Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)

[Cato]

Perhaps it marked the beginning of his market savvy. He has become very rich.
But there's a logic here. If he became more open minded when he was older, then he was less open-minded
When he was younger, no?

Well, it seems that way, but it was mentioned that e.g. his Mahler interest perhaps goes back to the 1960's, so - maybe - he was more accepting of other earlier composers than he let on. 

See:

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Boulez was conducting Mahler as early as the 1960s. It was his adoption of Bruckner and, a decade later, Janacek that really showed that the man had mellowed.

A Boulez Bruckner cycle!   0:)

[Abuelo Igor]

Okay so give some examples of trying to suppress other people's music. I'm not a hardcore Boulezian; I've learned a lot in this conversation. So, I really want to know the examples, just out of curiosity.

I remember reading some time ago an interview with the late Jean Françaix in which he said that his music stopped being performed in Paris after "a certain gentleman" started to be important there. It is not incontrovertible evidence, and it could just be an embittered old man speaking, but the perception has always existed that you wouldn't get state support, or, for that matter, performances of your music, if you didn't "toe the line" that was largely attributed at the time to this certain monsieur's policies. I also read somewhere that the first time an orchestral work by Dutilleux was performed at one of the main concert venues in Paris was during a tour of the CBSO, led by Sakari Oramo. I remember wondering how that was posible, and the thought came into my mind of the famous story about Boulez turning his back on Dutilleux in the 50s because he had written a symphony, or something like that.

I heard somewhere that he had had some kind of falling out with Jean Barraqué, who was his contemporary and, so to speak, composed "on the same side of the fence". Back in the day, both he and Boulez were serious contenders in the French avant-garde, but today Barraqué is half-forgotten. It's true that he committed suicide in 1973, but all the works that made Boulez's reputation and are considered classics today date from before that year. I don't know if Boulez, despite having conducted some of Barraqué's music during his Domaine Musical days, has done much in subsequent years to keep alive the memory of his colleague.

There is also the urban legend that one of the conditions Boulez demanded in his recording contract with Columbia was that the Robert Craft recordings of Schoenberg be kept permanently out of print, so that he would become the absolute reference. Again, it's all hearsay, but I'm still waiting for a CD reissue of those old vinyl sets, so, as the Italians say, "se non è vero è ben trovato".

[amw]

The claims keep shifting.
He never did that.
He was young when he did that.
After he was young he was being intellectual when he did that.
When he wasn't being an intellectual but a music director he was entitled to do that when he did that.
Hey, his music is great so it doesn't matter he did that.

Keep knocking down those strawmen, you're doing great.

I don't think one can argue that Boulez tried to 'suppress' any music, apart from e.g. the Trois psalmodies, quartet for four Ondes Martenot, Symphonie concertante... >.> It might help to think of musical trends as akin to fashion trends. Boulez did much to make serialism fashionable for a while, at least in certain circles: fashionable to write, to praise, or to mock depending on one's inclinations. (Stravinsky did all three.) Sort of like, say, sneakers. Suddenly everyone's wearing sneakers and, even if you think they're ugly and will never match your shoes for style, you might be tempted to try them on just to see what they're like. Or you might feel a bit lonely because no one's commenting on your shoes anymore, they're not cool enough. But in a short time, sneakers won't be such the rage anymore. There'll be some new kind of shoe, maybe crocs or something, and that's what everyone will be talking about instead. And so forth. And if you don't like any of the new kinds of shoes, you can just keep wearing your old ones until they become 'retro' or 'vintage' or something and you feel part of the fold again.

Similarly... well, like it or not, the things Boulez and Stockhausen and Leibowitz etc were saying in the 1950s and early 60s evidently struck a chord with a lot of people. Maybe it was a tonic chord and they felt they'd come home to the true aesthetic, maybe it was a jangly dissonant chord that really ruffled their feathers, but either way, serialism was in fashion. Then look at the 70s and early 80s. Boulez, Stockhausen and Leibowitz have retreated to conducting, whatever the hell planet Stockhausen lives on, and conducting, respectively. Most of the other Darmstadt composers (Ligeti, Kagel, etc) have moved on to new aesthetics (like those sneakers with wheels and flashing lights in. I used to love those). They're all 'establishment' now. The new avant-garde, the composers who are all the rage, who'd never be caught dead in a bowtie or a music faculty, are people like Glass and Reich and Riley. Are you going to argue that the minimalists were trying to 'suppress' the serialists, that Bang on a Can hates freedom by refusing to program any Babbitt or Wuorinen etc? Be reasonable. Boulez didn't do worse to Françaix than Glass did to Boulez, insults aside*: made him appear unfashionable. Not the worst fate in the world.

