to fruition.
Character and personal life
As a young man Boulez was an explosive, often confrontational figure. Jean-Louis Barrault, who knew him in his twenties, caught the contradictions in his personality: "his powerful aggressiveness was a sign of creative passion, a particular blend of intransigence and humour, the way his moods of affection and insolence succeeded one another, all these had drawn us near to him." Messiaen said later: "He was in revolt against everything." Indeed, at one point Boulez turned against Messiaen, describing his ''Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine
''Trois'' is a 2000 erotic thriller film directed by Rob Hardy and produced by William Packer. It stars Gary Dourdan, Kenya Moore and Gretchen Palmer. The film was given a limited theatrical release and was one of the years highest grossing ...
'' as "brothel music" and saying that the ''Turangalîla-Symphonie
The ''Turangalîla-Symphonie'' is the only symphony by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). It was written for an orchestra of large forces from 1946 to 1948 on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky in his wife's memory for the Boston Symphony Orches ...
'' made him vomit.[ It was five years before relations were restored.]
In a 2000 article in ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' Alex Ross
Nelson Alexander Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an American comic book writer and artist known primarily for his painted interiors, covers, and design work. He first became known with the 1994 miniseries ''Marvels'', on which he collaborated wi ...
described him as a bully. Boulez did not disagree: "Certainly I was a bully. I'm not ashamed of it at all. The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society."[ The most notorious instance of this is Boulez's declaration in 1952 that "any musician who has not experienced—I do not say understood, but truly experienced—the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch."
On the other hand, those who knew him well often referred to his loyalty, both to individuals and to organisations.][Barbedette, 15.] When his mentor, the conductor Roger Désormière
Roger Désormière () (13 September 1898 – 25 October 1963) was a French conductor. He was an enthusiastic champion of contemporary composers, but also conducted performances of early eighteenth century French music.
Life and career
Désormièr ...
, was paralysed by a stroke in 1952 Boulez sent scripts to French Radio in Désormière's name so that the older man could collect the fee. The writer Jean Vermeil, who observed Boulez in the 1990s in the company of Jean Batigne (founder of the Percussions de Strasbourg), discovered "a Boulez asking about the health of a musician in the Strasbourg orchestra, about another player's children, a Boulez who knew everyone by name and who reacted to each person's news with sadness or with joy". In later life, he was known for his charm and personal warmth.[ Of his humour, Gerard McBurney wrote that it "depended on his twinkling eyes, his perfect timing, his infectious schoolboy giggle, and his reckless compulsion always to say what the other person would not expect".
Boulez read widely and identified ]Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
, Joyce and Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
as particular influences. He had a lifelong interest in the visual arts. He wrote extensively about the painter Paul Klee and collected contemporary art, including works by Joan Miró, Francis Bacon (artist), Francis Bacon, Nicolas de Staël and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, all of whom he knew personally. He also had close links with three of the leading philosophers of the time: Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes.
He was a keen walker and, when he was at home in Baden-Baden, spent the late afternoons and much of the weekends walking in the Black Forest. He owned an old farmhouse in the Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence department of France and built another, modern home on the same land in the late 1970s.
In its obituary, ''The New York Times'' reported that "about his private life he remained tightly guarded". Boulez acknowledged to Joan Peyser
Joan Peyser (June 12, 1930 – April 24, 2011) was an American musicologist and writer, particularly known for her writing on 20th-century music and for her biographies of George Gershwin, Pierre Boulez and Leonard Bernstein. Her biography of Be ...
that there was a passionate affair in 1946, described as "intense and tormented" and which Peyser suggested was the trigger for the "wild, courageous works" of that period. After Boulez's death, his sister Jeanne told the biographer Christian Merlin that the affair was with the actress María Casares, but Merlin concludes that there is little evidence to support this. The author and blogger Norman Lebrecht, who knew Boulez, speculated that he was gay, citing the fact that for many years he shared his home in Baden-Baden with Hans Messner,[ whom he sometimes referred to as his valet. In his portrait for ''The New Yorker'', published shortly after Boulez's death under the title ''The Magus'', Alex Ross described him as "affable, implacable, unknowable".]
