Pierre Boulez dies at 90

[jbuck919]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/ ... f=cta&_r=0

[stenka razin]

Sad, sad news about one of the 20th century's outstanding composers and conductors. Below are some Boulez observations about his 10 picks for the greatest 20th century works:


http://soundcheck.wnyc.org/story/10-gre ... -birthday/


Regards,
Mel

[maestrob]

Boulez, in his early years, made some fine recordings for Columbia, including Debussy and Mahler. I didn't follow him much on DGG, but there was an excellent Bartok Wooden Prince. IMHO he never quite grasped either Mahler or Bruckner, but not every great conductor is great at everything.

He's listed as a composer in the headline, yet he made his living as a conductor. That he was a brilliant intellectual there is no doubt, but I never connected with his music.

He will be missed for what he did for contemporary music.

[lennygoran]

I tried to listen to some of music but it was beyond my comprehension. Len

[absinthe]

We can but hope his noise-making gets buried with him. Well, maybe not his one complete work,
Le Marteau sans Mâitre
....or was it Le Tomato Sauce Manglé?

I remember his declaration: "Messiaen wrote brothel music."...

which at first made me wonder what kind of brothel he attended.

But then I realised that since he was dead from the waist down he wouldn't know the difference between a church and a brothel.

[BWV 1080]

No greater musician for the last 50 years, brilliant composer and conductor. F--- the atonophobes, the man wrote beautiful music.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/classi ... ctor-dies/

[Lance]

Never could grasp his music. I enjoyed some of his conducting, mostly of traditional material. I heard some Wagner that was beautifully executed.

[John F]

Boulez's conducting was cold and generally left me cold. There was nobody better in some kinds of modern music, which he got played more accurately than can generally be counted on - though in his "Wozzeck" recording he surprisingly allowed a good deal of inaccurate singing to pass, especially by Karl Dönch as the doctor. His transparent textures often let me hear more musical details than other, more expressive conductors have. But at best his music-making appealed to the head, not the heart - for me anyway. At less than its best, it didn't appeal at all.

I've never liked his own music, despite the fastidious beauty of his instrumentation. Again, more for the head than the heart.

He was a man of contradictions - a controversialist in his younger years, and later on contradicting himself. I love it that the humorless Swiss actually arrested him as a suspected terrorist because of his polemic years earlier about blowing up the world's opera houses; by the time of his arrest, he had conducted in many of them, though never at the Met.

I was at a performance of "Pelléas et Mélisande" there when the conductor, Colin Davis, was greeted by a shout from upstairs, "Bravo Boulez." Boulez was indeed conducting that opera, but at Covent Garden. (Soon, to our amazement, he was to take over the New York Philharmonic.) I wasn't yet a "Pelléas" enthusiast - that came later when James Levine conducted the work - but the Boulez recording always struck me as abstract, almost inhuman, especially compared with Karajan's. A review seems to me to sum up that recording and Boulez generally:

Pierre Boulez's performance sounds as if it means to investigate the inward dimension of the score; only it doesn't really. It just executes, with admirable sensitivity to notated values, including some real delicacy, but with what sounds like a willful refusal to look for anything beyond the literal value of the notes.

Remembering his time in New York, I was astonished when Boulez took up Bruckner, whose music I'd expect him to disdain, and suppose he probably did in earlier years. But as far as I know, he was consistent in never conducting any Tchaikovsky.

[John F]

Recalling Pierre Boulez, a Conductor-Composer With an Ear to the Alternative
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
JAN. 6, 2016

In June 1969, the stunning news broke that the New York Philharmonic had appointed Pierre Boulez to succeed Leonard Bernstein as its music director. The decision understandably rattled the classical music establishment: Mr. Boulez was not just an uncompromising Modernist composer, but he had also first come to attention as a polemicist dismissive of those writing music beholden to tonal harmony.

In one fiery 1952 essay, Mr. Boulez, then in his late 20s, declared that any musician who had not felt “the necessity of the dodecaphonic language” — the rigorous 12-tone technique devised by Schoenberg a few decades before — “is of no use.” This was the conductor the Philharmonic had chosen to follow Bernstein? Charismatic Uncle Lenny, Mr. Let’s Find Out?

