Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:18:51.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Apprenticeship and Its Stocktakings: Leibowitz, Boulez, Messiaen, and the Discourse and Practice of New Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2020

MAX ERWIN Open the ORCID record for MAX ERWIN [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The textbook historical account of post-war New Music describes a logical and radical succession from Schoenberg to Webern to the Darmstadt School. Against this narrative of inevitability, I provide a more contingent account of the institutionalization of a particular discourse of New Music in the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe. What is contingent here is not so much why or how certain figures – chiefly Pierre Boulez and René Leibowitz – were important, but the shape and the logic by which this importance was established and maintained. Accordingly, this article first of all provides a summary of just what it meant for Leibowitz's understanding of New Music to be reproduced in an institutional capacity. From here, I undertake close critical reading of Boulez's break with Leibowitz in order to discover what, exactly, Boulez began to do differently to establish a new practice.

Type
Article
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 71 - 93
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor W. ‘Berg and Webern – Schönberg's Heirs’. Modern Music 8/2 (1931), 29–38.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. ‘New Music and the Public: Some Problems of Interpretation’, trans. Myers, Rollo H., in Twentieth Century Music: A Symposium, ed. Myers, Rollo H.. London: John Calder, 1960. 40–51.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. ‘Bach gegen seine Liebhaber verteidigt’, Merkur 5/40 (1951), 535–546.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Philosophie der neuen Musik, in Gesammelte Schriften XII, ed. Tiedemann, Rolf. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. Livingstone, Rodney. London: Verso, 1998.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Essays on Music, ed. Leppert, Richard. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Attinello, Paul, ‘Postmodern or Modern: A Different Approach to Darmstadt’, Contemporary Music Review, 26.1 (2007), 25–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balmer, Yves, Lacôte, Thomas, and Murray, Christopher Brent. ‘Un cri de passion ne s'analyse pas: Olivier Messiaen's Harmonic Borrowings from Jules Massenet’. Twentieth-Century Music 13/2 (2016), 233–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Gerald. ‘The Early Works’, in Pierre Boulez: A Symposium, ed. Glock, William. London: Eulenburg, 1986. 41–84.Google Scholar
Bleek, Tobias. ‘Between Messiaen and Leibowitz – Boulez's Musical Apprenticeship’, Explore the Score. http://explorethescore.org/pierre-boulez-douze-notations-history-and-context-a-journeyman-composition.html (accessed 28 January 2018).Google Scholar
Borio, Gianmario and Danuser, Hermann, eds. Im Zenit der Moderne: Die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt 1946–1966, I–IV. Freiburg: Rombach, 1997.Google Scholar
Boulez, Pierre. Relevés d'Apprenti, ed. Thévenin, Paule. Paris: du Seuil, 1966.Google Scholar
Boulez, Pierre. ‘Eventually…’, trans. Weinstock, Herbert, Notes of an Apprenticeship. New York: Knopf, 1968.Google Scholar
Boulez, Pierre. Pierre Boulez: Conversations with Célestin Deliège. London: Eulenburg, 1976.Google Scholar
Boulez, Pierre. ‘Schoenberg is Dead’, trans. Walsh, Stephen, in Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Campbell, Edward. Boulez, Music and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Carroll, Mark. Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Chua, Daniel K. L. ‘Drifting: The Dialectics of Adorno's Philosophy of New Music’. Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Hoeckner, Berthold. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. 1–18.Google Scholar
Decroupet, Pascal. Développements et ramifications de la pensée sérielle. Recherches et oeuvres musicales de Pierre Boulez, Henri Pousseur et Karlheinz Stockhausen de 1951 à 1958. Doctoral thesis, Université de Tours, 1994.Google Scholar
Delaere, Mark, ed. Rewriting Recent Music History: The Development of Early Serialism 1947–1957. Leuven: Peeters, 2011.Google Scholar
Fox, Christopher. ‘Luigi Nono and the Darmstadt School: Form and Meaning in the Early Works (1950–1959)’, in Luigi Nono: Fragments and Silence, ed. Davismoon, Stephen. Amsterdam: OPA, 1999.Google Scholar
Fox, Christopher. ‘Darmstadt and the Institutionalisation of Modernism’. Contemporary Music Review 26/1 (2007), 115–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Christopher. ‘Other Darmstadts: An Introduction’. Contemporary Music Review 26/1 (2007), 1–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fulcher, Jane F. ‘The Politics of Transcendence: Ideology in the Music of Messiaen in the 1930s’. The Musical Quarterly 86/3 (2002), 449–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gärtner, Susanne. Werkstatt-Spuren: Die Sonatine von Pierre Boulez. Eine Studie zu Lehrzeit und Frühwerki. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008.Google Scholar
Glock, William, ed. Pierre Boulez: A Symposium. London: Eulenburg, 1986.Google Scholar
Goléa, Antoine. ‘French Music Since 1945’, trans. Brockway, Lucile H., in Contemporary Music in Europe: A Comprehensive Survey, ed. Lang, Paul Henry and Broder, Nathan. New York: Schirmer, 1965. 22–37.Google Scholar
Grant, M. J. Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-War Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Griffiths, Paul. Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time. London: Faber & Faber, 1985.Google Scholar
Heile, Björn. ‘Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism’. Twentieth-Century Music 1/2 (2004), 161–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henze, Hans Werner. Music and Politics: Collected Writings 1953–81, trans. Labanyi, Peter. London: Faber & Faber, 1982.Google Scholar