Conducting
Boulez was one of the leading conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. In a career lasting more than sixty years he directed most of the world's major orchestras. He was entirely self-taught, although he said that he learnt a great deal from attending Désormière's and Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud (22 July 1895 – 29 December 1962) was an Austrian conductor, particularly associated with the music of the twentieth century.
Biography
Rosbaud was born in Graz. As children, he and his brother Paul Rosbaud performed with their ...
's rehearsals. He also cited George Szell
George Szell (; June 7, 1897 – July 30, 1970), originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer. He is widely considered one of the twentieth century's greatest condu ...
as an influential mentor.
Boulez gave various reasons for conducting as much as he did. He gave his first concerts for the Domaine musical because its financial resources were limited: "I told myself that, being much less expensive, I would have a go myself." He also said that the best possible training for a composer was "to have to play or conduct his own works and to face their difficulties of execution"—yet on a practical level he sometimes struggled to find time to compose given his conducting commitments. The writer and pianist Susan Bradshaw thought this was deliberate and related to a sense of being overshadowed as a composer by Stockhausen, who from the late 1950s was increasingly prolific. The French litterateur and musicologist Pierre Souvchinsky disagreed: "Boulez became a conductor because he had a great gift for it."
Not everyone agreed about the greatness of that gift. For the conductor Otto Klemperer, he was "without doubt the only man of his generation who is an outstanding conductor ''and'' musician". Hans Keller expressed a more critical opinion:
: "Boulez cannot phrase – it is as simple as that...the reason being that he ignores the harmonic implications of any structure he is dealing with, to the extent of utterly disregarding harmonic rhythm and hence all characteristic rhythm in tonal music..."
Joan Peyser considered that:
: ..."in general Boulez conducts what he loves magnificently, conducts what he likes very well and, with rare exceptions, gives stiff performances of the classic and romantic repertoire."
He worked with many leading soloists and had particularly long-term collaborations with Daniel Barenboim and Jessye Norman.
According to Peter Heyworth, Boulez produced a lean, athletic sound which, underpinned by his rhythmic exactitude, could generate an electric sense of excitement. The ability to reveal the structure of a score and to clarify dense orchestral textures were hallmarks of his conducting. He conducted without a baton and, as Heyworth observed: "there is no trace of theatre—not even the rather theatrical sort of economy that was practised by Richard Strauss." According to Boulez: "outward excitement uses up inner excitement."
Boulez's ear for sound was legendary: "there are countless stories of him detecting, for example, faulty intonation from the third oboe in a complex orchestral texture," Paul Griffiths wrote in ''The New York Times''.[ Oliver Knussen, himself a well-known composer-conductor, observed that "his rehearsals are models of clear-headedness and professional courtesy—he effortlessly commands respect."][ Nicholas Kenyon wrote of Boulez's rehearsal ethos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra:
: "Boulez is supremely efficient...his rehearsal requirements have always been absolutely precise. He knows exactly what can be done and what cannot...He knows how to organise a rehearsal without fuss, even when there are countless platform changes, switches of personnel, electronics and staging to consider. For orchestral administrators, concert managers, orchestral porters, he is the easiest, kindest and best organised of conductors."
]
Opera
Boulez also conducted in the opera house. His chosen repertoire was small and included no Italian opera. Apart from Wagner, he conducted only twentieth-century works. Of his work with Wieland Wagner on ''Wozzeck'' and ''Parsifal'', Boulez said: "I would willingly have hitched, if not my entire fate, then at least a part of it, to someone like him, for [our] discussions about music and productions were thrilling."
They planned other productions together, including ''Salome (opera), Salome'' and ''Elektra (opera), Elektra'', ''Boris Godunov
Borís Fyodorovich Godunóv (; russian: Борис Фёдорович Годунов; 1552 ) ruled the Tsardom of Russia as ''de facto'' regent from c. 1585 to 1598 and then as the first non-Rurikid tsar from 1598 to 1605. After the end of his ...
'' and ''Don Giovanni''. However, by the time rehearsals for their Bayreuth ''Parsifal'' began Wieland was already gravely ill and he died in October 1966.