But Mr. Boulez, who died on Tuesday at 90 in Germany, had mellowed over the years, long before the Philharmonic tapped him. For sure, he arrived in New York determined to bring the orchestra belatedly into the 20th century. But the inventiveness and diversity of his programming proved a surprise. His death comes at a time when the Philharmonic is poised to reveal who will follow Alan Gilbert, like Mr. Boulez an inventive, varied programmer, as music director. Now, when the orchestra seems vague about its post-Gilbert artistic vision, it’s worth remembering the lessons of Mr. Boulez’s

Mr. Boulez championed modern music at the Philharmonic and showed that he was an unmatched conductor of knotty contemporary scores. But that first season he also focused on, of all composers, Liszt. And long before it became fashionable, he demonstrated how to juxtapose new and old music, sometimes very old: He conducted a raft of Baroque pieces. In one 1977 program from his final season as music director, he opened with Haydn’s “London” Symphony and then gave the New York premiere of the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu’s “Arc” for piano and orchestra, with Peter Serkin as soloist. And — talk about a crowd pleaser — he ended with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

He even proved deft at accommodating soloist superstars. In another 1977 program, the violinist Itzhak Perlman was featured in Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G and Ravel’s shamelessly showy “Tzigane.” The concert opened with Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll” and ended with a pair of scorchers by Varèse: “Ionisation” and “Arcana.”

Mr. Boulez spoke often about finding ways to shake up concert protocols and try alternative approaches. His innovations at the Philharmonic included Rug Concerts, which had the orchestra performing on the floor of the auditorium (its seats removed), and the audience resting on cushions and carpets. The programs boldly mixed composers from different eras: Ligeti and Mahler, Bach and Varèse.

I have vivid memories of Mr. Boulez’s Prospective Encounters programs, including one in 1973 at the Juilliard Theater. It was devoted to Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet (Op. 5), first played as a quartet, then in its version for string orchestra. In his French-accented English, Mr. Boulez explained the music without jargon, taking all questions graciously. One young man commented that Webern’s music didn’t seem to have “any beats.” Mr. Boulez seemed delighted to address this interesting, and essentially accurate, observation.

Still, though his days as a polemicist were past, Mr. Boulez conveyed a message through his programming and leadership: Complex modern music had come to stay; institutions and audiences were going to have to adjust. The Philharmonic had to remake itself as a vibrant institution that honored its heritage not by abandoning the past, but by integrating it into the present.

If Mr. Boulez did not accomplish all that he might have, it was less because of his vision than because of his lack of commitment. His time in New York overlapped with his tenure as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in England. He was too restless, finally, and too engaged as a composer, to devote himself entirely to remaking established institutions. As years passed, he felt more comfortable, and perhaps had more impact, through guest appearances and residencies.

During celebrations of Mr. Boulez’s 90th birthday last year, audiences had ample opportunities to hear his music. And as you listen to his ingeniously complex, rhythmically breathless and sensual scores, it’s hard to remember why they were once thought so intimidating.

Yes, the early works, steeped in 12-tone technique, are steely and radical, like the first two piano sonatas. But last March at Zankel Hall, the pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich gave exhilarating accounts of these pieces on a program presenting all of Boulez’s music for piano. The Sonata No. 1 came across as a work of jarring originality, especially in its rhythmic character, as the music unfolds with nonstop intensity through sweeping bursts and organic gestures. And the staggeringly difficult Sonata No. 2 seemed more than ever a young composer’s modernist retort to Beethoven’s mighty “Hammerklavier.”

In a 1999 interview, Mr. Boulez told me that his landmark work for alto and six instruments, “Le Marteau Sans Maître,” was his declaration of freedom from the “very narrow kind of serialism” that had become “very academic immediately.” For all its intricacy, the music abounds in texture and fantasy. And, in 1998, I found it unexpectedly moving to hear young players from the New Juilliard Ensemble in a commanding account of his 40-minute masterpiece “Sur Incises,” scored for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists. The sheer riot of energy and color was spectacular.