Henze, Hans Werner. Bohemian Fifths: An Autobiography, trans. Stewart Spencer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Heyworth, Peter. ‘The First Fifty Years’, in Pierre Boulez: A Symposium, ed. Glock, William. London: Eulenburg, 1986.Google Scholar
Hill, Peter, ed. The Messiaen Companion. London: Faber & Faber, 1995.Google Scholar
Hodeir, André. ‘Serialism and Developments in Western Music since Webern’, trans. Myers, Rollo H., in Twentieth Century Music: A Symposium, ed. Myers, Rollo H.. London: John Calder, 1960. 29–39.Google Scholar
Hodeir, André. Since Debussy: A View of Contemporary Musici. New York: Grove, 1961.Google Scholar
Iddon, Martin. ‘Serial Canon(s): Nono's Variations and Boulez's Structures’. Contemporary Music Review 29/3 (2010), 265–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iddon, Martin. ‘Darmstadt Schools: Darmstadt as a Plural Phenomenon’. Tempo 65/256 (2011), 2–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iddon, Martin. John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Notation and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Iddon, Martin. New Music at Darmstadt: Nono, Stockhausen, Cage, and Boulez. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iddon, Martin. ‘Institutions, Artworlds, New Music’, in The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music, ed. Heile, Björn and Wilson, Charles. Oxford: Routledge, 2019. 86–107.Google Scholar
Jameux, Dominique. Pierre Boulez, trans. Bradshaw, Susan. London: Faber & Faber, 1991.Google Scholar
Kapp, Reinhard. ‘Shades of the Double's Original: René Leibowitz's dispute with Boulez’. Tempo 165 (1988), 2–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koblyakov, Lev. Pierre Boulez: A World of Harmony. Chur: Harwood, 1990.Google Scholar
Kovács, Inge. Wege zum musikalischen Strukturalismus. René Leibowitz, Pierre Boulez, John Cage und die Webern-Rezeption in Paris um 1950. Schliengen: Argus, 2004.Google Scholar
Kurtz, Michael. Stockhausen: A Biography, trans. Toop, Richard. London, Faber & Faber, 1992.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, René. Le compositeur et son double: Essais sur l'interprétation musicale. Paris: Gallimard, 1973.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, René. ‘Luigi Dallapiccola’. L'arche 3/23 (1947), 122–24.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, René. Introduction à la musique de douze sons. Paris: L'Arche, 1949.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, René. Schoenberg and His School, trans. Newlin, Dika. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.Google Scholar
Marie, Jean-Étienne. Musique Vivante: introduction au langage musical contemporain. Paris: Privat, 1953.Google Scholar
Meine, Sabine. Ein Zwölftöner in Paris: Studien zu Biographie und Wirkung von René Leibowitz. Augsburg: Wißner, 2000.Google Scholar
Meine, Sabine. Liner notes to René Leibowitz: Chamber Music/ensemble aesthesis. Divox CDX 29303, 1996.Google Scholar
Messiaen, Olivier. Musique et couleur: noveaux entreteins avec Claude Samuel. Paris: Belfond, 1986.Google Scholar
Messiaen, Olivier. The Technique of My Musical Language, trans. Satterfield, John. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1956.Google Scholar
Messing, Scott. Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept Through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic. Rochester: University of Rochester, 1996.Google Scholar
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, ed. The Boulez–Cage Correspondence, trans. Samuels, Robert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
O'Hagan, Peter. Pierre Boulez and the Piano: A Study in Style and Techniquei. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.Google Scholar
Pace, Ian. ‘The Reconstruction of Post-War West German New Music during the early Allied Occupation (1945–46), and its Roots in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich (1918–45)’. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cardiff, 2018.Google Scholar
Paddison, Max. Adorno's Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Peyser, Joan. Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma. London: Cassell, 1977.Google Scholar
Rostand, Claude. ‘Trends and Tendencies in Contemporary French Music’, trans. Myers, Rollo H., in Twentieth Century Music: A Symposium, ed. Myers, Rollo H.. London: John Calder, 1960. 147–55.Google Scholar
Salzman, Eric. Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1967; 4th edn 2002.Google Scholar
Schiffer, Brigitte. ‘The Citadel of the Avant-Garde’. World of Music 11/3 (1969), 32–43.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Stein, Leonard. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. Theory of Harmony, trans. Carter, Roy E.. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz. Twentieth-Century Composers. Volume II: Germany and Central Europe, ed. Kallin, Anna and Nabokov, Nicolas. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970.Google Scholar
Taruskin, Richard. Music in the Late Twentieth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music, V. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Toop, Richard. ‘Messiaen/Goeyvaerts, Fano/Stockhausen, Boulez’. Perspectives of New Music 13/1 (1974), 141–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudu, Antonio. La “Scuola” di Darmstadt: I Ferienkurse dal 1946 a oggii. Milan: Edizioni Unicopoli, 1992.Google Scholar
Wheeldon, Marianne. ‘Anti-Debussyism and the Formation of French Neoclassicism’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 70/2 (2007), 433–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Alistair. New Music and the Claims of Modernity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997.Google Scholar
Williams, Alistair. ‘New Music, Late Style: Adorno's “Form in the New Music”’. Music Analysis 27/2–3 (2008), 193–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar