The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez

The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez

Author: Jonathan Goldman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-02-17

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0521514908

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A fresh look at the musical universe of arguably one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century.


Music Lessons

Music Lessons

Author: Pierre Boulez

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-10-17

Total Pages: 689

ISBN-13: 022667259X

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Music Lessons marks the first publication in English of a groundbreaking group of writings by French composer Pierre Boulez, his yearly lectures prepared for the Collège de France between 1976 and 1995. The lectures presented here offer a sustained intellectual engagement with themes of creativity in music by a widely influential cultural figure, who has long been central to the conversation around contemporary music. In his essays Boulez explores, among other topics, the process through which a musical idea is realized in a full-fledged composition, the complementary roles of craft and inspiration, and the degree to which the memory of other musical works can influence and change the act of creation. Boulez also gives a penetrating account of problems in classical music that are still present today, such as the often crippling conservatism of established musical institutions. Woven into the discussion are stories of his own compositions and those of fellow composers whose work he championed, as both a critic and conductor: from Stravinsky to Stockhausen and Varèse, from Bartók to Berg, Debussy to Mahler and Wagner, and all the way back to Bach. Including a foreword by famed semiologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez, who was for years a close collaborator and friend of the composer, this edition is also enriched by an illuminating preface by Jonathan Goldman. With a masterful translation retaining Boulez’s fierce convictions, cutting opinions, and signature wit, Music Lessons will be an essential and entertaining volume.


Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Author: Lev Koblyakov

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1136608494

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In this significant study of the music of Pierre Boulez, Dr. Koblyakov provides a complete analysis of Le Marteau sand Maître and deals with the development of serial music in the twentieth century and the problems of serial organization in general. He reaches stimulating conclusions about serial thinking and harmony in themusic of Pierre Boulez, thus enabling an understanding of the intricacies of this major composer's compositional techniques.


Pierre Boulez and the Piano

Pierre Boulez and the Piano

Author: Peter O'Hagan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-09-30

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1315517841

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Pierre Boulez's first piano pieces date from his youth, prior to his studies in Paris with Messiaen, and his subsequent meteoric rise to international acclaim as the leader of the musical avant-garde during the 1950s. His most recent published work is a solo piano piece, Une page d’éphéméride, written some sixty years after his first attempts at composition. The piano has remained central to Boulez's creative work throughout his career, and although his renown as a conductor has to some extent overshadowed his other achievements, it was as a performer of his own piano music that his practical gifts first found expression. Peter O'Hagan has given performances of various unpublished piano works by Boulez, including Antiphonie from the Third Sonata and Trois Psalmodies. In this study, he considers Boulez's writing for the piano in the context of the composer's stylistic evolution throughout the course of his development. Each of the principal works is considered in detail, not only on its own terms, but also as a stage in Boulez's ongoing quest to invent radical solutions to the renewal of musical language and to reinvigorate tradition. The volume includes reference to hitherto unpublished source material, which sheds light on his working methods and on the interrelationship between works.


Boulez, Music and Philosophy

Boulez, Music and Philosophy

Author: Edward Campbell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-08-19

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0521862426

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In this book, Campbell explores the relationships of music, philosophy and intellectual culture in the work of Pierre Boulez.


Rationalizing Culture

Rationalizing Culture

Author: Georgina Born

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1995-09-08

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0520202163

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As a year-long participant-observer, Born studied the social and cultural economy of an institution for research and production of avant-garde and computer music. She gives a unique portrait of IRCAM's composers, computer scientists, technicians, and secretaries, interrogating the effects of the cultural philosophy of the controversial avant-garde composer, Pierre Boulez, who directed the institute until 1992.


Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship

Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship

Author: Pierre Boulez

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780193112100

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Pierre Boulez (born 1925) is a major figure in French musical life, being not only the leading French composer of his generation, but also an outstanding conductor. He is also a prolific writer on music, and this is a translation of his first collection of essays, published in France in 1966. In these essays Boulez worked out many of his most significant ideas about music, and he sets forth his views with characteristic intellectual vigour and acuity. The essays are divided into four parts, the first three concerned with a common preoccupation (aesthetic, technical, polemical), thelast a collection of entries intended for a music encyclopaedia. Boulez writes mainly on the giants of twentieth-century music - Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Debussy, Messiaen, Ravel - and he offers penetrating and at times provocative analyses of some of their music and musical styles,such as neo-classicism and serialism. His illuminating comments arise from intimate knowledge of the music, and the resulting collection is an essential document of post-war modern music.


The Language Electroacoustic Music

The Language Electroacoustic Music

Author: Simon Emmerson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1986-12-03

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1349184926

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Since the inception of electroacoustic music in 1948, much has been written about technical developments. This book is one of the first to examine aesthetic issues central to this rapidly developing genre. It brings together composers from leading academic departments and studios in Britain, the United States, Canada and Paris with a wide range of approaches and opinions, resulting in a study which is likely to have a marked impact on current debates on the future of electroacoustic music. The book is divided into three sections. The first, Culture and Language, considers the relationship between music and the listener's perception and expectation. Materials and Lanugage looks at the types of materials available to composers and the way in which the internal structure of the sound can have implications for the overall structure of a piece. The final section, The Influence of New Technology, considers the relationship between computer systems and the music they are helping to create.


Modern Music and After

Modern Music and After

Author: Paul Griffiths

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-02-16

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 0199792283

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Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace, were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling of the serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies; in Karlheinz Stockhausen's development of electronic music and in Luigi Nono's pursuit of the universally human, in Iannis Xenakis's view of music as sounding mathematics and in Luciano Berio's consideration of it as language. The initiatives of these composers and their contemporaries opened prospects that haven't yet stopped unfolding. This constant expansion of musical thinking since 1945 has left us with no singular history of music; Griffiths's study accordingly follows several different paths, showing how and why they converge and diverge. This new edition of Modern Music and After discusses not only the music of the fifteen years that have passed since the previous edition, but also the recent explosion of scholarly interest in the latter half of the twentieth century. In particular, the book has been expanded to incorporate the variety of responses to the modernist impasse experienced by composers of the 1980s and 1990s. Griffiths then moves the book into the twenty-first century as he examines such highly influential composers as Helmut Lachenmann and Salvatore Sciarrino. For its breadth, wealth of detail, and characteristic wit and clarity, the third edition of Modern Music and After is required reading for the student and the enquiring listener.