Professional Documents
Culture Documents
European
composers
who came to maturity at the close of the Second World War. The
outstanding figures within this group, including Boulez (b. 1925),
Luciano Berio (b. 1925), and Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928), shared
a genuine community of values. While envisioning a powerful new
musical language that would possess the scope and universality of the
Viennese Classical style, they were alike in rejecting their heritage, in
attempting to escape tradition. "II faut etre absolument moderne," as
Rimbaud had said." Berio, Boulez, and Stockhausen staked a claim for
their new aesthetic with a remarkable series of works that largely
realized their ambitions: Stockhausen's Zeitmasse(1956), Gruppen
('955-1957), and Punkte (1962); Berio's Allelujab H (1957-1958),
and Epifanie
Diffrences (1959), Tempi Concertati (1958-1959),
(1959-1961); and Boulez's own Le marteausansmaitre(1954-1957), Pli
selonpli (i958-1962), and Figures,Doubles,Prismes(1959-1963; i968).
With the new synthesis embodied in these works, the hierarchy of the
musical elements was overturned and every aspect of the musical
discourse rethought.3
*I would like to thank Kenneth Carlborg (The University of Illinois Libraries,
Urbana), Robert P. Morgan, and Charles Rosen both for commenting on drafts of this
and for many illuminating discussions of Boulez's music.
study
' David Patrick
Stearns, "Pierre Boulez: The Evolution of a Revolutionary,"
Ovation(July 1986): 2 1-22.
2 Arthur Rimbaud, A Seasonin Hell and TheDrunkenBoat, bilingual edition trans.
Louise Varese (New York: New Directions, i961), 88.
3 Of the three composers mentioned here, Boulez has remained closest to the style
embodied in these works. Where appropriate, I have ranged freely among works
written throughout Boulez's career. References to Berio and Stockhausen generally
427
428
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
profitably be considered against the background of these tonal traditions. The achievements of Schoenberg and Stravinsky provide an
illuminating context for exploring both Boulez's treatment of time and
his transformations of tonal space. Aspects of his harmonic language
and the forms it implies are best understood within the context of the
French tradition from which they ultimately stem: with the post-war
synthesis, the influence of French tradition became unprecedentedly
central to European music.
Boulez's relationship to the central Austro-German tradition is an
ambiguous one. Debussy's ambivalent attitude toward Wagner is
recapitulated in Boulez's equivocal relationship to the three Viennese.
Virgil Thomson's witty characterization of Boulez as "a German
agent"' notwithstanding, Boulez's fundamental allegiance to aspects
of Debussy and Stravinsky is part of a complex of cultural predilections already exhibited in his early preference for Boris Godunovover
Tristan und Isolde. Writing in 1976, the more perfect Wagnerite of
Boulez's Bayreuth years still had this to say on the subject of the Ring:
We need only considerthe visualconceptionof the Ringas producedat
Bayreuthin 1876 to be convinced[thatWagnerwas alreadyoutmodedin
realmsother than music]. By that point the Impressionistshad painted
someof theirmost beautifulpictures.As for poetry,a "frissonnouveau"
had contributedsensationsmoredaringthanthese settingsfromNordic
mythology, which really belongedto the intellectuallandscapeof the
earlynineteenthcentury:when Bayreuthopened[Rimbaud's]UneSaison
en Enferand [Lautreamont's]
LesChantsde Maldororhad alreadybeen
written.7
The "frisson nouveau" in Boulez's music has little to do with a
rhetoric either "Romantic"or "expressionist"originating east of the
Rhine.
From the very beginning, Boulez's heritage stemmed from two
distinct traditions. His first models were respectively a student of
Schoenberg and a French heir to Stravinsky: Anton Webern and
Reader(Boston:HoughtonMifflin, 1981),
6 Virgil Thomson, A VirgilThomson
529-
429
430
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
43 I
432
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
433
Example I
Excerpt from Boulez: Pli selonpli:Don. ? 1967 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of European American Music Distributors Corporation, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Universal Edition London
L
A
ten.
ten.
ten.
-sempre piu 7
Piano
Cymb.
grave
2/8
80o4/8
pour
les
kr--3-n
r31
4.
sol
v..II
Alt.div.
en 4
piz.