It was astonishing that the Philharmonic selected such a pioneer as its music director. And in 1969! Almost 50 years later, with another conductor choice on the horizon, it’s hard to imagine the orchestra doing something remotely as daring.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/ ... ative.html

[Wallingford]

When I think of Boulez, my mind turns immediately to all the fine contemporary composers he DIDN'T conduct.

[Ted Quanrud]

I do not like and certainly do not understand his music, but I deeply admire him as a conductor and a champion of new music. His conducting often gave music a crystalline clarity, a quality much appreciated with the Impressionists, less so -- perhaps -- with Wagner.

I heard him in concert only once -- the Mahler 7th with the Chicago Symphony in Carnegie Hall in 2006. It was a performance to die for. Every detail of the complex orchestration was exposed, yet all the kookiness of what I think is Mahler's weirdest score was there. I would love to have a recording of it.

[jbuck919]

When I think of Boulez, my mind turns immediately to all the fine contemporary composers he DIDN'T conduct.

I can take a good guess at whom you mean, and with a little research could probably come up with my own list, but just for my edification and with no intent to engage you in a dispute on the matter, could you be more specific?

[karlhenning]

When I think of Boulez, my mind turns immediately to all the fine contemporary composers he DIDN'T conduct.

I can take a good guess at whom you mean, and with a little research could probably come up with my own list, but just for my edification and with no intent to engage you in a dispute on the matter, could you be more specific?

Well, he came to New York to direct the Philharmonic, and gave New York composers William Schuman & Charles Wuorinen no consideration, e.g. (Just two names that came to mind right off.)

Cheers,
~k.

[Wallingford]

He wouldn't do Shostakovich or Gubaidulina.

The only Prokofiev he conducted was the Scythian Suite.

[Modernistfan]

I completely agree with Wallingford. He will be sorely missed, but the tragedy is how much more he might have accomplished as a conductor if he had not been so rigid and dogmatic. I would have loved to have heard his take on, for example, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 and "The Nose," not to mention some of the more recent post-Shostakovich Russian composers such as Schnittke, Gubaidulina, and Firsova, but he flat-out refused to budge on his rejection of Shostakovich. There are many other contemporary composers whose works might have been conducted by him, such as, just to name a few, Magnus Lindberg, Poul Ruders, and Peter Maxwell Davies, but, again, he would not move in that direction (I am deliberately eliminating any American minimalists and composers influenced by them in view of his often-expressed disdain for that school of composition). He also would not even look at the modern French spectralist school (Grisey, Dalbavie, Murail, and others). I fail to see the logic in him conducting Ravel and Richard Strauss while ignoring much of contemporary music (although he was, indeed, a great Ravel conductor). Some of what he did, of course, made sense to me. I completely understand him ignoring all French music prior to the late nineteenth/early twentieth century except for that avant-gardiste avant le lettre Hector Berlioz. Nevertheless, we need more people with his sense of mission in the increasingly conformist, increasingly commercial world of classical music today.

[John F]

What good does it do to increase the number of bad performances? I should think Boulez would have been completely at a loss in Shostakovich's music, it was not only distasteful to him but alien to his musical personality. Indeed, the only Russian composer for whom he had any liking or aptitude was Stravinsky, and only certain Stravinsky at that.

Generally, I think it's a good thing for musicians not to perform music they dislike or, as James Levine puts it, that they don't hunger to conduct. (Levine too avoids the Slavic composers other than Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.) Boulez seized opportunities to perform the music he cared about even when there was nothing in it for him but personal satisfaction, as when he conducted an Elliott Carter birthday concert at the Juilliard School. Good for him!

[karlhenning]

What good does it do to increase the number of bad performances? I should think Boulez would have been completely at a loss in Shostakovich's music, it was not only distasteful to him but alien to his musical personality. Indeed, the only Russian composer for whom he had any liking or aptitude was Stravinsky, and only certain Stravinsky at that.