* yeah ok, Boulez insults lots of people, I'll give you that. So he's a Dorothy Parker wannabe. I think everyone is, secretly.

[not edward]

I think there's a gradual change between the Darmstadt-era Boulez, who was essentially projecting a non-stop "my hammer's bigger than your hammer" battle with Stockhausen and Nono, and the Boulez of the last 30 years. His views may not have changed much, and the catty remarks never totally stopped, but the more recent Boulez doesn't seem to have felt the need to constantly go to war with the rest of the planet. Perhaps he became more at peace with himself, and more willing to accept his own failings? Certainly it's easy to find anecdotes involving musicians who've worked with him in the last 20 years and who seem to think very warmly of him.

The near-20-year-period between Marteau and Rituel during which he didn't "finish" a single work (even Pli selon pli got rewritten again and again) seems to point to a certain lack of confidence; perhaps conducting suited him better than composition, because you can't go back and rewrite a concert you've already given. It's certainly easy for me to believe that obsessively tinkering with works he'd already finished may have deprived us of some significant compositions.

I've a feeling he probably will be remembered more as a conductor than a composer; but I do think the best of his works (amongst which I would number Marteau, Pli selon pli, Rituel and sur Incises) have qualities enough to ensure that they won't be entirely forgotten.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Well, then let's say its like expecting Toscanini to have programmed Mahler regularly at the NBC  .

I really don't see why Boulez is considered to have turned the NYPO into his private fiefdom....he surely didn't conduct what he didn't like (well, I know there was Brahms once at least--some people will be able to say: " I saw Boulez do Brahms, and I've lived to tell it"  ), but that is natural in any M.D., and it may be interesting to see the orchestra's programming during those years. I'm sure Tchaikovsky, and Copland, and...you name it, were presented by guest conductors...

Exactly. If you actually look at the Philharmonic archives to see what Boulez conducted as MD, his performances included the Meistersinger Prelude (10 times), Till Eulenspiegel (6), the Schumann 4th (4), the Schubert C major (3), Pictures at an Exhibition (9), Mendelssohn's Italian (6), the Mahler 9th (10), Mathis der Maler (2), the Dvorak Cello Concerto (2), Beethoven's 7th (10), Beethoven's 2nd (14), excerpts from Berlioz's Romeo (25!); and some Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Brahms symphonies and concertos, and Prokofiev piano concertos. I couldn't afford many performances back in those days, but I distinctly remember him doing the Schumann Scenes from Faust. Of course there were also the usual suspects like Bartok, Berg, Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern, but comparatively little of his own work, and naturally plenty of guest conductors to handle the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. Whatever Boulez's feelings towards any of this music might have been, this is hardly using the NY Phil podium as a private fiefdom.

[amw]

It's certainly easy for me to believe that obsessively tinkering with works he'd already finished may have deprived us of some significant compositions.

Yes, as far as Boulez-the-composer goes, I feel like each revision he makes to a piece makes that piece less interesting, and in general he sort of screwed himself over with the hardline insecure hypermasculine attitude of his 20s etc, after which he evidently felt he couldn't just turn around and write a piece like Dérive 2 that was hardly serial at all and actually sounds quite a bit like Dutilleux, because he'd lose face. (And I think that sort of thing is much more what he 'wanted' to write than things like the 3rd Sonata, but that's conjecture.) His deadly sin is definitely pride, or maybe sexual repression (that is one of the seven deadly sins, right?). If he'd been humbler, he probably would have written more music, admitted he was wrong more often, insulted fewer people and probably been a good deal less influential. So we get what we get: a conductor who composed, was controversial and influenced musical fashions. Maybe that'll make him the Wilhelm Furtwängler of 2064. Who knows.