Bongos
(f4
____
&
434
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
continuum helps to counter any tendency for the attack points to call
a new rhythmic hierarchy into existence.'5
Something of this transformed system of dynamics can be gleaned
from an excerpt from Don, the first movement of Pli selonpli (see
Example I). Boulez's adaptation of "hairpin"notation tells the whole
story. The initial glissando avec l'embouchureis performed with a
crescendo: crescendo and glissando are perceived as one. Once the
notated pitches have been attained, the sustained chord suddenly
drops in volume. This is followed by a longer, slower crescendo. Near
the end of this crescendo, a sudden more rapid crescendo perceptibly
effects an increase, not only in volume, but in tempo: an increase in
the rate of change of volume. Motion is conveyed along this sustained
chord by dynamics alone. ' (The new sforzando attack releasing the
crescendo within a crescendo is part of this same continuous dynamic
process.)
At higher levels of form, the dynamic curve need not be far
removed from the wave-like forms to be found in many works of
Wagner, Mahler, and Debussy. Tombeau(1959-I962), the last movement of Pli selonpli, is conceived as a single vast crescendo with coda.
In its externals, it traces a curve strongly reminiscent of the three
successive waves that constitute the first movement of Mahler'sNinth
Symphony: both movements rely on a gradual statistical accumulation of detail, but where Mahler's tonal processes build to ultimate
cathartic resolutions, Boulez's music floats. There is an extraordinary
monolithic accumulation of activity in Tombeauthat parallels the
smooth dynamic of its local processes, processes far removed from
Mahler's tonal respiration. With the static timelessness of its language
and the serene implacability of its form, Tombeaugives vent to an
ethos reflecting Boulez's experience of oriental musics.
'5 These clean attack points within Boulez's dynamic continuum are a Stravinskyan heritage. Stravinsky once wrote: "The stylistic performance problem in my
music is one of articulation and rhythmic diction. ... For fifty years I have
endeavored to teach musicians to play sfF.7Y instead of in certain cases, depending
on the style. I have also labored to teach them to accent syncopated notes and to
phrase before them in order to do so. (German orchestras are as unable to do this, so
far, as the Japanese are unable to pronounce 'L.')" Stravinsky and Craft, Conversations
with Stravinsky, I20.
16 It should be
emphasized that this technique was not an inevitable consequence
of atonality but specific to the post-war European synthesis. In exploring new
possibilities in the realm of meter, Elliott Carter, for example, developed a post-tonal
language that is not without parallels to Boulez's or Stockhausen's. Nevertheless, for
Carter's explorations of time it was crucial that the attack point maintain essentially
the same privilege it enjoyed with Beethoven.
435
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
436
fsub.
------ h
--
437
Example 3
Boulez: Premieresonatepourpiano,second movement, mm. I --1 2. Used by Permission of
0 staccato
438
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
tempo governs any given span of time, but there are continual
excursions from this tempo: ductile patterns of accelerationand return
inscribe temporal arcs. This continuous oscillation of tempo interacts
with the movement's overall pattern of deceleration in constituting the
form of the movement, but Boulez's use of the fermata is crucial for
the manner in which the form is projected.
Like rubato, the fermata is a familiar unfixed element. Unlike
measured silence, it seldom played a crucial role before Boulez,
despite such spectacular exceptions as the opening of Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony. Beethoven's use of fermatas in this passage is
rhetorical and dramatic:in performancethese fermatasare held for the
duration of several measures. They help to articulate not only
Beethoven's famous motive but the form of the movement as well.
Near the end of the coda (mm. 475-82), the motive returns for the last
time in its original form, that is, with fermatas, but the upbeat figure
of three eighth notes has been extended by three additional measures
of repeated octave G's (see Example 4).
Example 4
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, first movement, mm. 475-482
"""
FF
'
9P
439
the edges." At the same time that each fragment projects the
characteristic rubato of the whole, it is equally a miniature in its own
right with its own defining envelope. The undampened sonorities of
xylorimba and vibraphone continue vibrating through the ruptures in
the continuity, so that each burst of motion is defined by the dying
curve of its own sonority. The large-scale temporal design of the
movement is not projected whole but is only implicit within its
fragments.
A compendium of the varieties of heterophonic experience could
be culled from Boulez's oeuvre.Boulez would insist on the rarity of
heterophony in the traditions of Western art music, but he can cite
examples both French and German to counter this generality:
Beethovenused it for ornamentalpurposes-the Adagio of the Ninth
Symphony-and in a certainnumberof slow movementsfromhis other
late works. Debussy used heterophonicfigures with an acoustic aim
-above all to "construct"his orchestra.23
22
440
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
441
= 66 (72 / 76
Mod6r
IIIFl.
l
S
Htb.
4 -
sans
lafin
de 1
possible,
respirer
jusqu'a
aphrase.
Sin&cessaire,
i lSi
avant b ]
respirer
Htb.
Perc.
1
Cloche
....... >
Boo-#roc7TTr
ktrr
>
>
..,,,.,
r
3l.
