Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 A debut
- 2 Berio
- 3 Paths to Montsalvat
- 4 Carter
- 5 Da lontano
- 6 Gubaidulina
- 7 A handful of pianists
- 8 Purcell 1995
- 9 Around New York
- 10 Tippett
- 11 Being in Assisi
- 12 Boulez
- 13 The composer's voice
- 14 Mozart 1991
- 15 A decade of Don Giovannis
- 16 Henze
- 17 Operatic passions
- 18 Vivier
- 19 At the movies
- 20 Schoenberg on the stage
- 21 Five British composers
- 22 Lachenmann
- 23 Mapping Mtsensk
- 24 Stockhausen
- 25 Behind the rusting Curtain
- 26 Verdi at the Met
- 27 A quintet of singers
- 28 Schnittke
- 29 How it was, maybe
- 30 Reich
- 31 Tracks in Allemonde
- 32 Birtwistle
- 33 A departure
- Further reading and listening
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 A debut
- 2 Berio
- 3 Paths to Montsalvat
- 4 Carter
- 5 Da lontano
- 6 Gubaidulina
- 7 A handful of pianists
- 8 Purcell 1995
- 9 Around New York
- 10 Tippett
- 11 Being in Assisi
- 12 Boulez
- 13 The composer's voice
- 14 Mozart 1991
- 15 A decade of Don Giovannis
- 16 Henze
- 17 Operatic passions
- 18 Vivier
- 19 At the movies
- 20 Schoenberg on the stage
- 21 Five British composers
- 22 Lachenmann
- 23 Mapping Mtsensk
- 24 Stockhausen
- 25 Behind the rusting Curtain
- 26 Verdi at the Met
- 27 A quintet of singers
- 28 Schnittke
- 29 How it was, maybe
- 30 Reich
- 31 Tracks in Allemonde
- 32 Birtwistle
- 33 A departure
- Further reading and listening
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
Pierre Boulez's most startling creative work came early, climaxing in the violent beauty of Le Marteau sans maître (1952–4), for a septet of dissimilar instruments including the contralto voice. Many later works he left unfinished (e.g. his Third Piano Sonata, 1955–7), disclaimed or recomposed: Pli selon pli, for soprano with an orchestra rich in chiming percussion, he began in 1957, first presented whole in 1960 and went on revising until the end of the 1980s. Meanwhile he gained and maintained acclaim as a conductor and forthright musical presence.
at sixty
Modern music grows old alarmingly. Pierre Boulez now is sixty, and the opportunity was taken to celebrate with a long weekend of concerts and an exhibition in Baden-Baden, which has been his home town since 1959. This solidly respectable spa, this German Cheltenham, survived having Berlioz and Brahms as summer visitors in the 1860s, but perhaps has never quite got used to housing a master of the avantgarde. After one lady had patiently explained to her elderly husband about this ‘Hommage à Pierre Boulez’ he turned swiftly to her: ‘Er ist tot oder?’
In truth there were moments when it was a bit like that. The nature of exhibitions is to seem commemorative rather than jubilant, and the long glass cases in the Kunsthalle, containing scores, sketches, letters, postcards and photographs, did convey a funereal solemnity not altogether alleviated by the reverberating sound of the Ring being eternally replayed in some part of the building.
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- The Substance of Things HeardWritings about Music, pp. 90 - 108Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005