''...explosante-fixe...'' () is a piece of music composed by

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 19255 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 contemporary classical music. Born in Montb ...

. Initially conceived in 1971 as a memorial for

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...

, who died in April of that year, several different versions of the work were composed by Boulez between 1972 and 1993, culminating in a piece for solo

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

and chamber orchestra.

Title

The title of the work is taken from the concluding line of the first chapter of

André Breton André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

's '' L'amour fou'' (1937): "La beauté convulsive sera érotique-voilée, explosante-fixe, magique-circonstancielle, ou ne sera pas" (Convulsive beauty will be erotic-veiled, exploding-fixed, magical-circumstantial, or it will not be at all).

History

The first version of ''...explosante-fixe...'' (1971–1972) is a one-page

aleatoric Aleatoricism (or aleatorism) is a term for musical compositions and other forms of art resulting from "actions made by chance". The term was first used "in the context of electro-acoustics and information theory" to describe "a course of sound ...

work in seven parts entitled, according to one report, ''Originel'' and ''Transitoires II–VII'',Javier Alejandro Garavaglia, "Raising Awareness about Complete Automation of Live-electronics: A Historical Perspective", in ''Auditory Display: 6th International Symposium, CMMR/ICAD 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 18–22, 2009'', edited by Sølvi Ystad, 443–45, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5954; LNCS Sublibrary SL 3 (Berlin and New York: Springer, 2010). though the manuscript score (published as two pages of music and twelve pages of instructions) bears the title in the composer's hand '' .. Explosante-fixe ...', and the indications "Originel" and "Transitoires II–VII" are the names of the groups into which the work is divided. The seven parts each represent one member of a seven-note row found in the "Originel" section: E, G, D, A, B, A, E, an emblem of the Stravinsky memorial for which it was composed (the note E sustained at the beginning is pronounced ''Es'' in German, cognate with the letter S for "Stravinsky"). The pitches of this row were later used also in '' Rituel''. In this original form, the instruments were not indicated, though a possible scoring for two violins, two flutes, two clarinets, and harp is suggested. Like most of the other pieces in the Stravinsky memorial, this reflects the instrumentation of two brief commemorative works Stravinsky wrote in 1959: the '' Epitaphium'' for flute, clarinet, and harp, and the '' Double Canon'' (in memory of Dufy) for string quartet. In the two subsequent years, Boulez developed ''...explosante-fixe...'' into a work for solo flute, accompanied by

clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or ...

vibraphone The vibraphone (also called the vibraharp) is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using Percussion mallet, mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone ...

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...

cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...

and electronics. Performances of this version made use of a recently created device known as the Halaphone. According to inventor

Hans Peter Haller Hans Peter Haller (26 October 1929 – 16 April 2006) was a German composer and pioneer of electroacoustic music. Life Born in Radolfzell, Haller studied church music in Heidelberg from 1947 and took composition lessons with Wolfgang Fortne ...

, the Halaphone is capable of "projecting sounds in various directions and at various speeds at will, projecting sound from point to point, making it move in circles around a hall, or making it move diagonally across a hall." Boulez, however, was ultimately unsatisfied with the electronics. There were actually two main variants, a "preliminary" version based on the bare bones of the outline score and scored for a trio of violin, clarinet, and trumpet, first performed by the London Sinfonietta in St John's, Smith Square in June 1972, and a longer, more sophisticated, and seemingly definitive form for septet, premiered in New York on 5 January 1973 and subsequently revised several times, for performances in Rome on 13 May 1973, at the

Promenade Concerts The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the ...

in London in August 1973, at the

Donaueschinger Musiktage The Donaueschingen Festival, or more precisely ''Donaueschingen Music Days'' (), is a three-day October event presenting new music in the town of the same name, where the Danube River starts, at the edge of the Black Forest in southern Germany. F ...

on 21 October 1973 (by which time it had become an octet) and at the

Théâtre d'Orsay The théâtre d'Orsay was a theater located on the rive gauche of the Seine, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris It was inaugurated in 1972 in the former gare d'Orsay originally conceived by the architect Victor Laloux in 1898. Jean-Louis Barra ...

in Paris as part of the Festival d'Automne 1974, where it created a sensation. These revisions involved changes in the order of sections and rewriting six of the eight instrumental parts. In all, there are four different versions for the flute, three versions each for the viola and cello, two versions each for the trumpet, violin, and clarinet, but only one version each for the vibraphone and harp, which differ from one version to the next only in the ordering of their constituent parts. Boulez withdrew the materials for both versions, primarily because of his dissatisfaction with the all-too-audible failure of the electronics, and in particular the computer tape that was intended to direct the conductorless 1973 Proms version, but also as an acknowledgement that the scoring really required a symphony orchestra.Susan Bradshaw, "Comparing Notes", ''Musical Times'' 137, no. 1844 (October 1996): 5–12. Citations on 8 and 11–12. The next version of ''...explosante-fixe...'', for vibraphone and electronics, was not composed until 1986. In the intervening years, parts of the original material appeared in other works by Boulez, specifically '' Rituel'' (1975) and ''Mémoriale'' (1985). Between 1991 and 1993, while at

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 music, avant garde and Electroacoustic ...

, Boulez composed a new version of ''...explosante-fixe...'', for solo MIDI-flute with live electronics, two "shadow" flutes and a chamber orchestra. This version premiered in

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

at ''Settembre Musica Festival'' on 13 September 1993, in a performance by the Ensemble InterContemporain.

References

External links

*May, Thomas.

996 Year 996 ( CMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Japan * February - Chotoku Incident: Fujiwara no Korechika and Takaie shoot an arrow at Retired Emperor Kazan. * 2 March: Emperor ...

br>About the Piece: '...explosante-fixe...': Pierre Boulez
. La Phil website. Accessed 25 August 2011. *Zurletti, Michelangelo. 1993

''La Repubblica'' (18 September), from website. Accessed 28 September 2019. {{DEFAULTSORT:explosante-fixe Compositions by Pierre Boulez Computer music compositions 20th-century classical music Serial compositions Compositions for flute Compositions for violin Compositions for clarinet Compositions for trumpet Chamber music compositions

Title

History

References

Further reading

External links