Generally, I think it's a good thing for musicians not to perform music they dislike or, as James Levine puts it, that they don't hunger to conduct. (Levine too avoids the Slavic composers other than Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.) Boulez seized opportunities to perform the music he cared about even when there was nothing in it for him but personal satisfaction, as when he conducted an Elliott Carter birthday concert at the Juilliard School. Good for him!

Absolutely fair enough.

Cheers,
~k.

[BWV 1080]

Would not say that Shostokovich was alien to PB's musical personality given the fact that Mahler was DS's primary influence- Boulez judged that the music was just derivative of Mahler

Did Boulez conduct much neoclassical stravinsky? Am only familiar with the earlier works

[jserraglio]

"In Cleveland, if I'm rehearsing, say, the Meistersinger Prelude, I give the downbeat and get glorious sound, a chord with all voices dead in tune, perfectly balanced from top to bottom, and absolute unanimity of attack. In Vienna, I do the same thing, and I get something that sounds vaguely like C major. Of course, in Vienna I don't have to stop the rehearsal to explain what Die Meistersinger is about."

[jserraglio]

Would not say that Shostokovich was alien to PB's musical personality given the fact that Mahler was DS's primary influence- Boulez judged that the music was just derivative of Mahler

Did Boulez conduct much neoclassical stravinsky? Am only familiar with the earlier works

http://www.amazon.com/Stravinsky-Sympho ... B000031X7Y

http://www.amazon.com/Stravinsky-Pulcin ... B002YOJC4K

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/m ... vinsky.htm

Pierre Boulez' musical tastes may have broadened over the years (though his performing repertoire must be the smallest among today's major conductors), but his negative opinion of a significant chunk of Igor Stravinsky's output has clearly not changed. In his interview with Philip Huscher that replaces the usual program notes in the CD booklet at hand, Boulez calls the "serious" works of Stravinsky's neoclassical period — the opera Oedipus Rex, the ballets Apollo and Jeu de cartes — "contrived, forced," a "dead end" that is not even "an interesting detour"! As for the Symphony in Three Movements, "the second movement is pure neoclassicism — and that's not the best movement in my opinion... The best parts are... for me the first movement and part of the third, where he has an illustration of something in his mind" — that is, Stravinsky is best as a musical storyteller, as in his great early ballets, rather than as an abstract thinker like Brahms, Bruckner or Beethoven. Well, it's refreshing to encounter a conductor nervy enough to make disparaging remarks about the very work he's offering on the CD, though lovers of the entire symphony, or indeed of Stravinsky's whole neoclassical phase, may find it more outrageous than refreshing.

Pulcinella escapes this general condemnation, even though it's a prime example of neoclassicism, because it's playful, "a game," "a work I like to conduct, because it's like a toy in my hand." Fair enough. Boulez has previously recorded the Suite, on a 1978 Columbia LP with the New York Philharmonic (currently available on a remastered Sony CD with some different pairings), but this is his first go at the complete ballet, which runs a little under 40 minutes and features vocalists in 9 out of the 22 sections. Stravinsky was persuaded by Sergei Diaghilev in 1919 to write a ballet featuring music by Pergolesi: it was to be a follow-up to two other Ballets Russes productions using arrangements of 18th-Century Neopolitan music. Charmed by the music (much of which he and Diaghilev did not know was wrongly attributed to Pergolesi), Stravinsky reshaped it and created delightful orchestrations for the original production, which featured sets by Pablo Picasso, the title role of the commedia dell'arte lover danced by Leonid Massine, and the 33-piece orchestra led by a young Ernest Ansermet.

Boulez' new performance is very comparable to his New York Philharmonic recording of the Suite, taking into account the differing timbres of the solo players and, even more, the warmer and more detailed sound of the CSO-Resound disc (which I heard in stereo rather than surround sound) compared to the slightly muddy-sounding original LP. Sound quality and timbres aside, now that I've become more acquainted with the complete ballet, I'll want to return to it rather than the Suite: I now prefer the sound of the tenor voice taking over the melody of the Serenata (the second number) after the oboe's initial statement, and would miss hearing the roughly 40% "new" music in the complete ballet. Boulez's CSO performance is certainly a good choice: genial in the opening sections, really energized in the vigorous movements like the Allegro assai (after the first soprano solo) and the Tarantella, and featuring such lovely instrumental solos as those of First Oboe Eugene Izotov in the Serenata and indeed throughout.