When the Frankfurt ''Wozzeck'' was revived after Wieland's death, Boulez was deeply disillusioned by the working conditions: "there was no rehearsal, no care taken over anything. The cynicism of the way an opera house like that was run disgusted me. It still disgusts me."
He later said that it was this experience which prompted his notorious remarks in an interview the following year in ''Der Spiegel'', in which he claimed that "no opera worth mentioning had been composed since 1935", that "a Beatles record is certainly cleverer (and shorter) than a Henze opera" and that "the most elegant" solution to opera's moribund condition would be "to blow the opera houses up".
In 1967, Boulez, theatre director Jean Vilar and choreographer Maurice Béjart were asked to devise a scheme for the reform of the Paris Opéra, with a view to Boulez becoming its music director. Their plan was derailed by the political fallout from the 1968 student protests. Later, in the mid-1980s, Boulez became vice president of the planned Opéra Bastille in Paris, working with Daniel Barenboim, who was to be its music director. In 1988 a newly-appointed director, Pierre Bergé, dismissed Barenboim. Boulez withdrew in solidarity.
In the event, Boulez conducted only specific projects—in productions by leading stage directors—when he could be satisfied that conditions were right. Thanks to his years with the Barrault company, the theatrical dimension was as important to him as the musical and he always attended staging rehearsals.
For the centenary ''Ring'' in Bayreuth, Boulez originally asked Ingmar Bergman then Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook (21 March 1925 – 2 July 2022) was an English theatre and film director. He worked first in England, from 1945 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from 1947 at the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shak ...
to direct, both of whom refused. Peter Stein initially agreed but withdrew in 1974. Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau (; 2 November 1944 – 7 October 2013) was a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor and producer. In France he is best known for his work for the theatre, internationally for his films '' La Reine Margot'' and ...
, who was primarily a theatre director, accepted and went on to create one of the defining opera productions of modern times. According to Allan Kozinn the production "helped open the floodgates of directorial reinterpretation of opera" (sometimes known as ''Regietheater''). Chéreau treated the story in part as an allegory of capitalism, drawing on ideas that George Bernard Shaw explored in ''The Perfect Wagnerite'' in 1898. He updated the action to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using imagery of the industrial age, and he achieved an unprecedented degree of naturalism in the singers' performances.[ Boulez's conducting was no less controversial, emphasising continuity, flexibility and transparency over mythic grandeur and weight. In its first year the production met with hostility from the largely conservative audience, and around thirty orchestral musicians refused to work with Boulez in subsequent seasons. Both production and musical realisation grew in stature over the following four years and after the final performance in 1980 there was a 90-minute ovation. Boulez worked with Chéreau again on Berg's ''Lulu'' in Paris (1979) and Janáček's '']From the House of the Dead
''From the House of the Dead'' () is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček. The libretto was translated and adapted by the composer from the 1862 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was the composer's last opera, premiered on 12 April 1930 at ...
'' in Vienna (2007).
His other preferred director was Peter Stein. Of Debussy's ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' Boulez had written: "I don't like the French tradition of sweetness and gentleness ... [the work] is not gentle at all, but cruel and mysterious." Stein realised that vision in his staging for Welsh National Opera in 1992, John Rockwell describing it as "an abstract, angry ''Pelléas'', one perhaps over-intent on emphasizing the score's links to modernity". David Stevens described their 1995 production of Schoenberg's ''Moses und Aron'' in Amsterdam as "theatrically and musically thrilling".
