Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)

[North Star]

He's selling his house in Provence. If you like "concrete" musi... euh Architecture... ;-)

http://www.valeursactuelles.com/guide-immobilier-maison-pierre-boulez-provence

I'd rather have this house of his than that prime example of modernist architecture at its worst.

[snyprrr]

I suppose you could use a similar procedure to Boulez's use of the SACHER chord in recent years....

Random fun fact: If you take the alphabetical positions of B-O-U-L-E-Z and map them onto a twelve-note scale, the resulting short note row is diatonic and even contains a dominant seventh chord:

(eg: Bb-B natural-F-Ab-Db-Bb)

So THAT's why he's so angry, haha!!

[Joaquimhock]

Amen!   0:)  That is just double-bug ugly!

Maybe it is nice inside, but...

The bathromm is not bad...

http://www.emilegarcin.fr/vente/Maison-darchitecte-Alpes-de-Haute-Provence-/FD66BE33-06E6-47D1-B992-0F897C9E8BFA/MEN-6037-SA.html

[ritter]

The program of the Festtage in Berlin for 2015 (March and April) has just been announced (here: http://staatsoper-berlin.de/de_DE/festtage-programm-2014-2015).

Four concerts are billed Hommage à Pierre Boulez. Barenboim conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in the Livre pour cordes and a piece labeled "Originel" (which I presume is the "Originel" from " ...explosante-fixe... ", i.e. Mémoriale). Another concert has pianist Michael Wendeberg playing the three Piano sonatas, Incises and the Notations. The West-Eastern Divan will do Dérive II. Finally, a concert with the Staatskapelle has Barenboim again conducting Le Visage nuptial, the Notations I - IV and, intriguingly, a Notation VI (the orchestral version of which is unknown until now). Or can it be a typo, and it's actually the Notation VII ?

[CRCulver]

If you haven't heard it yet, I'd recommend hearing this 1958 radio broadcast where Boulez explains his serialist aesthetic of the time. It's remarkable how far Boulez's English has come since then, as in later decades he was able to sound suave and charming in English, but here he can hardly get his point across.

[EigenUser]

Does anyone know what the tone row for "Derive I" is? Does it have one? I read that it does, but I can't seem to find it and it doesn't really sound like it has one. Just a lot of trills. Even a far-east folk-like theme in the last minute or two, very briefly. But no tone row?

amw, I suspect you have some idea... 

[Ken B]

Does anyone know what the tone row for "Derive I" is? Does it have one? I read that it does, but I can't seem to find it and it doesn't really sound like it has one. Just a lot of trills. Even a far-east folk-like theme in the last minute or two, very briefly. But no tone row?

amw, I suspect you have some idea... 

I believe it is all the notes of the harmonic scale. I don't recall the exact order though.

[petrarch]

Does anyone know what the tone row for "Derive I" is? Does it have one? I read that it does, but I can't seem to find it and it doesn't really sound like it has one. Just a lot of trills. Even a far-east folk-like theme in the last minute or two, very briefly. But no tone row?

amw, I suspect you have some idea... 

It's the six-note Sacher series (Eb-A-C-B-E-D). The trills are a result of the contrast between main notes and grace notes, ultimately related to Boulez's idea of striated and smooth time (which he described as early as in his Penser la musique aujourd'hui) and the form scheme of this work.

[EigenUser]

It's the six-note Sacher series (Eb-A-C-B-E-D). The trills are a result of the contrast between main notes and grace notes, ultimately related to Boulez's idea of striated and smooth time (which he described as early as in his Penser la musique aujourd'hui) and the form scheme of this work.

Thank you so much!

Interesting -- it isn't a 12-time row. I'll have to look at what he does with this. My first thought would be to make a "photo-negative" and play the missing six notes in a separate series.

[bwv 1080]

It's the six-note Sacher series (Eb-A-C-B-E-D). The trills are a result of the contrast between main notes and grace notes, ultimately related to Boulez's idea of striated and smooth time (which he described as early as in his Penser la musique aujourd'hui) and the form scheme of this work.

What is the relation to Paul Sacher of the (012457) hexachord?  it does not seem to have any special features

[amw]

amw, I suspect you have some idea... 

I never had patience for all those number games, actually. My ears glaze over as soon as I hear phrases like "pitch class" and "combinatoriality" and "hexachord". And I know ears can't actually glaze over, but shutup.

[EigenUser]

I never had patience for all those number games, actually. My ears glaze over as soon as I hear phrases like "pitch class" and "combinatoriality" and "hexachord". And I know ears can't actually glaze over, but shutup.

Oh, I have no formal music theory training. Those big words you threw at me just all make me think of the same thing -- Babbitt. I wouldn't have understood much beyond the simple 12 (or, I guess 6) note row and its usual three transformations.

