Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)

[Mahlerian]

I know what you're saying.


The quickest way I know of for a Classical Snob to get a taste of the real world, is to play some cherished Masterpiece of High Modernism... look folks, it really only takes early Schoenberg,... anyhow, play this piece that YOU JUST KNOW this friend/lover/family memebr/respected person... just a "normal" person, and play them you piece,... and then watch the reaction... which shouldn't take long!

Look, I was in the car with this one lady, and I had brought Schubert Trios... I don't know, I thought they'd be soothing... NO!!...and when she started to "OMG, turn that shit off I can't think, how can you listen to that..." and she made screetchy violin skrank noises... and I was listening to the music, and in my mind,... I had to agree... it was at a particularly "emotional" point, and yes, the piano and strings were all aflutter everywhere, and yes, it wasn't what ANYONE SHOULD WANT TO HEAR. And here we are blasting Boulez et al, and now I'm hearing Schubert as a musical trainwreck of emotion because it wasn't SOOTHING. And Shumann?,... please.

This belatedly reminded me of a review I happened to come across on Amazon yesterday.  As far as I can tell by this guy's reviews, he's entirely serious here:

Lousy

I previously heard this String Quintet performed by some forgotten group, and I did not like it. Today I decided to give this String Quintet a second chance, as performed by musicians with stellar reputations. It is a subpar composition for Schubert. In movements 1-3 the forte passages are indistinguishable from noise. In movements 1 & 2 the cello pizzicato is so loud that it distracts from the melody (what little there is). I must admit that part of movement 3 is pretty. Movement 4 is so agitated that it is disturbing. This is music to be endured rather than enjoyed. I have listened to a lot of classical music since 1968, and this is the worst I've ever heard, aside from 3 works by Benjamin Britten.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RM8EG8MY37TDI/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B000V6MR8Q

[Karl Henning]

I previously heard this String Quintet performed by some forgotten group, and I did not like it. Today I decided to give this String Quintet a second chance, as performed by musicians with stellar reputations. It is a subpar composition for Schubert. In movements 1-3 the forte passages are indistinguishable from noise. In movements 1 & 2 the cello pizzicato is so loud that it distracts from the melody (what little there is). I must admit that part of movement 3 is pretty. Movement 4 is so agitated that it is disturbing. This is music to be endured rather than enjoyed. I have listened to a lot of classical music since 1968, and this is the worst I've ever heard, aside from 3 works by Benjamin Britten.

Slightly adjusted for style, but not at all for content, that reads like any number of James's posts.

[snyprrr]

Slightly adjusted for style, but not at all for content, that reads like any number of James's posts.

:'(LEAVE JAMES ALONE!

[Mirror Image]

Forget to take your meds again, Alien?

[Karl Henning]

:'(LEAVE JAMES ALONE!

Sure, let's give Snowflake a Safe Space 

[Karl Henning]

Nah, just feeling amused (and much better) today.

Good!  I dig the fins, real futuristic.

[snyprrr]

Nah, just feeling amused (and much better) today.

To this day, I am still perplexed by the very confrontational attitudes I've come across towards modern music. I've never understood it, I guess I never will.

When I first heard Pli Selon Pli, it was so a thrilling experience and I've come to love it very much, same with the sonatas and Repons etc.

My relationship with modern music, seems to be similar to many older *other people's profound love of Romantic and Classical era music, I don't know.

I JUST DON'T GET IT  


I've just a had a 7 hour car trip and I'm in another city for the week. I'm feeling very inspired right now 

I haaated Modern Music at first. 'Tetras'?... huh boy, first time I heard that, of course my ABBA trigger kicked in and I was like whaaaa? Ahen I say Carter's tough nut Brass Quintet at school, and thought it was horrid. I would be vicious like one of these protester types, smashing modern music's storefront and setting it on fire.

I don't know what happened.

Maybe Turangalila or something like that ,,..something that SOUNDED FUN. I mean, Boulez ... I don't really think of his music as "fun", even though 'Sur Incises' has a tumbling, rolling fun feeling... but... not like Donatoni...


I mean, seriously, Modern Music IS, technically, MEANT to sound "bad" Right? To "normal people", Again I challenge to play your fav bloop/nleep for anyone of the unwashed and see what happens. They haven't been programmed like us and will see through the first tritone and call BS.

I mean... is Music really heading anywhere right now? Isn't it so that we HAVE LOST... SOMETHING? I mean, there are no musical giants getting on the cover of Time... music has died... it's no longer useful to the DeepPoliceState

just wait till the muslin overthrow of the Western World, then it's going to be hali-ali-ali-ahhhh all day and night.