From the mid-1960s, Boulez spoke of composing an opera himself. His attempts to find a librettist were unsuccessful: "both times the writer has died on me, so I'm a bit superstitious about looking for a third candidate". From the late 1960s he exchanged ideas with the radical French playwright and novelist Jean Genet and a subject—treason—was agreed on. Parts of a draft libretto were found among Genet's papers after his death in 1986. Boulez later turned to the German playwright Heiner Müller, who was working on a reduction of Aeschylus's ''Oresteia'' when he died in 1995, again without leaving anything usable.[ In the 1980s he discussed with Patrice Chéreau an adaptation of Genet's 1961 play ''The Screens, Les Paravents'' (''The Screens''), which was planned for the 1989 opening of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, but this too came to nothing. In a 1996 interview Boulez said that he was thinking of Edward Bond's ''The War Plays'' or ''Lear'', "but only thinking".][ When news emerged in 2010 that he was working on an opera based on Samuel Beckett's '' Waiting for Godot'', few believed such an ambitious undertaking could be realised so late in the day.][
]
Recording
Boulez's first recordings date from his time with the Domaine musical in the late 1950s and early 1960s and were made for the French Vega label. They document his first thoughts on works which he would subsequently re-record (such as Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No.1), as well as pieces to which he did not return in the studio (such as Stravinsky's ''Renard'' and Stockhausen's ''Zeitmaße''). They also include the first of his five recordings of ''Le Marteau sans maître'' (with contralto Marie-Thérèse Cahn). In 2015 Universal Music brought these recordings together in a 10-CD set.
Between 1966 and 1989 he recorded for Columbia Records (later Sony Classical). Among the first projects were the Paris ''Wozzeck'' (with Walter Berry (bass-baritone), Walter Berry) and the Covent Garden ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' (with George Shirley and Elisabeth Söderström). He made a highly praised recording of ''The Rite of Spring'' with the Cleveland Orchestra and a number of recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, including rarities such as Berlioz's ''Lélio'' and the first complete recording of Mahler's ''Das klagende Lied''. The LSO also contributed to the Webern edition which Boulez supervised, consisting of all the works with opus numbers. He produced a wide-ranging survey of the music of Schoenberg, including ''Gurrelieder'' and ''Moses und Aron'' (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra), and also less well-known works such as the unaccompanied choral music. As for Boulez's own music, in 1969 there was a first recording of ''Pli selon pli'' (with Halina Łukomska as soprano soloist) and recordings of ''Rituel'' and ''Éclat/Multiples''. In 2014 Sony Classical issued ''Pierre Boulez—The Complete Columbia Album Collection'' on 67 CDs.
Three operatic projects from this period were picked up by other labels: the Bayreuth ''Ring'' was released on video and LP by Philips; the Bayreuth ''Parsifal'' and Paris ''Lulu'' were recorded for Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...
.
In the 1980s, he also recorded for the Erato label, mostly with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with a greater emphasis on the music of his contemporaries (Berio, Ligeti, Carter etc.), as well as a survey of some of his own music, including ''Le Visage nuptial'', ''Le Soleil des eaux'' and ''Figures—Doubles—Prismes''. In 2015 Erato issued ''Pierre Boulez—The Complete Erato Recordings'' on 14 CDs.[ For EMI in 1984 he recorded a number of pieces on Frank Zappa's album Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger, The Perfect Stranger with the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
From 1991, onwards Boulez recorded under an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. It centred on the orchestras of Chicago and Cleveland in the United States and Vienna and Berlin in Europe. He re-recorded much of his core repertoire—the orchestral music of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Bartók—and oversaw a second Webern edition, including the unpublished works. His own late music featured prominently, including ''Répons'', ''...explosante-fixe...'' and ''sur Incises''. There was also a recording of ''Pli selon pli'' (with Christine Schäfer) in its definitive version, incorporating revisions made in the late 1980s. Composers new to his discography included Richard Strauss, Szymanowski and Anton Bruckner—his recording of the Symphony No. 8 (Bruckner), Eighth Symphony met with particular acclaim. The most significant addition to his recorded repertoire was the multi-orchestra cycle of the ]Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
symphonies and vocal works with orchestra. All of Boulez's recordings for Deutsche Grammophon have been collected into boxed sets of CDs.
In addition, many hundreds of concerts conducted by Boulez are held in the archives of radio stations and orchestras. In 2005 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra released a 2-CD set of broadcasts by Boulez, focusing on works which he had not recorded commercially, including Janáček's ''Glagolitic Mass'' and Messiaen's ''L'ascension''.