[amw]

Oh, I have no formal music theory training. Those big words you threw at me just all make me think of the same thing -- Babbitt.

which actually shouldn't be surprising as I'm pretty sure he coined all three... hmm.

I do find some of Babbitt's music enjoyable but I would rather stab myself in the face than read his theory texts.

I wouldn't have understood much beyond the simple 12 (or, I guess 6) note row and its usual three transformations.

Basically. There's not even any reason a note row has to have 12 notes, or that they all be different (Stravinsky's Cantata uses a 9 note row that contains only Cs, Ds, Es and a C#—I know this because he actually pointed it out with brackets in the published score).

[EigenUser]

which actually shouldn't be surprising as I'm pretty sure he coined all three... hmm.

I do find some of Babbitt's music enjoyable but I would rather stab myself in the face than read his theory texts.Basically. There's not even any reason a note row has to have 12 notes, or that they all be different (Stravinsky's Cantata uses a 9 note row that contains only Cs, Ds, Es and a C#—I know this because he actually pointed it out with brackets in the published score).

The only Babbitt that I remotely liked was "All Set" for jazz band. Are his theory textbooks boring?

[San Antone]

Oh, I have no formal music theory training. Those big words you threw at me just all make me think of the same thing -- Babbitt. I wouldn't have understood much beyond the simple 12 (or, I guess 6) note row and its usual three transformations.

Those words are nothing more than descriptions of how most serial composers use the series as the underlying raw data for the work much like a tonal composer will not use the entire major or minor scale for his melodies, but segment it into motives and smaller phrases.  A hexachord is just a word to describe a six note segment; trichord is a three note segment, and so on.  Pitch class is something unique to serial music.  And it denotes the idea that a particular note in the series represents not one specific iteration (register or octave) but is one of the "class" of "pitch C" for example.  Combinatorial is a term Babbitt took from set theory, and essentially means that the last six notes of a series mirror (in some form) the first six but do not repeat any of the pitches.  Webern liked to utilize this in his rows.  The advantage of combinatorial series is that the first half of the "O" series can be combined with the last half of one of the others, e.g. the last half of its inversion at one of the transpositions.  This allows a composer to generate many variations of his original series, but all  being related to each other.

Boulez was composer who wished to hide his process and it is almost impossible to find the original series from merely looking at the score.  It is possible and analyses have been done (most famously by Ligeti for Structures 1a, and someone else did a analysis of Marteau Sans Maitre) - but that is not the point, really.

Just listen to the music and don't even think of trying to hear the "series". 

[amw]

Are his theory textbooks boring?

Multiply those three words by 50,000 or so... actually that will suffice also to tell you about pretty much every other book on serial techniques. Particularly the Americans who seemed obsessed with turning it into a branch of the hard sciences for a while.

Just listen to the music and don't even think of trying to hear the "series". 

This is my viewpoint also.

[EigenUser]

Those words are nothing more than descriptions of how most serial composers use the series as the underlying raw data for the work much like a tonal composer will not use the entire major or minor scale for his melodies, but segment it into motives and smaller phrases.  A hexachord is just a word to describe a six note segment; trichord is a three note segment, and so on.  Pitch class is something unique to serial music.  And it denotes the idea that a particular note in the series represents not one specific iteration (register or octave) but is one of the "class" of "pitch C" for example.  Combinatorial is a term Babbitt took from set theory, and essentially means that the last six notes of a series mirror (in some form) the first six but do not repeat any of the pitches.  Webern liked to utilize this in his rows.

Boulez was composer who wished to hide his process and it is almost impossible to find the original series from merely looking at the score.  It is possible and analyses have been done (most famously by Ligeti for Structures 1a, and someone else did a analysis of Marteau Sans Maitre) - but that is not the point, really.

Just listen to the music and don't even think of trying to hear the "series".

Nice explanation, thanks!

"Structures 1a", I admit, was the piece that really turned me off serialism. Recently I discovered "Derive", though, and have been trying to find more things like it (I didn't like "Derive II", but I need to hear it again).

[Mandryka]

Does anyone know if there's a place online where I can read "Sonate, que me veux-tu?"? I have the LP which Rosen made of the third sonata, transferred to FLAC. I'll upload it to symphonyshare if anyone expresses an interest. I wonder what are people's experiences with the this music, whether people have heard any recordings which are particularly satisfying.

Boulez recorded it in 1958. Is it available anywhere?

[petrarch]

Thank you so much!

Interesting -- it isn't a 12-time row. I'll have to look at what he does with this. My first thought would be to make a "photo-negative" and play the missing six notes in a separate series.

There are six six-note series, each built up by rotating the intervals while always starting with Eb.

Strict twelve-tone rows have been passé for quite a long while .

[petrarch]

What is the relation to Paul Sacher of the (012457) hexachord?  it does not seem to have any special features

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacher_hexachord