't.t
?,
..............k
', /
.i
Per
F"
en
*) diesesanfiinglicheZweiunddreissigstel
soil immerschnellsein.
**) jede Gruppewirdunterder Leitungeines Instrumentalisten
spielen
This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 01:36:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Htb. 1
Perc. 1
Clch.jap.
en
sib
I
mI
Perc.2
Wood bl.
.-
C..
>
>
--
III
Fl.
iff
2
An"t-.
Perc.3
Bongo
cm
.,
Example 5
Boulez: Rituel:In MemoriamBrunoMaderna,Section IV. ? 975 by Universal Edition
(London) Ltd., London. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of European American Music DistributorsCorporation,sole U.S. and Canadianagent for Universal Edition
London
444
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THIEAMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
rapide.
piano, molto crescendo,moltoaccelerando,and then excessivement
This gesture comes to rest on a chord that is extended, pianissimo, by
the sustaining instruments. The pianist then launches a cadenza,
under which cover, one by one, the trilling sounds of the sustaining
instruments imperceptibly fade. Within the cadenza, the tempo
remains in constant flux, in a state of continuous accelerando or
rallentando, until a rapid, regular tempo is attained at the very end.
Like the slow introduction to a Haydn symphony, this opening
section functions as a large-scale "upbeat" to the work's central
section, but the dynamic of Boulez's form could not be more remote
from Haydn's.
The floating center of Aclat marks an extreme point within
Boulez's oeuvre.Within its special timbral world, the sense of pulse is
suspended and amorphous temporal effects are given free rein. The
scintillating core of Aclatconsists of a succession of brief, brilliant, and
variegated heterophonic passages punctuated by long unmeasured
silences. Temporal structure seems to be determined by the rates of
decay of the various sonspercutes."The tempo floats in response to the
changing sonorities," as Charles Rosen has remarked of the Third
Piano Sonata.27
With the still center of Aclat, we arrive at what might be called the
II de
metaphysics of the fermata. Where the fermatas in Commentaire
"Bourreauxde solitude"made brusquescoupureswithin the continuity's
fabric, Aclat'sfermatas are absorbed within a continuous process. At
each fermata, music reverts to a state of pure sound as to its origin.
During each fermata, the unmeasured vibration of undampened
sonorities gradually subsides, leaving unmeasured silence. (Laissez
vibrer is an ubiquitous indication in Boulez's scores.) Within this
unique realization of the smooth continuum that Boulez's generation
sought, rhythm is often no more than the vibration of sound, form a
respiration of sound and silence, and silence is revealed as music's
ground.
445
against which the specific tonalities of each of his mature works must
be understood. Boulez's harmony unfolds against the background of a
neutral tonal space fundamental for the floating stasis projected in his
mature works. In the period from 1908-1920, a functionally neutral
tonal space had been the by-product of Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's
unique and particular compositional strategies. For Boulez's generation, a neutral tonal space would be an ineluctable starting point.
Schoenberg's expressionist works succeeded a significant realignment of the musical elements. Emphasis had gradually shifted from
the tonal framework to the elaboration of the musical surface. The
forms of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven had essentially been harmonic forms. With Wagner, the development of themes or motives
commanded as much importance as the underlying, increasingly
ambiguous, tonal relations. Within a chromatic context, interest was
increasingly focused on the local surface elaborationof highly expressive motives, motives whose dissonances were often resolved only as
others arose within the flux. Music began to approach "invention in a
perpetual state of becoming," as Boulez would describe Erwartung.'8
Although now fragmentary, the individual motives in Erwartungare
recognizably those of a post-Wagnerian framework, if a radically
transformed one. In Wagner'smusic, motivic working-out had always
implied harmonic resolution, if often resolution delayed or unattained. With Erwartung, maximum instability is reached. While its
motives are unstable, their tensions can only be discharged within an
unstable system. The framework is in dissolution.
Of the five composers who have remained talismans for Boulez
throughout his career, Debussy, Stravinsky, and the three Viennese,
only Stravinsky remained entirely aloof from Richard Wagner. In
rejecting the faded aesthetics of self-expression that he perceived in
the twilight Romanticism of the Austro-German tradition, Stravinsky
necessarily rejected the rich harmonic resources of formal development that were available to him in all their complexity, particularlyas
developed by Wagner and Mahler. Without denying an immediate
Russian tradition upon which Stravinsky could draw-that source is
variously reflected in all the works of his "Russian"period-we can
see that Stravinsky turned his back on three hundred years of musical
"expression"as embodied in the development of tonality. Moreover,
he gradually abandoned the continuous developments of TheFirebird.