Performing
Early in his career Boulez sometimes performed publicly as a pianist. In 1955 he accompanied the tenor Jean Giraudeau in a recording of songs by Stravinsky and Mussorgsky. Between 1957 and 1959 he gave several performances of his own Third Piano Sonata (a performance he gave in Darmstadt on 30 August 1959 was issued on CD in 2016). He also gave recitals of music for two pianos with Yvonne Loriod. In the 1960s and 1970s he occasionally included songs for voice and piano in orchestral programmes, for example accompanying Christa Ludwig in songs by Berg at a New York Philharmonic Orchestra concert in February 1972. A rare example of his pianism in later life was a short film made by Austrian television in 1992, in which Boulez played his early ''Notations''.
Writing and teaching
According to Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Boulez was one of two twentieth-century composers who wrote most prolifically about music, the other being Schoenberg. Ironically, it was with a 1952 article with the inflammatory title "Schoenberg is Dead", published in the British journal ''The Score'' shortly after the older composer's death, that Boulez first attracted international attention as a writer. This highly polemical piece, in which he attacked Schoenberg for his conservatism, contrasting it with Webern's radicalism, caused widespread controversy.
Jonathan Goldman points out that, over the decades, Boulez's writings addressed very different readerships: in the 1950s the cultured Parisian attendees of the Domaine musical; in the 1960s the specialised avant-garde composers and performers of the Darmstadt and Basel courses; and, between 1976 and 1995, the highly literate but non-specialist audience of the lectures he gave as Professor of the Collège de France. Much of Boulez's writing was linked to specific occasions, whether a first performance of a new piece, notes for a recording or a eulogy for a lost colleague. Generally he avoided publishing detailed analyses, other than one of ''The Rite of Spring''. As Nattiez points out: "as a writer Boulez is a communicator of ideas rather than of technical information. This may sometimes prove disappointing to composition students, but it is no doubt a peculiarity of his writing that explains its popularity with non-musicians."
Boulez's writings have appeared in English as ''Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship'', ''Boulez on Music Today'', ''Orientations: Collected Writings'' and ''Pierre Boulez, Music Lessons: The Complete Collège de France Lectures''. Throughout his career he also expressed himself through long-form interviews, of which perhaps the most substantial are those with Antoine Goléa (1958), Célestin Deliège (1975) and Jean Vermeil (1989). In addition, two volumes of correspondence have been published: with the composer John Cage (from the period 1949–62); and with the anthropologist and ethnomusicologist André Schaeffner (from 1954 to 1970).
Boulez taught at the Darmstadt Summer School most years between 1954 and 1965. He was professor of composition at the Musik Akademie Basel in Switzerland (1960–63) and a visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 1963. He also taught privately in the early part of his career. Students included the composers Richard Rodney Bennett, Jean-Claude Éloy and Heinz Holliger.
Legacy
An article published for Boulez's 80th birthday in ''The Guardian'' revealed that Boulez's fellow-composers had divided, and sometimes equivocal, views about him:
* George Benjamin (composer), George Benjamin: "[Boulez] has produced a catalogue of wondrously luminous and scintillating works. Within them a rigorous compositional skill is coupled to an imagination of extraordinary aural refinement".
* Oliver Knussen: "a man who fashions his scores with the fanatical idealism of a medieval monk minutely illuminating volumes"
* John Adams (composer), John Adams: "a mannerist, a niche composer, a master who worked with a very small hammer".
* Alexander Goehr: "[Boulez's] failures will be better than most people's successes".
When Boulez died in January 2016, he left no will. In 1986 he entered into an agreement to place his musical and literary manuscripts with the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. In December 2017, the Bibliothèque nationale de France announced that the Boulez estate had made a substantial donation of Boulez's private papers and possessions not covered by the Sacher contract, including 220 metres of books, 50 metres of archives and correspondence, as well as scores, photographs, recordings and about 100 other objects.
In October 2016, the large concert hall of the Philharmonie de Paris
The Philharmonie de Paris () ( en, Paris Philharmonic) is a complex of concert halls in Paris, France. The buildings also house exhibition spaces and rehearsal rooms. The main buildings are all located in the Parc de la Villette at the northeaste ...