[John F]

Would not say that Shostokovich was alien to PB's musical personality given the fact that Mahler was DS's primary influence- Boulez judged that the music was just derivative of Mahler

Which of course no more than a half-truth and I'd say considerably less. Also, Mahler had the excuse of having died in 1911; Shostakovich lived through the dodecaphonic/serial generations but ignored them, which according to Boulez made him and other such composers "useless."

Did Boulez conduct much neoclassical stravinsky? Am only familiar with the earlier works

Early on, Boulez was dismissive of Stravinsky's neoclassical period, and jserraglio has found an extensive discussion of this. But later he recorded "Pulcinella" and the Symphony in Three Movements. His excuses for this are decidedly flimsy; I believe he just liked the music despite himself.

[Modernistfan]

It is not quite accurate that Shostakovich ignored atonality and 12-tone music. It is important to realize that, in Leningrad in the 1920's, there was relative artistic freedom, and the music of composers such as Alban Berg and Ernst Křenek was heard quite frequently there. Křenek's Second Symphony, more or less free-atonal, may have been an important influence on Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony (check that work out--there are recordings on CPO and Decca). (When the Fourth Symphony was actually published, as late as 1961, about 25 years after it had been completed, Shostakovich did not want to put a key signature on it, but, because the Soviet State Music Publishing House would not publish what it considered "atonal music," he was more or less forced to arbitrarily put the key signature of C Minor on it. )

Also, some of his later works, including some of the later string quartets played around with 12-tone rows without fully embracing dodecaphony.

I agree that Boulez should not have conducted music that he felt completely out of sympathy with and for which the results would not have been worth hearing, but his rigidity and dogmatism may have deprived us of some worthwhile performance and recordings. (Of course, at this point, we have good recordings of Shostakovich up the gazoo.)

[karlhenning]

Would not say that Shostokovich was alien to PB's musical personality given the fact that Mahler was DS's primary influence- Boulez judged that the music was just derivative of Mahler

Which of course no more than a half-truth and I'd say considerably less. Also, Mahler had the excuse of having died in 1911; Shostakovich lived through the dodecaphonic/serial generations but ignored them, which according to Boulez made him and other such composers "useless."

That is the nub: for so much of his life and career, his viewpoint was marred by a walleyed obsession with what was or was not "useless" in his Cause.

Cheers,
~k.

[Modernistfan]

Agreed. It is this idea of "musical progress" to which Boulez was devoted at all costs that creates these ideological blind spots. Of course, Boulez was hardly the only victim of this chimera. Some years ago, a friend of mine showed me the textbook that she was using in a music appreciation course at UCLA (this was about 1994). The textbook dismissed Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, and Shostakovich in a total of one paragraph as "conservative 20th-century symphonists" and devoted about nine pages to Stockhausen. Well, I like Stockhausen to the point that I spent a lot of money ordering his own-label recordings from the Stockhausen-Verlag in Germany (he probably would have called me "der verrückte amerikanischen Sammler") and I just played one of my several recordings of Gruppen a few days ago, but I am still a huge Shostakovich fan, and it is now clear (which it might not have been at that time) that he was a substantial influence on the next generation of Soviet/Russian composers (Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Kancheli, and others). Similarly, Sibelius, following Alex Ross's analysis, has also turned out to be a major influence on a number of modernists (Morton Feldman, Magnus Lindberg, and many more).

[BWV 1080]

Ok but nobody bitched about Christopher Hogwood not conducting Xenakis after he died

[Modernistfan]

Hogwood did do some 20th-century works, mostly in a more or less neoclassical vein; the composers that he conducted (not with a period-instrument ensemble, of course), included Stravinsky, Honegger, Martinů, Britten, Tippett, Malipiero, and Casella. He actually recorded quite a bit of Martinů, on several labels including Decca, Arte Nova, Hyperion (4 CDs of the complete works for violin and orchestra), and Supraphon. (No Xenakis, though.)

[jbuck919]

Agreed. It is this idea of "musical progress" to which Boulez was devoted at all costs that creates these ideological blind spots. Of course, Boulez was hardly the only victim of this chimera. Some years ago, a friend of mine showed me the textbook that she was using in a music appreciation course at UCLA (this was about 1994). The textbook dismissed Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, and Shostakovich in a total of one paragraph as "conservative 20th-century symphonists" and devoted about nine pages to Stockhausen. Well, I like Stockhausen to the point that I spent a lot of money ordering his own-label recordings from the Stockhausen-Verlag in Germany (he probably would have called me "der verrückte amerikanischen Sammler") and I just played one of my several recordings of Gruppen a few days ago, but I am still a huge Shostakovich fan, and it is now clear (which it might not have been at that time) that he was a substantial influence on the next generation of Soviet/Russian composers (Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Kancheli, and others). Similarly, Sibelius, following Alex Ross's analysis, has also turned out to be a major influence on a number of modernists (Morton Feldman, Magnus Lindberg, and many more).

IMO this is a complete incongruity. Shostakovich, Sibelius, and Vaughan Williams do not belong in the same sentence even though I just placed them there. Shostakovich is the clear genius among them and not to be compared with the other two, who may have had their moments and may very well be inspirational for succeeding hacks. Anyone who groups the three together in apposition to some sort of avant-garde is fabricating a false dichotomy.

[THEHORN]

JSerraglio, that quote about the Meistersinger overture was actually by Christoph von Dohnanyi , not Boulez. And Dohnanyi has also been a staunch champion of contemporary music with a lot of overlap with the Boulez repertoire .
I don't even agree with him though . The VPO actually produces an even more glorious sound than the Cleveland , and I've never found their playing out of tune . I don't know what was going through Dohnanyi's mind . The Viennese may be a little looser and less concerned with rigorous precision , but I don't find that problematical ; their playing has a certain old world charm and Viennese suavity the Clevelanders , for all their polish, can't match . But the same is true of other top US orchestras .
Boulez could be quite chilly in his earlier years , but he definitely mellowed with age , and his later recordings for DG have a much warmer and more colorful sonorities . Still, Boulez has left a remarkable legacy of recordings which will be highly instructive to conductors of the future .
The music of Shostakovich is certainly influenced by Mahler, but it's a mistake to dismiss it as merely derivative . Like it or not, his music has an unmistakable sound and style of its own .
Only time will tell how posterity sees the music of Boulez ; but you can't deny its importance to the 20th and early 21st century . I've found that with repeated hearings, it's not really as daunting as many think .

[rwetmore]

I only know him from a few recordings I have -- most of which are quite good. I never saw him conduct anywhere live.

[Heck148]

I only know him from a few recordings I have -- most of which are quite good. I never saw him conduct anywhere live.

I saw /heard him conduct Cleveland Orch in Rochester - c. '69 or '70...
Raver Alborado del Gracioso, and one of the Ives Orchestral sets - excellent concert -
one thing I remember vividly - typical Ives pattern - IIRC - there was a 3 measure phrase in 4/4 time - slow tempo...against this there were 7 chimes of the bell spaced out evenly over the 3 bars - 7 against 12....Boulez conducted the 4//4 with his right hand, and cued the bells evenly with his left....that is impressive - that is tricky....

[jserraglio]

JSerraglio, that quote about the Meistersinger overture was actually by Christoph von Dohnanyi , not Boulez. And Dohnanyi has also been a staunch champion of contemporary music with a lot of overlap with the Boulez repertoire .

Thanks, I picked the quote up on another site and passed it on but somehow it didn't sound like Boulez to me. I heard Boulez conduct the M7 with the Clevelanders in the 1990s and was very impressed.