Stravinsky's Russian-period works stand in marked contrast to
that final paroxysm of Viennese Romanticism, the expressionism of
2s
446
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. Stravinsky reduced the linear elements of music to simple melodic units, Russian folk melodies. These
materials are often not even tonal, but modal, pentatonic, or based in
"artificial"symmetrical scales. In short, relative to the materials of the
tonal tradition they are neutral and "inexpressive"enough to begin
with, and this is reinforced by their harmonization. However much
Stravinsky's vertical structures may resemble those of traditional
harmony, there is a prevailing relative dissonance serving to neutralize
harmony in his works. Properly speaking, these chords are not
dissonant, requiring resolution, but static.
If only at a certain level of abstraction, the harmonic languages of
Schoenberg and Stravinsky converged from opposite points. Where
Schoenberg's absolute harmonic instability admitted no resolution,
Stravinsky's neutralized motives and static harmonies did not require
any. Schoenberg's "overbidding," no less than Stravinsky's "simplification," as Boulez once put it,29 resulted in a neutral tonal space,
although with an important qualification that seems to have escaped
Boulez and Stockhausen for a time. In Stravinsky's neo-modal world
no less than in Schoenberg's chromatically charged one, motivic
materials reserved palpable if largely frustrated tonal tendencies.
There is a lingering tension between the motivic materials with their
persistent tonal tendencies on the one hand and the framework with
its implicit neutrality on the other. "Foreground"and "background"
were essentially polarized and the neutrality was never absolute.
The conception of tonal space implicit within the music of the
post-war European synthesis is inextricably bound up with a characteristic treatment of register. Boulez's generation unconditionally
accepted a neutral tonal space; the surfaces of the works of this group
unambiguously reflect this. To effect this neutrality within a space
that remains functional, Berio, Boulez, and Stockhausen have all
made use of various techniques of harmonic diffusion, one of the very
most important of which was directly inspired by Debussy's spacious
registral effects. The last two centuries have witnessed a gradual
expansion of the registral space consistently exploited in composition,
but, following Debussy, Berio, Boulez, and Stockhausen were the
first composers to accept broad tracts of registral space as given and,
in diffusing harmonic tension, to exploit them in a thorough-going
fashion. A breath-taking sense of space is apparent on virtually any
page of their mature works.
29
447
P8
Jr
sub.
.... 3
*
?
" '
J '
,
448
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
32
Charles Ives, EssaysBeforea Sonata, TheMajority,and Other Writings,selected
and ed. Howard Boatwright (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), 36.
33 This coincided with a "rehabilitation"of Berg chezBoulez and Stockhausen that
was accomplished by the mid-195os. With probable reference to Boulez, Stravinsky
complained of a reaction against Webern's music "in favor of Berg's; I hear
everywhere now that Webern's series are too symmetrical, that his music makes one
too conscious of twelves, that la structureserielle chez Berg est plus cacbhe."Igor
(Garden City: Doubleday,
Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memoriesand Commentaries
I960), 98.
34 If only passively, Le marteausansmattrewas Boulez's first work to express such
a sonority. Boulez's use of a single static controlling harmony represents the
culmination of a long development. Robert P. Morgan, "Dissonant Prolongation:
Theoretical and Compositional Precedents,"Journalof MusicTheory20 (1976): 49-9 ,
has shown how composers in the later nineteenth century began to "prolong"
dissonant sonorities over increasingly longer spans of time. I hope to pursue this
aspect of Boulez's harmony at a future date. When a score becomes available, an ideal
locus for a study of the relationship of controlling sonority to the unfolding continuity
in Boulez's mature works will be Ripons.The septachord with which the soloists make
their entrance remains near the surface throughout much of the work. For a glimpse
of Boulez's harmonic techniques in Ripons, see Andrew Gerzso, "Reflections on
MusicReview i, no. I (October, 1984):23-34. A first important
Repons," Contemporary
approach to Boulez's harmony is Robert Piencikowski, "Nature morte avec guitare,"
in PierreBoulez:EineFestschriftzum 60. Geburtstag
am 26. Mrz r985, ed. Josef Hiusler
(Vienna: Universal Edition, 1985): 66-81. Boulez's development of the continuum
449
450
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
37 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues and a Diary (Garden City:
451
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
452
nality of Schoenberg (expressionist or neoclassicist), Luigi Dallapiccola, Roger Sessions, or Elliott Carter from the antitonality of Boulez,
Stockhausen, and Berio; Carter's dynamic conception of form is
infinitely closer to Beethoven's than to Stockhausen's, despite any
superficial resemblances between the tonal languages of the two
post-war composers. Debussy had already drawn a paralleldistinction
between French and German traditions when he claimed that "Berlioz
is much further removed from Bach and Mozart than is Wagner. He
is less tonal than Wagner."4' Far from leveling all distinctions, the
history of atonality has preserved them intact.