[not edward]

Schumann Scenes from Faust

I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but didn't he do quite a few other 19th-century rarities? I know he programmed Liszt's Legend of St Elizabeth in one of his early seasons.

[kishnevi]

There is also the urban legend that one of the conditions Boulez demanded in his recording contract with Columbia was that the Robert Craft recordings of Schoenberg be kept permanently out of print, so that he would become the absolute reference. Again, it's all hearsay, but I'm still waiting for a CD reissue of those old vinyl sets, so, as the Italians say, "se non è vero è ben trovato".

The Craft recordings have been reissued on Naxos (same as his Stravinsky recordings and should be readily available as individual CDs or in the form of two sets(Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)

[(poco) Sforzando]

The Craft recordings have been reissued on Naxos (same as his Stravinsky recordings and should be readily available as individual CDs or in the form of two sets(Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)

Have they been reissued, or did Craft re-do the works in his old age? Sony did reissue Craft's Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, in a blazing white-hot performance with he CSO, but though the younger Craft was rarely given much rehearsal time, he did some splendid work for Columbia in the 1960s, such as his Pierrot Lunaire, Erwartung, Der Wein, and more. It's fashionable to dismiss his Webern set, but I don't know any better rendition of the Bach Ricercare, just for one.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but didn't he do quite a few other 19th-century rarities? I know he programmed Liszt's Legend of St Elizabeth in one of his early seasons.

Correct, in September 1971.

[EigenUser]

I don't think one can argue that Boulez tried to 'suppress' any music, apart from e.g. the Trois psalmodies

Do you mean the Messiaen Trois Petites Liturgies? I know he didn't like the tonal music of 1940s-Messiaen, but how did he try to suppress it?

Very interesting post, too!

[ritter]

Do you mean the Messiaen Trois Petites Liturgies? I know he didn't like the tonal music of 1940s-Messiaen, but how did he try to suppress it?

Very interesting post, too!

No, I think he means the Trois psalmodies for piano, an early work (1945) by Boulez that  the composer withdrew from his catalogue. Actually, all the works amw mentions are by Boulez himself (all withdrawn or lost)...

[Karl Henning]

Well, then let's say its like expecting Toscanini to have programmed Mahler regularly at the NBC  .

I really don't see why Boulez is considered to have turned the NYPO into his private fiefdom....

Let's call that phrase a mediæval-tinged overstatement, and say that I took my cue from the gentleman whose remark mentioned Madame Guillotine.

At bottom, I agree completely that (a) Art is not served if the musician performs music which he does not himself like; and (b) the fault really belongs to the New York Philharmonic for hiring such a fastidious music director.

I shall say, too, that it is to his credit that he saw light sufficiently, in spite of his avowed and enduring distaste (his shtick still relies in part on the ritual hand-wringing over those people -- those benighted people -- who persist in a desire for music dating before 1952) that he consented to conduct (and ultimately found it to some degree congenial) 19th-c. music. But that is not really what I had in view.

From their inception, American orchestras have always been primarily an organ for presenting European music.  That in itself is morally neutral, of course. Under Lenny's direction, the NY Phil adopted a more consistent mission of presenting the work of American composers.

If the combination of that culturally important precedent, with the appointment of one of the world's leading avant-garde composers as the orchestra's music director, gave the younger generation of US composers an (I think, understandable) hope, the reversion of the New York orchestra to a "no Americans need apply" club was, in any sober judgment, a major disappointment.

I don't think it would have been a matter of expecting Boulez magically to convert the band into a new music ensemble. I think it was only the natural expectation that a living composer would not roll back the advances made under Bernstein's directorship.

[Abuelo Igor]

The Craft recordings have been reissued on Naxos (same as his Stravinsky recordings and should be readily available as individual CDs or in the form of two sets(Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)

Have they been reissued, or did Craft re-do the works in his old age?

It is my understanding that the Naxos series re-issues newer recordings he made in the 90s for Koch Classics. His original recordings for Columbia, apart from the disc of orchestral transcriptions referred to above, remain in limbo. You can find the original vinyl sets on Amazon.com, but some of them fetch, let us say, interesting prices...

