Conductor and composer, born in Montbrison, SC France. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire (19435), and became musical director of Barrault's Théâtre Marigny (1948), where he established his reputation as an interpreter of contemporary music. During the 1970s he devoted himself mainly to his work as conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (19715) and of the New York Philharmonic (19717), before becoming director of the Institut de Recherche et de Co-ordination Acoustique Musique (Ircam) at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (197791). His early work as a composer rebelled against what he saw as the conservatism of such composers as Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Of his later works, Le Marteau sans maître (1955, The Hammer Without a Master) gained him a worldwide reputation, confirmed by Pli selon pli (Fold according to Fold) and his third piano sonata.
Pierre Boulez (IPA: /pjɛʁ.buˈlɛz/) (born March 26, 1925) is a composer and conductor of contemporary classical music.
Life and music
Early years
Boulez was born in Montbrison, France. The first fruits of this were his cantatas Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux for female voices and orchestra (both composed in the late forties and revised several times since), as well as the Second Piano Sonata of 1948, a well-received 32-minute work that Boulez composed at the age of 23. Thereafter, Boulez was influenced by Messiaen's research to extend twelve-tone technique beyond the realm of pitch organization, serialising durations, dynamics, accents, and so on. Boulez quickly became one of the philosophical leaders of the post-war movement in the arts towards greater abstraction and experimentation. Many composers of Boulez's generation taught at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany. Boulez was in contact with many young composers who would become influential, including John Cage.
Serialism
Boulez's totally serialized, punctual works included Polyphonie X (1951; Structures was also a turning point for Boulez. György Ligeti, for example, published an article that examined its patterns of durations, dynamics, pitch, and attack types in great detail, concluding that its "ascetic attitude" is "akin to compulsion neurosis", and that Boulez "had to break away from it. These criticisms, combined with what Boulez felt was a lack of expressive flexibility in the language, as he outlined in his essay "At the Limit of Fertile Land..." had already led Boulez to refine his compositional language.
Le marteau sans maître
Boulez's strongest achievement in this method is his masterpiece Le marteau sans maître for ensemble and voice, from 1953-1957, one of the few works of advanced music from the fifties to remain in the repertoire. Le marteau was a surprising and revolutionary synthesis of many different streams in modern music, as well as seeming to encompass the sound worlds of modern jazz, the Balinese Gamelan, traditional African musics, and traditional Japanese musics. At that time, Boulez seemed to control the modern musical discourse. Boulez described one of his innovations, called "pitch multiplication", in several articles, most importantly in the chapter "Musical Technique" in Boulez 1971.
Experimentation
After Le marteau sans maître, Boulez began to strengthen the position of the music post-WWI modern composers through conducting and advocacy. With Pli selon pli for orchestra with solo soprano, he began to work with an idea of improvisation and open-endedness. In addition, he worked with the idea of leaving the specific ordering of movements or sections of music open to be chosen for a particular night of a performance, an idea related to the polyvalent form of Karlheinz Stockhausen. During the time that Boulez was testing these new ideas, those colleagues who had never been entirely comfortable with the prominence of a rigorous musical language, such as György Ligeti, had brought a convincing musical counter argument to Boulez's musical ideals. In a poetic twist, Boulez had moved from peerless respect for Le marteau sans maître, meaning "the hammer without master", to seeming defeat with Pli selon pli ("Fold upon fold"), which sets a Stéphane Mallarmé poem about the tripping impotence of a swan, unable to take flight from a frozen lake.
"Controlled chance"
From the 1950s, beginning with the Third Piano Sonata (1955–57/63), Boulez experimented with what he called "controlled chance" and he developed his views on aleatoric music in the articles "Aléa" (1957) and "Sonate, que me veux-tu?" While in Cage's music the performers are often given the freedom to improvise and create completely unforeseen sounds, with the object of removing the composer's intention from the music, in works by Boulez they only get to choose between possibilities that have been written out in detail by the composer—a method that is often described as "mobile form".
1970s
Boulez's output since the late 1970s has been of a different kind since the early works that brought him to initial prominence. After a rapid succession of explosive works, such as the three cantatas on poetry by René Char, the first two piano sonatas, and other chamber music, compositions have tended to be contemplated and expanded over a long period of time, during which they were performed in various stages of development. ...explosante-fixe..., now resembling a flute concerto with electronics, was first published in 1971 as a sketch in the journal Tempo as a memorial tribute to Stravinsky, then worked out in various versions, including one for mixed octet with electronics performed in 1973. The desire to expand unrealized possibilities has also lead Boulez to create related works in series. The material contained in Anthèmes for solo violin, itself once expanded, was later worked out as an extended composition for violin and electronics Anthèmes 2. Boulez now plans to further realize the material's implications as a violin concerto.
Electronic music
After the 1960s, in which he had produced little, Boulez began to turn back to the electronic medium and to large extended works. His first attempt was the 1973 version of ...explosant/fixe... However, at around this time president Georges Pompidou began to discuss with Boulez the possibility of creating an institute for the exploration and development of modern music where there would be a chance to explore the medium seriously. At IRCAM, Boulez created an environment where composers would have at hand the best performers available, and where the most advanced technology and computer scientists would be at their serviceclassical electronic music and computer music. Boulez now began to explore the use of electronic sound transformation in real time. Boulez found this impossibly restrictive. With the assistance of Andrew Gerzso Boulez fashioned a work in which the computer captured the resonance and spatialization of sounds created by the ensemble and process them in real time.
Recent years
Today, Boulez was and is one of the leaders of the post-World War II musical modernism. Boulez continues to conduct and compose as of 2006. From 1976-1995, Boulez held the Chair in "Invention, technique et langage en musique" at the prestigious Collège de France.
Boulez as a conductor
Boulez is also a world-famous conductor, having directed most of the world's leading symphony orchestras and ensembles since the late fifties. Boulez is particularly famed for his polished interpretations of twentieth century classics - Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Anton Webern and Edgard Varèse - as well as for numerous performances of contemporary music.
Boulez as a writer
Boulez is also an articulate, perceptive and sweeping writer on music. 2 (1947-48) Le Soleil des eaux (soprano solo, mixed choir, orchestra, 1948/50/58/65) Polyphonie X (1951) Structures, Livres I et II (2 pianos, 1952 and 1961, respectively) Le marteau sans maître (alto, alto flute, guitar, vibraphone, xylorimba, percussion and viola, 1953-55) Piano Sonata No. 3 (1955-57/63 ...) (Unfinished: only two of the five movements have been published in final form.) Pli selon pli (soprano and orchestra, 1957-62) Domaines (clarinet solo, 1968-69) Domaines (clarinet and ensemble, 1968-69) cummings ist der Dichter (for chorus and ensemble, 1970) Rituel: In Memoriam Bruno Maderna (orchestra, 1974-75) Messagesquisse (seven cellos, 1976-77) Notations (piano version 1945, orchestral version 1978-...) Répons (two pianos, harp, vibraphone, glockenspiel, cimbalom, orchestra and electronics, 1980-84) "Dérive 1" (for six instruments, 1984) "Dérive 2" (for eleven instruments, 1990) ...explosante-fixe... (first version for flute, clarinet and trumpet, 1972; fourth version for MIDI-flute, chamber orchestra and electronics, 1991-93) Sur Incises (3 pianos, 3 harps and 3 mallet instruments, 1996-98) "Anthèmes 2" (violin and electronics, 1998)
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