, for which Boulez campaigned for many years, was renamed the Grande salle Pierre Boulez. In March 2017, a new concert hall, the Pierre Boulez Saal, designed by Frank Gehry, was opened in Berlin under the auspices of the Barenboim–Said Academy. It is home to a new Boulez Ensemble, made up of members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle and guest musicians from Berlin and around the world.
Boulez's music continues to be taken up by interpreters of the next generation. In September 2016 Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic paired Boulez's Éclat with Mahler's 7th Symphony for an international tour. In May and June 2017 many of Boulez's major works, including ''...explosante-fixe...'' and ''Répons'', were performed at the Vienna Konzerthaus 38th International Festival by Klangforum Wien, conducted by Baldur Brönnimann. In October 2017, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Matthias Pinscher, gave four performances of ''Répons'' over two evenings at the Park Avenue Armory, New York, in a presentation conceived by Pierre Audi. In September 2018 the first edition of the Pierre Boulez Biennial took place in Paris and Berlin, a joint initiative by the Philharmonie de Paris and the Staatskapelle Berlin under Daniel Barenboim. Performances of Boulez's music were set in the context of works which influenced him. The second Biennial was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, but a modified version went ahead (online in 2020, in person in 2021), with a particular focus on the piano music.
Honours and awards
State honours awarded to Boulez included Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE); and Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Among his many awards, Boulez listed the following in his ''Who's Who'' entry: Grand Prix de la Musique, Paris, 1982; Charles Heidsieck Award for Outstanding Contribution to Franco-British Music, 1989; Polar Music Prize, Stockholm, 1996; Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 1999; Wolf Prize, Israel, 2000; Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, University of Louisville, 2001; Glenn Gould Prize, Glenn Gould Foundation, 2002; Kyoto Prize, Japan, 2009; De Gaulle-Adenauer Prize, 2011; Giga-Hertz Prize, 2011; Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Venice Biennale, 2012; Gloria Artis Gold Medal, 2012; Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music, 2012; Karol Szymanowski Prize, Foundation Karol Szymanowski, 2012; Frontiers of Knowledge Award, BBVA Foundation, 2013, and nine honorary doctorates from universities and conservatoires in Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic and the United States.
Notes, references and sources
Notes
References
Sources
* Aguila, Jesus. 1992. ''Le Domaine Musical, Pierre Boulez et vingt ans de creation contemporaine'' (in French). Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard. .
* Akoka, Gérard. ''Entretiens de Pierre Boulez avec Gérard Akoka'' (in French). Paris: Éditions Minerve. .
* Archimbaud, Michel. 2016. ''Pierre Boulez. Entretiens avec Michel Archimbaud'' (in French). Paris: Éditions Gallimard. .
* Barbedette, Sarah (ed.). 2015. ''Pierre Boulez'' [Catalogue of the exhibition at the Musée de la musique in Paris, 17 March to 28 June 2015] (in French). Paris: Actes Sud. .
* Barrault, Jean-Louis. 1974. ''Memories for Tomorrow'', translated by Jonathan Griffin. London: Thames and Hudson. .
* Barulich, Frances. 1988. [Review of recently published books by and about Boulez, including Boulez 1981, Glock 1986 etc.]. ''Notes'' 2nd series, 45, no. 1 (September): 48–52.
* Bennett, Gerald. 1986. ''The Early Works''. In ''Pierre Boulez: A Symposium'', edited by William Glock, 41–84. London: Eulenburg Books. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 1971. ''Boulez on Music Today'', translated by Susan Bradshaw and Richard Rodney Bennett. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 1976. ''Conversations with Célestin Deliège''. London: Ernst Eulenburg Ltd. .
* Boulez, Pierre and Patrice Chéreau, Richard Peduzzi, Jacques Schmidt. 1980. ''Histoire d'un Ring'' with additional texts by Sylvie de Nussac and François Regnault (in French). Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 1986. ''Orientations: Collected Writings'', collected and edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, translated by Martin Cooper (musicologist), Martin Cooper. London: Faber & Faber, 1986. .
* Boulez, Pierre and John Cage. 1990. ''Correspondence et documents'', edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez with Françoise Davoine, Hans Oesch and Robert Piencikowski (in French). Basel: Amadeus Verlag. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 1991. ''Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship'', collected and presented by Paule Thévenin, translated by Stephen Walsh, 209–14. New York: Oxford University Press. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 1995. ''Points de repère, I: Imaginer'', edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Sophie Galaise, with the collaboration of Robert Piecikowski (in French). Musique/passé/présent. Paris: Christian Bourgois. .
* Boulez, Pierre and André Schaeffner. 1998. ''Correspondence, 1954–1970'', edited by Rosângela Pereira de Tugny (in French). Paris: Fayard. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 2003. ''Boulez on Conducting. Conversations with Cécile Gilly'', translated by Richard Stokes. London: Faber & Faber. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 2005a. ''Points de repère, II: Regards sur autrui'', edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Sophie Galaise (in French). Musique/passé/présent. Paris: Christian Bourgois. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 2005b. ''Points de repère, III: Leçons de musique: Deux décennies d'enseignement au Collège de France (1976–1995)'', edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez (in French). Musique/passé/présent. Paris: Christian Bourgois. .
* Boulez, Pierre. 2017. ''Entretiens de Pierre Boulez, 1983–2013, recueillis par Bruno Serrou'' (in French). Château-Gontier: Éditions Aedam Musicae. .
* Borchardt-Hume, Achim. 2015. ''Alexander Calder–Performing Sculpture''. London: Tate Publishing. .
* Bradshaw, Susan. 1986. ''The Instrumental and Vocal Music''. In ''Pierre Boulez: A Symposium'', edited by William Glock, 127–229. London: Eulenburg Books. .
* Campbell, Edward and Peter O'Hagan. 2016. ''Pierre Boulez Studies''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
* Di Pietro, Rocco. 2001. ''Dialogues with Boulez''. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. .
* Edwards, Allen. 1989. "Unpublished Bouleziana at the Paul Sacher Foundation". ''Tempo'' (New Series) no. 169 (June), 4–15.
* Ford, Andrew. 1993. ''Composer to Composer—Conversations about Contemporary Music''. London: Quartet Books Limited. .
* Glock, William. 1991. ''Notes in Advance''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
* Goldman, Jonathan. 2011. ''The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
* Goléa, Antoine. 1982. ''Rencontres avec Pierre Boulez'' (in French). Paris: Editions Slatkine. .
* Griffiths, Paul. 1978. ''Boulez'' (Oxford Studies of Composers). London: Oxford University Press. .
* Griffiths, Paul. 1995a. ''Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945''. London: Oxford University Press. .
* Griffiths, Paul. 1995b. Notes to CD ''Boulez: Exploding-Fixed''. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft GmBH. .
* Griffiths, Paul. 2005. ''The Substance of Things Heard—Writings about Music''. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. .
* Guldbrandsen, Erling E. 2015. "Playing with transformations: Boulez's Improvisation III sur Mallarmé". In Transformations of Musical Modernism, edited by Erling E. Guldbrandsen and Julian Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
* Heyworth, Peter. 1982. ''Boulez, Wagner and the Road to Répons''. BBC Promenade Concerts 1982 Season Brochure. London: BBC.
* Heyworth, Peter. 1986. ''The First Fifty Years''. In ''Pierre Boulez: A Symposium'', edited by William Glock, 3–40. London: Eulenburg Books. .
* Heyworth, Peter (ed.). 1973. ''Conversations with Klemperer''. London: Faber & Faber. .
* Hill, Peter and Nigel Simeone. 2005. ''Messiaen''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. .
* Hopkins, G. W., and Paul Griffiths. 2011. "Boulez, Pierre", ''Grove Music Online''. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. (retrieved 6 January 2016). (Subscription access)
* Iddon, Martin. 2013. ''New Music at Darmstadt. Nono, Stockhausen, Cage, and Boulez''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
* Jameux, Dominique. 1991. ''Pierre Boulez'', translated by Susan Bradshaw. London: Faber & Faber. .
* Jampol, Joshua. 2010. ''Living Opera''. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. .
* Kenyon, Nicholas. 1981. ''The BBC Symphony Orchestra, 1930–1980''. London: BBC. .