[John F]

IMO this is a complete incongruity. Shostakovich, Sibelius, and Vaughan Williams do not belong in the same sentence even though I just placed them there. Shostakovich is the clear genius among them and not to be compared with the other two, who may have had their moments and may very well be inspirational for succeeding hacks. Anyone who groups the three together in apposition to some sort of avant-garde is fabricating a false dichotomy.

Many would disagree with you. Until fairly recently, very likely influenced by his more sober late works, Shostakovich was the one of these three great composers who was most often dismissed by reviewers, critics, and other composers (outside Russia) - i.e. the opinion-makers - as banal, lowest-common-denominator. The ostinato in the first movement of the Leningrad Symphony was derided, and Bartok mocked it in his Concerto for Orchestra. Similarly Mahler, for those with memories stretching back as far as the '50s. In contrast, Sibelius and Vaughan Williams were seen as the true 20th century symphonists, in the long tradition reaching back to Haydn, in the structure and formal inventiveness of their symphonic works. That Mahler and to a lesser degree Shostakovich are now intellectually respectable is rather surprising, though of course I think it's deserved. But that doesn't lessen the achievement and reputations of the other two.

[John F]

I have three memories of Boulez when I was in college in the early '60s. First was listening to his song cycle "Le marteau sans maitre" in the first recording for Columbia, conducted by Robert Craft. I didn't understand the poetry and I didn't like the music, but I listened to the end - and since then, I confess, I've heard almost none of Boulez's music.

At about the same time, WHRB received a program from Netherlands Radio including the scherzo of Schubert's 6th symphony played by the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Boulez. It was very good, and the first suggestion that he might become a conductor of standard repertoire, not just music of the 20th century.

In 1963 Boulez came to Harvard as a visiting professor, teaching a graduate-level course, Music 218a, "Studies in 20th-century music." The title left him free to do whatever he wanted. Naturally I was curious and I audited (sat in for free) a couple of his classes. The first was about the scene with the doctor in Act 1 of "Wozzeck" - Berg composed it in the form of a passacaglia and Boulez spoke only about the form and compositional technique, not a word about the story or the characters or the music's dramatic relevance. I was disappointed but hung on for the next class, devoted to Webern's symphony op. 21, which typically for that composer is very short and very 12-tone. Again, Boulez spoke only of form and technique, and though I'd actually bought a score of the symphony and tried hard to follow him, making marginal notes in the score, I hardly understood anything. Not because of Boulez's way of speaking, his English was very clear, but because of what he was talking about. So I gave up and stopped auditing. Who knows what I missed?

Just now I've learned from a classmate that at the end Boulez gave no final exam but had a brief conversation with each of the students registered in the course, gave every one of them an A, and beat it out of town before the music faculty could get on his back about it.

[jbuck919]

Milton Babbitt also gave an automatic A to anyone who attended his class. He did not have to worry about the door hitting him on the backside on the way out. (I am not defending that grading policy.)

[jserraglio]

[snip]
Just now I've learned from a classmate that at the end Boulez gave no final exam but had a brief conversation with each of the students registered in the course, gave every one of them an A, and beat it out of town before the music faculty could get on his back about it.

So Boulez was a trend-setter as pedagogue as well as composer?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/ ... on-mode-a/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ans ... an-admits/

[karlhenning]

I have three memories of Boulez when I was in college in the early '60s. First was listening to his song cycle "Le marteau sans maitre" in the first recording for Columbia, conducted by Robert Craft. I didn't understand the poetry and I didn't like the music, but I listened to the end - and since then, I confess, I've heard almost none of Boulez's music.

Have you ever thought of giving Le marteau a second try, John?

Cheers,
~k.

[rwetmore]

His recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra with the NYPO from the 1970s is excellent, IMO. One of the best.

[John F]

Have you ever thought of giving Le marteau a second try, John?

Now you ask me, no, I never have. Maybe I will, but if I do revisit Boulez's music more likely it will be other music that I haven't heard and others have appreciated in ways I can connect with. Either way, the prospect doesn't appeal to me.

[karlhenning]

Well, I would not invite you to a chore : )

My ears have gone back and forth on Le marteau over the years, but I'm now solidly for the piece.

Cheers,
~k.