Xenakis thought in Utopian terms but I see NONE of this Greatness around today... none of has survived (it didn't even last his career- his last pieces speak of exhaustion and death... no more Utopia)



I mean, you DO understand how/why "Normies" will never come around to this. It's just not "natural". People want natural. Ordered. That's why you'd have to try the EASIEST Xenakis on anyone, if there were such a thing- I'm sure my mommu would like 'A Helene' or whatever that piece is.


To me, Schoebergian technique IS the sound of "mental illness" (since it only seems to reflect agitated states of emotion), and normal people hear it as... wait for it... yes.... "horror movie music"


I mean, you DO actually "get it", right? And James is just playing Devil's Advocate, reminding us that the greater outside world still thinks we are nerds... like those annoying people on pool leagues or bicycle clubs.


Just be thankful, for instance, that you and I both share love for Xenakis... that's just ONE PERSON, but you have to be grateful. I am ,...

as for Boulez... mm... yea... I would've wanted MOAR... I'll stick with IX here... Boulez seems like he's the "mean teacher" type, lol, IX is more like James Dean...


We're definitely in the minority

[Mahlerian]

To me, Schoebergian technique IS the sound of "mental illness" (since it only seems to reflect agitated states of emotion), and normal people hear it as... wait for it... yes.... "horror movie music"

Which is strange, because horror movie music sounds nothing like Schoenberg.  It usually sounds more like a bunch of techniques cribbed from early Penderecki thrown together.

[Karl Henning]

. . . of course my ABBA trigger kicked in . . . .

No one here can deny that you are ready to make yourself vulnerable.

[Cato]

Which is strange, because horror movie music sounds nothing like Schoenberg.  It usually sounds more like a bunch of techniques cribbed from early Penderecki thrown together.

The Exorcist in fact used excerpts from several works by Penderecki, as well as excerpts from works by Crumb, Webern, and Henze.

[Karl Henning]

I mean, seriously, Modern Music IS, technically, MEANT to sound "bad" Right? To "normal people"

You've got a very strange grasp of the stick.  I should say, instead, that Modern Music cannot remain within the musical technique of the "normal person's" (leaving that stand for the present) Comfort Zone.

To me, Schoebergian technique IS the sound of "mental illness"

Like Mahlerian, I don't hear this at all, all (nor do I believe I heard it at all in that way the very first I listened to it).  Rather than (as was my first impulse) provide 10 counter-examples, would you give us your examples?

[kishnevi]

Nah, just feeling amused (and much better) today.

To this day, I am still perplexed by the very confrontational attitudes I've come across towards modern music. I've never understood it, I guess I never will.

When I first heard Pli Selon Pli, it was so a thrilling experience and I've come to love it very much, same with the sonatas and Repons etc.

My relationship with modern music, seems to be similar to many older *other people's profound love of Romantic and Classical era music, I don't know.

I JUST DON'T GET IT  


I've just a had a 7 hour car trip and I'm in another city for the week. I'm feeling very inspired right now 

Mind you, I am at least thirty five years older than you, so my ears started off at a different place.  A lot of the music you like was not even in existence yet when I was in college, or produced in the last fifteen years and not heard very often.  Karajan and Bernstein were still on the podium. Rap did not exist, and Led Zeppelin was about the heaviest metal around (although that changing).

So when I heard much of that music, it was to my ears ugly, and your "composed by a cat" remark does apply. It still does, to me. I don't like Maitre sans Marteau, and it put me off Boulez for years, until I got myself to listen to his later works.  Same for Schoenberg (I still don't like anything not from his earlier period) and Ligeti, although eventually I got to terms with him. And I liked Berg from the first note I heard, btw Anything Darmstadtian, so to speak,  grates on my ears. A lot of the middle 20th century is stuff that just does not strike a chord with me.
Trends in the last twenty years or so have produced much more music I like. You remember how I said I liked later Penderecki more than earlier, and that is why. I did find better luck with works for small forces. That's how I worked myself into Ligeti, and trying off and on with Carter.

But I would not call any of this music "mental illness".  And to keep this to the composer to whom this thread is dedicated, I find later Boulez much more easier to connect with than earlier Boulez.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I tend to feel more of a connection with music written closer to the time I have been alive....late Boulez being one such type of music. Earlier Boulez is brilliant and I love it to bits, but for me, those are museum pieces now rather than anything representative of 'music today.'

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Apparently oblivious to irony.