[Karl Henning]

. . . Sony did reissue Craft's Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, in a blazing white-hot performance with he CSO, but though the younger Craft was rarely given much rehearsal time, he did some splendid work for Columbia in the 1960s, such as his Pierrot Lunaire, Erwartung, Der Wein, and more. It's fashionable to dismiss his Webern set, but I don't know any better rendition of the Bach Ricercare, just for one.

By curious chance, a fellow composer proudly showed me his boxed LP of the Webern set just the day before yesterday.

[ritter]

Let's call that phrase a mediæval-tinged overstatement, and say that I took my cue from the gentleman whose remark mentioned Madame Guillotine.

...yes, the guillotine, while we triocoteuses placidly continue to knit next to the scaffold.... 

I think your post puts things very much in perspective, Karl.  I can understand that US composers felt let down by Boulez, given the expectations his appointment had raised...but I also think he himself had done nothing to raise such expectations, and can therefore not be accused of "betraying" anyone.

The issue is, Boulez is blamed for many sins, of action and omission. If he attacked composers and works which he disliked (which he certainly did--the Shostakoviches and Henzes and so forth...) he was being destructive. If he didn't perform the works of others (Jean Barraqué was mentioned above), once again, he was being mean (one could extend this sin of omission to the work of Maderna, but Boulez gave some excuse or other for not preforming him after his death). But the we have the case of Elliott Carter, who was hugely promoted by Boulez, and we cannot deny that the frenchman's contribution to the acceptance of many major names of music into the standard repertoire (we need not go much further than Webern) is huge. Some people tend to highlight the negative aspects of his behaviour, some--includiung myself--tend to stress the positive facets of it. It seems both "sides" cannot agree, but one thing is for sure: still today, almost 40 years after it ended, Boulez's tenure at the NYPO is being discussed (passionately, at times). Not a mean feat...

[Karl Henning]

Aye, Carter (unquestionably a first-rate composer) is conspicuous by his singularity, there   

[Karl Henning]

I think your post puts things very much in perspective, Karl.  I can understand that US composers felt let down by Boulez, given the expectations his appointment had raised...but I also think he himself had done nothing to raise such expectations, and can therefore not be accused of "betraying" anyone.

I agree;  betrayal is not at all the right word.  And of course, I agree that (for all the intellectual unfairness which Boulez has committed over the years) it were unfair to make out the whole of the disappointing development to be his fault, somehow.  I certainly do not hate Boulez;  there is music he has made which requires no defense, and that is all that will matter over time;  and if I find that I cannot much admire him as a person, an impartial observer would own that that is but a reasonable perspective.

[ritter]

Aye, Carter (unquestionably a first-rate composer) is conspicuous by his singularity, there   

And then there was Crumb's Star Child...a stunning work (but I've never read any comments by Boulez on what ¡he thought of this music  )

It is my understanding that the Naxos series re-issues newer recordings he made in the 90s for Koch Classics. His original recordings for Columbia, apart from the disc of orchestral transcriptions referred to above, remain in limbo. You can find the original vinyl sets on Amazon.com, but some of them fetch, let us say, interesting prices...

Well, there's also the Gesualdo oddity, the Monterverdi  Vespers coupled with some Bach cantatas,  and a disc of Mozart (including the Gran Partita)... But yes (apart from Stravinsky, of course), none of Craft's core repertoire...

[Abuelo Igor]

Well, Naxos did license the Craft Webern from 1957, so I guess there's some hope there, but Naxos hasn't been the cheapest choice available for some time now. I think I would really spring for a "Complete Robert Craft recordings for Columbia Records" box set from Sony, that could be had for a song not very long after release. Well, let's dream on...

(apart from Stravinsky, of course)

I know that folk wisdom credits Craft for most of the hard work behind the later recordings released under Igor's name, but, listening to the rehearsal excerpts included on the Sony set, Stravinsky didn't strike me as a conductor who couldn't communicate to the musicians exactly what he wanted.

OK, off-topic over. Back to Pierre.