Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Le Marteau sans maître

Pierre Boulez A Mad Genius at 100

“Blow the opera houses up!”

“All the art of the past should be destroyed!”

“A musician who has not experienced… the necessity for the dodecaphonic language is USELESS!”

“From Schoenberg’s pen flows a stream of infuriating clichés!”

“The Paris opera is full of dust and crap! Operatic tourists make me want to vomit!”

Pierre Boulez could be provocative and full of contradictions. Is it any wonder there’s been so much blowback against him and what he came to represent? This gadfly of the avant-garde was born 100 years ago today.

As a composer and polemicist, he was ever the rebel angel, the archnemesis of tonality and tradition. He studied under Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory, but in his advocacy of the abstruse, Boulez froze his teacher out. (Boulez characterized Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-Symphonie” as “brothel music.”) He idolized the Igor Stravinsky of “The Rite of Spring;” but in 1945, when Stravinsky unveiled his “Four Norwegian Moods,” a neoclassical pastiche in the style of Edvard Grieg, of all people, Boulez and his classmates booed vigorously.

As a conductor, he could be a persuasive interpreter of Mahler, Debussy, and Ravel. He enjoyed particular success with a landmark centenary production of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle,” directed by Patrice Chéreau – a triumph scored in one of those very opera houses he was so eager to have destroyed. In his later years, he found value even in the music of Strauss and Bruckner.

But for the most part, the composers he championed were those who were perceived as revolutionary in their own time and who, as Liszt so memorably put it, had hurled their lances into the future.

In contemporary music, Boulez was a master. You’re on pretty safe ground if Boulez is conducting Webern, Xenakis, or himself. He even came around to grasping the value of his old mentor, Messiaen.

It’s as a composer that his reputation hangs in the balance. There’s been a lot of vituperation launched against Boulez’s aesthetic, but it’s hard to deny that he brought it on himself. Passionate acolytes remain, though they live like anchorites in the wilderness, in hovels and on barren cliff-faces, with no friends outside internet chat groups, or perhaps, depending on how closely they emulate the rhetoric of their idol, not even there.

Myself, I tend to be a little more moderate in my views, at least in this regard. Depending on my mood, I can put on a Boulez record and just go with it. His chamber cantata “Le Marteau sans maître” (1955), which I’ve played on the radio a few times over the years, is a good example of that. I understand what he’s up to, because I’ve done my homework, but it’s not to say I can hear everything any more than I can in any other serial score. But it sure does make some fascinating sounds. Actually, I find it his most approachable piece.

That’s about as good as it gets, folks. Later in life, when speaking of his “Structures, Book I” for two pianos (1951-52), Boulez described it as a work in which “the responsibility of the composer is practically absent. Had computers existed at that time I would have put the data through them and made the piece that way. But I did it by hand… It was a demonstration through the absurd.” Asked whether it should still be listened to as music, Boulez replied, “I am not terribly eager to listen to it. But for me it was an experiment that was absolutely necessary.”

Sometimes you have to push hard in order to find equilibrium. Ironically, Boulez makes such a show of breaking with tradition, yet he’s still caught within the tradition.

Boulez might not be to everyone’s taste, either as a composer or a conductor, but if he did one thing well it was to force everyone to think – about music, about progress, and about the reasons we value the things we hold sacred.

Boulez once proclaimed, “A civilization that conserves is one that will decay!” Even so, I’m glad we have his records.

Happy 100th, you mad prodigal.

Maurizio Pollini plays Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2 (1948)

Serial for breakfast: “Le Marteau sans maître” (1955)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljcDXPcWRvI

Boulez rehearsing “Structures” (Book I, 1952; Book II, 1961) with Messiaen’s second wife, Yvonne Loriod

Conducting Debussy’s “Images for Orchestra”

An early “The Rite of Spring”

Conducting Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 (live video)

“Das Rheingold,” from the Chéreau “Ring”

PHOTO: Put your hands up for Pierre Boulez

March 26, 2025
Pierre Boulez Provocations in Sound

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!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: The Hammer has found a Master

March 22, 2025
Boulez Centenary on The Lost Chord Radio Show

Just finished recording this week’s edition of “The Lost Chord.” To mark the centenary of the birth of Pierre Boulez on March 26, the program juxtaposes two Boulez-conducted song cycles: Boulez’s own “Le Marteau sans maître” (“The Hammer without a Master”) and Ravel’s “Chansons madécasses“ (“Madagascan Songs”). Hear it on KWAX, this Saturday at 7:00 p.m. EDT/4:00 p.m. PDT. Stream it wherever you are at https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

March 19, 2025
Pierre Boulez Celebrates 95th Birthday

In his early days, he was the enfant terrible who railed against tradition and even called for the violent destruction of the opera houses. Later, he grew into a revered conductor of Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartók, and even Bruckner. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain – a group he founded – and guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, and many others.

Today is the birthday of Pierre Boulez. Boulez would have been 95 today. He died in 2016.

Here is one of his most famous works, “Le Marteau sans Maître” – “The Hammer without a Master” – settings of surrealist poems by René Char, perhaps most easily digested in live performance. You’ll find translations of the texts posted beneath the video:

Boulez on Boulez:

Boulez conducts Bruckner:

PHOTO: The Hammer finds its Master

March 26, 2020
Boulez: A Corrective Force in Music

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 last week 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.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll remember Boulez with a recording of his keystone composition, “Le Marteau sans maître” (“The Hammer without a Master”), written 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.

I thought this 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 – tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast, at wwfm.org.

PHOTO: The Hammer has found a Master

January 11, 2016

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