[Mirror Image]

Nah, just feeling amused (and much better) today.

To this day, I am still perplexed by the very confrontational attitudes I've come across towards modern music. I've never understood it, I guess I never will.

When I first heard Pli Selon Pli, it was so a thrilling experience and I've come to love it very much, same with the sonatas and Repons etc.

My relationship with modern music, seems to be similar to many older *other people's profound love of Romantic and Classical era music, I don't know.

I JUST DON'T GET IT  


I've just a had a 7 hour car trip and I'm in another city for the week. I'm feeling very inspired right now 

I think I'll reply to this as my buddy Jeffrey Smith already put his personal yet eloquent spin on it. Like Jeffrey, I started off in a completely different place than you did when it came to classical music. First of all, nobody, aside from my grandfather and uncle whom I never spoke to about music much, liked classical music. When I did ask my grandfather for some recommendations, he gave me a pretty standard list: Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, etc. Well, I knew these composers even though I didn't know their music, I also knew that I was going to have to explore this music on my own and just dive in head-first. Whenever I saw an interview in a magazine of one of my favorite jazz guitarists mention Bartók, I was intrigued. After this encounter, I had heard Copland's Billy the Kid but in a jazz band arrangement. Ives was also a name I ran across that I kept in the back of my mind. Where I'm getting at is we all start off in a different place and what we're influenced by or are inspired to explore forms the foundation of our appreciation of this music. I love the late-19th up to mid-20th Centuries the most of any period. Like Jeffrey, I can easily get onboard with The Second Viennese School and I do love more Schoenberg than he does, but I'm also quite versed in post-WWII composers like Ligeti, Scelsi, Takemitsu, Lutoslawski, Schnittke, among others. There's a lot of music that I just don't get and does absolutely nothing for me, but I have found that most of it comes from the second half of the 20th Century and well into our current time.

All of this said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with someone who is only into Baroque or Classical Era music just like there's nothing wrong with someone who focuses on music of our current era only. You should explore and listen to music that you like and it's really as simple as that. It would be wrong-headed, and ignorant, of me to point my finger at you and tell you that you're not listening to music correctly or you should be listening to this or that composer. There is no wrong way to listen and explore music. That's the beauty of it. No judgement should be passed on anyone for pursuing music that they have an immense interest and passion for.

[snyprrr]

Which is strange, because horror movie music sounds nothing like Schoenberg.  It usually sounds more like a bunch of techniques cribbed from early Penderecki thrown together.

I don't know why the "mental illness" image is poo-pooed. Who was it that said that after Wagner, it was a "race to the graveyard" in terms of the emotional states that the new extensions of tonality was creating?

I mean, Schoenberg DOESN'T illuminate more stressed out emotional states than, say, ... uh... Tchaikovsky? And, isn't the music called EXPRESSIONISM? Expressive of what? Extreme emotional states.

Wasn't that the point?



For the most part, I'm ONLY reflecting what I've heard the NORMIES say, and THEY say it "all" sounds like horror movie music- I know it doesn't really, but, of course, we all know what they're saying. It's not Mozart or Haydn.

You've got a very strange grasp of the stick.  I should say, instead, that Modern Music cannot remain within the musical technique of the "normal person's" (leaving that stand for the present) Comfort Zone.

Like Mahlerian, I don't hear this at all, all (nor do I believe I heard it at all in that way the very first I listened to it).  Rather than (as was my first impulse) provide 10 counter-examples, would you give us your examples?

Elliott Carter. Period.

Stockhausen/ Boulez/ Nono. Period.

Sessions. Period.

Lucier/ Young/ uh.... Period.




What was the argument again? It's a nice day outside... can't we all just get along? 

[Mahlerian]

I don't know why the "mental illness" image is poo-pooed. Who was it that said that after Wagner, it was a "race to the graveyard" in terms of the emotional states that the new extensions of tonality was creating?

Whoever it was probably took Adorno far more seriously than he deserves.  Whatever use his writings may be (and I respect him for having been one of the first to write perceptively on Mahler, however much I disagree with his conclusions), he is not a reliable guide to the way Schoenberg thought about his own music.  Schoenberg despised Adorno and felt nearly the opposite on many issues.

I mean, Schoenberg DOESN'T illuminate more stressed out emotional states than, say, ... uh... Tchaikovsky? And, isn't the music called EXPRESSIONISM? Expressive of what? Extreme emotional states.

Wasn't that the point?

Yes and no.

