Think of Pierre Boulez as a corrective.
Whether or not you are crazy about Boulez as a composer or a conductor, he certainly had a knack for casting music in a fresh light. No romantic indulgence or fuzzy thinking to be found in his interpretations of Debussy and Ravel. Instead, a kind of neoclassical elegance prevails.
A similar sense of discipline informs his recordings of the Mahler symphonies (of all things). He transforms what under Leonard Bernstein, for instance, became the ne plus ultra of Romantic excess, into presentiments of the Modern Age – which to some extent actually makes sense. After all, didn’t Mahler himself once declare, “My time will come!”
As concerns his own music, he actually thought Arnold Schoenberg didn’t take his 12-tone experiments far enough. Boulez was a radical who out-radicaled the radicals. He redrew the boundaries of integral serialism, controlled chance, and electronic music. An aggressive push to the avant-garde earned him a reputation as an enfant terrible.
Ironically, by the time Boulez died on January 5, 2016, at the age of 90, his brand of dogma had long come to seem old-fashioned, as pluralism and a new acceptance of tonality have come to dominate the contemporary music scene.
And now, here we are, already poised to mark the centenary of his birth on March 26…
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll remember Boulez with two of his recordings for voice and somewhat intimate ensembles, imaginatively employed.
We’ll begin with his keystone composition, “Le Marteau sans maître” (“The Hammer without a Master”), composed between 1953 and 1957. The piece consists of three cycles, instrumental and vocal, after poems by René Char – one surreal and fantastical; another somber and existentialist; and a third romantic and utopian. The individual movements of the cycles are shuffled and integrated. The titles of the poems: “The Furious Craftsman,” “Stately Building and Presentiments,” and “Hangmen of Solitude.”
There is a further fascination to be found in the work’s instrumentation, which includes a colorful assortment of percussion, and the use of the instruments, which suggests Southeast Asian and African influences.
The piece was lauded by Igor Stravinsky as “the only significant work of this new age,” and by György Ligeti as “the chief work of the 1950s.” Furthermore, it is surprisingly listenable, with a kind of hypnotic allure.
We’ll round out the hour with Maurice Ravel’s evocations of a distant land, his “Chansons madécasses” (“Madegascan Songs”), of 1925/1926, on texts of Evariste-Desiréa de Parny.
Again, there are three of them: “Nahandove,” the name of the narrator’s beloved, the arrival of whom he anticipates on a sticky, languorous night; “Aoua!,” a violent outcry against white imperialism; and “Il est doux” (“How pleasant to lie”), a portrait of a lazy day, passed beneath a palm tree, waiting for the cool of night.
If anything, Ravel’s songs are even more sparsely scored than Boulez’s, for voice, flute, cello, and piano. Yet the composer manages to convey a certain lushness, or at any rate sensuousness, that boils over into violence as the music skirts atonality.
I thought it an ideal complement to “Le Marteau sans maître,” with Boulez conducting, of course.
If there’s one thing Boulez did well it was to force everyone to think – about music, about progress and about the reasons we value the things we hold sacred.
He once proclaimed, “A civilization that conserves is one that will decay!” Even so, we are very lucky to have his recordings, and music is the healthier for his provocations.
I hope you’ll join me for “Modern Romance” – Pierre Boulez in poetry and song – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
PHOTO: The Hammer has found a Master