* Lebrecht, Norman. 2001. ''The Maestro Myth''. New York: Citadel Press. .
* Meïmoun, François. 2010. ''Entretien avec Pierre Boulez—la naissance d'un compositeur'' (in French). Château-Gontier, France: Aedem Musicae. .
* Merlin, Christian. 2019. ''Pierre Boulez'' (in French). Paris: Les éditions Fayard. .
* O'Hagan, Peter. 2017. ''Pierre Boulez and the Piano—A study in style and technique''. London and New York: Routledge. .
* Olivier, Philippe. 2005. ''Pierre Boulez: Le Maître et son marteau'' (in French). Collection points d'orgue. Paris: Hermann, éditeurs des sciences et des arts. .
* Peyser, Joan. 1976. ''Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma''. London: Cassell.
* Peyser, Joan. 1999. ''To Boulez and Beyond: Music in Europe Since the Rite of Spring''. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008.
* Piencikowski, Robert. 1990. Notes to CD ''Boulez: Le Visage nuptial/Le Soleil des eaux/Figures, Doubles, Prismes''. Hamburg: Erato-Disques S.A. .
* Ponsonby, Robert. 2009. ''Musical Heroes, A Personal View of Music and the Musical World Over Sixty Years''. London: Giles de la Mare Publishers Limited. .
* Porter, Andrew. 1988. ''Musical Events''. London: Grafton Books. .
* Rosenberg, Donald. 2000. ''The Cleveland Orchestra Story, "Second to None"''. Cleveland, OH: Gray and Company, Publishers. .
* Ross, Alex. 2007. ''The Rest is Noise''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. .
* Samuel, Claude. 1976. ''Conversations with Olivier Messiaen'', translated by Felix Aprahamian. London: Stainer and Bell. .
* Samuel, Claude (ed.). 1986. ''Eclats / Boulez'' (in French). Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou. .
* Samuel, Claude (ed.). 2002. ''Eclats 2002'' (in French). Paris: Mémoire du Livre. .
* Samuel, Claude. 2013. Notes to CD set ''Boulez: Complete Works''. France: Deutsche Grammophon. .
* Steinegger, Catherine. 2012. ''Pierre Boulez et le théâtre'' (in French). Wavre (Belgium): Éditions Mardaga.
* Vermeil, Jean. 1996. ''Conversations with Boulez: Thoughts on Conducting''. Translated by Camille Nash, with a selection of programs conducted by Boulez and a discography by Paul Griffiths. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press.
* Wagner, Wolfgang. 1994. ''Acts. The Autobiography of Wolfgang Wagner''. Translated by John Brownjohn. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. .
* Walsh, Stephen. 2006. ''Stravinsky: the Second Exile. France and America, 1934–1971''. London: Jonathan Cape. .
External links
Boulez pages at Universal Edition
– publisher of most of his work, including audio extracts and a calendar of forthcoming performances.
BBC artist page
– includes interviews with, and about, Boulez and extracts from works.
*
Audio recordings with Pierre Boulez
in the Online Archive of the Österreichische Mediathek (Interviews and radio reports) Retrieved 1 March 2021
Composer's entry on IRCAM's database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boulez, Pierre
Pierre Boulez,
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
1925 births
2016 deaths
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Collège de France faculty
Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Composers for cello
Composers for piano
Composers for violin
Conservatoire de Paris alumni
Deutsche Grammophon artists
French electronic musicians
Edison Classical Music Awards Oeuvreprijs winners
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners
French male conductors (music)
French classical composers
French male classical composers
French male writers
French music theorists
Glenn Gould Prize winners
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Grand Crosses of the Order of Saint James of the Sword
Honorary Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music
Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society
Ivor Novello Award winners
Kyoto laureates in Arts and Philosophy
LGBT classical composers
LGBT classical musicians
Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Music directors of the New York Philharmonic
Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Ondists
People from Montbrison, Loire
Pupils of René Leibowitz
Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
Recipients of the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis
Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale
Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists
Twelve-tone and serial composers
Wolf Prize in Arts laureates
20th-century French conductors (music)
20th-century French male musicians
20th-century French composers
21st-century French composers
Members of the German Academy for Language and Literature