Schoenberg did turn to non-triadic harmony in response to an impulse to express emotions more directly.  Expressionism was not his term, but one that was applied by critics after the fact.  At the time, many critics called his music "impressionist," to connect it with the ultra-modern music of Debussy and those around him, and some used the terms interchangeably.  It is true that, like Schoenberg's music of this period, most impressionist music is not traditionally tonal.

Likewise, the emotional states in the music are heightened and intensified, but they are not by any means wholly negative.  Pierrot lunaire, for example, traverses a whole range of emotions, from the ironic to the wistful, and the first music of this style, the "Rapture" movement of the Second Quartet, is transcendent, not alienated but ethereal.

Music of the serial period (which is not generally called expressionist) has an even wider emotional range.

For the most part, I'm ONLY reflecting what I've heard the NORMIES say, and THEY say it "all" sounds like horror movie music- I know it doesn't really, but, of course, we all know what they're saying. It's not Mozart or Haydn.

Normal people don't listen to any classical music.  And no, I certainly don't know what they're saying, because for one person "dissonant and modern" can be Debussy, for another Schoenberg, for another Mahler, for another Philip Glass, and so on.  I have no clue what an individual's perception is when they use a cliched phrase to express it.

[Karl Henning]

Elliott Carter. Period.

Stockhausen/ Boulez/ Nono. Period.

Sessions. Period.

You add "period" because you know that you haven't answered the question, haven't made an argument.  0:)

Elliott Carter?

http://www.youtube.com/v/pZpUfwN67xA

Boulez?

http://www.youtube.com/v/98COFqc7-NE


I do not hear that as the music of mental illness, at all, at all.  Do you?  Why?

Sessions did not employ Schoenbergian technique.  Period 


(Neither did Carter, really.  That brush broad enough for ya?)

[snyprrr]

You add "period" because you know that you haven't answered the question, haven't made an argument.  0:)

Elliott Carter?

http://www.youtube.com/v/pZpUfwN67xA

Boulez?

http://www.youtube.com/v/98COFqc7-NE


I do not hear that as the music of mental illness, at all, at all.  Do you?  Why?

Sessions did not employ Schoenbergian technique.  Period 


(Neither did Carter, really.  That brush broad enough for ya?)

Of course not the Cello Sonata, I'm talking Mature Compositions...


Using the "technique" isn't the point, it's the "hard on the noob ears" effect, the rigorous,... the manly...


I mean, sure, I'll just end the conversation with one word: Ives. To me, Ives has enough for grandma to enjoy, but, because he's Da Man, and believes people should take their dissonances as such, ole granny STILL won't have her nursery rhyme music to make he feel safe and good.


I hope you all realize I'm just making granny's argument here- it's not me (riiight??)- and, frankly, again, just to end the confusion- FUCK GRANNY'S EARS!!

But, my point here is is that, generally, granny DOES somehow rule the world, and people who like their music straight up are asked to go into the corner- I mean, this will never be MAINSTREAM- I don't know if anyone here is actually harboring that sentiment (that OUR MUSIC MUST BE HEARD), but, hey, just be grateful you actually have Sessions and Carter and Boulez and whatever...


Still, I'll go as far as 95% of all is shyte... but, as Scripture says, one will seek out buried treasure.... BURIED in a mountain of shyte...


I have this CRI disc by Donald Harris, a typical Modern American Composer, with a String Quartet from 1971(?), and the thing is about as doctrinaire a typical gnarly-ish Serial-ish work as one could ask for. It's pretty well pruned in my estimation, but, ultimately, it resides in a bucket with about a billion other works that sound soooooo much like it I end up just picking one or two for an example. (how this is different than 1793, I don't know)...



Karl, don't you have a granny somewhere? I mean, you've never had a normie look at you funny when you tried to play "this cool new work" for them? Don't you write somewhat gnarly music? Do you have a granddaughter you could play it for?- I'd love to know the out of mouths of babes-

"Oh, I love you uncle Karl, but why don't you write any NICE music?"


You've really never heard this?



I know it's hard trying to make this (lost) point to the converted... here at GMG,... but you all seem to be acting like the world at large doesn't know in its heart of hearts that we are all somewhat "off" for even giving a tritone the light of day...


Yea, trolling the Boulez Thread isn't what I had hoped for.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Just gonna post this here, it is from a performance at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music (BIFEM) in 2015.

https://soundcloud.com/bifemsoundarchive/sur-incises-by-pierre-boulez-1996-98

Interested to know what you all think of the performance. There's something I like about the roughness here, which I think is quite nice.........certainly performed with lots of character. It is noticeably slower than EIC/Boulez.