This opposition naturally extends all the way to the level of form.
Boulez admires certain forms of Berlioz for being "cachees."43 In the
Adagio from RomeoetJuliette, the key of the dominant appears only
briefly in the final moments of the work (mm. 367ff), serving not as an
architectural fulcrum but to amplify the movement's climax. This
special effect is unforeseen in what has gone before, "hidden" as the
recapitulations of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven are not, as the
staggering climaxes of Wagner and Mahler are not. Similarly nurtured
by divergent harmonic traditions, the formal ambitions of Schoenberg
and Boulez are fundamentally incomparable, as Sessions implicitly
suggested in defending Schoenberg's neoclassical forms:
When people call Schoenberga neoclassicist,the point is, he was
grappling with large musical design. ... With some of the music
[Boulez's, Stockhausen's] that would be called non-neoclassic ... you
204.
453
454
Texts
Barzun, Jacques. Berlioz and His Century. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982.
Boulez, Pierre. Boulez on Music Today.Translated by Susan Bradshaw and
Richard Rodney Bennett. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
197i.
"Debussy's Orchestral Music." Liner notes to recordings of Debussy's orchestral music. New York: Columbia Records (D3M 32988),
1974.
"Musique traditionelle-un paradis perdu?" The Worldof Music 9,
no. 2 (1967): 3-10.
,. Par volontietpar hasard:EntretiensavecCilestinDeliege.Paris: iditions
du Seuil, 1975.
. Points de repere.Rev. ed. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1985 (Englishlanguage edition: Orientations.Translated by Martin Cooper. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1986).
. Relevisd'apprenti.Paris: iditions de Seuil, 1966 (English-language
edition: Notes of an Apprenticeship.Translated by Herbert Weinstock.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968).
Carter, Elliott. The Writingsof Elliott Carter.Edited by Elsa and Kurt Stone.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977Cone, Edward. "Inside the Saint's Head: The Music of Berlioz." In Music:A
Viewfrom Delft, SelectedEssays, edited by Robert P. Morgan, 217-48.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Gable, David. "Ramifying Connections: An Interview with Pierre Boulez."
Journal of Musicology4 (1985-86): 105-1 3.
MusicReview i, no.
Gerzso, Andrew. "Reflectionson Repons." Contemporary
I (October 1984): 23-34.
Heyworth, Peter. "The First Fifty Years." In Pierre Boulez:A Symposium,
edited by William Glock, 3-39. London: Eulenburg Books, 1986.
Ives, Charles. EssaysBeforea Sonata, TheMajority,and OtherWritings.Selected
and edited by Howard Boatwright. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.
Lockspeiser, Edward. Debussy:his Life and Mind. 2 vols. London: Cassell
Books, 1962.
Morgan, Robert P. "Dissonant Prolongation:Theoretical and Compositional
Precedents."Journal of Music Theory20 (1976): 4-9
I.
455
456
SOCIETY
JOURNALOF THE AMERICANMUSICOLOGICAL
reflected both in Boulez's first models, Messiaen and Webern, and by his
life-long engagement with both Schoenberg's expressionism and the works of
Stravinsky's Russian period. Wagner, Mahler, and Schoenberg had developed a continuous dynamic inflection that Stravinsky, by the 192os, rejected
in his neoclassical works. Boulez's generation reintegrated these tendencies
within the absolutely smooth continuums to be found in many of their
works. In Boulez's mature works, there is a continuous system of smoothly
planing dynamics. No longer expressive inflection, these dynamics exhibit
the clean objective character of Stravinsky's discrete dynamic planes. This
dynamic continuum was crucial in creating the continuous through-composed forms of Boulez and Stockhausen. Boulez's rhythmic structures are
ultimately rooted in Stravinsky's motor rhythms and Schoenberg's prose
rhythms, an opposition he has exploited in many works. Schoenberg's and
Stravinsky's essentially neutral tonal space furnished the background for the
post-war European harmonic language in which harmonic tensions are
diffused both by spacious effects of register and by the continuously graded
dynamics. The floating stasis projected in Boulez's mature works is as much
a culmination of certain trends within the French harmonic tradition as a
natural development within the history of atonality. With the post-war
generation in Europe, the French harmonic tradition enjoyed unprecedented
influence.