This technique became known as integral serialism. Boulez quickly became one of the philosophical leaders of the post-war movement in the arts towards greater abstraction and experimentation. The so-called Darmstadt School composers were instrumental in creating a style that, for a time, existed as an antidote to music of nationalist fervor; an international, even cosmopolitan style, a style that could not be 'co-opted' as propaganda in the way that the Nazis used, for example, the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Boulez was in contact with many young composers who would become influential, including John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Early in his career, he performed as a specialist on the ondes Martenot. Structures was also a turning point for Boulez. As one of the most visible totally serialized works, it became a lightning rod for various kinds of criticism.
And so he created the sensual feline world of the 'Marteau'". These criticisms, combined with what Boulez felt was a lack of expressive flexibility in the language, as he outlined in his essay "At the Limit of Fertile Land He loosened the strictness of his total serialism into a more supple and strongly gestural music, and did not publicly reveal much about these techniques, which limited further discussion.
Its material was reused in the composition Cummings ist der Dichter. Le marteau was a surprising and revolutionary synthesis of many different streams in modern music, as well as seeming to encompass the sound worlds of modern jazz, the Balinese Gamelan, traditional African musics, and traditional Japanese musics.
Fluent and expressive, even sensuous, in a way that Boulez's earlier serial works had not been, it was hailed by diverse musicians, including Igor Stravinsky. Boulez described one of the work's innovations, called "pitch multiplication", in several articles, most importantly in the chapter "Musical Technique" in Boulez However, an explanation of the processes themselves was not made until Other techniques used in the "Bourreaux de solitude" cycle were first described by Ulrich Mosch, and later fully elaborated by him.
He also began to consider new avenues in his own work. With Pli selon pli for orchestra with solo soprano, he began to work with an idea of improvisation and open-endedness.
He considered how the conductor might be able to 'improvise' on vague notations, such as the fermata, and how the players might 'improvise' on irrational durations, such as grace notes.
In addition, he worked with the idea of leaving the specific ordering of movements or sections of music open to be chosen for a particular night of a performance, an idea related to the polyvalent form of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Interestingly, though the two works sound similar today, and certainly represent the same impeccable craft, Pli selon pli was not received as well as Le marteau. This is perhaps more of a cultural barometer than a reflection on the work itself.
While in Cage's music the performers are often given the freedom to improvise and create completely unforeseen sounds, with the object of removing the composer's intention from the music, in works by Boulez they only get to choose between possibilities that have been written out in detail by the composer - a method that, when applied to the successional order of sections, is often described as "mobile form". Stravinsky , then worked out in various versions, including one for mixed octet with electronics performed in The desire to expand unrealized possibilities has also lead Boulez to create related works in series.
To date, at least seven movements have been completed, although only five have been performed. Incises, a short work for solo piano, has since exploded into Sur Incises for three percussive groups pianos, harps, percussion in two very extended movements. Electronic Music After the s, in which he had produced little, Pierre Boulez began to turn back to the electronic medium and to large extended works.
In aleatoric music no two performances are ever exactly alike, because there are so many alternatives from which the performer can choose. Although structural devices associated with serial music are used in the piece, its outstanding characteristic is its luscious sound.
The low register of the flute and the viola carry many of the melodies, surrounded by the ever-present shimmer of the vibraphone, xylorimba, and guitar. The later compositions of Boulez show an interest in stereophonic effects gained through the use of spatially divided orchestral groups.
Pli selon pli and Figures doubles prismes are also huge sound montages. Further opportunities to conduct followed, particularly in Germany, but also in England and the United States.
His conducting career gained further prominence in , when he was engaged as Leonard Bernstein's successor as musical director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as conductor of London's BBC orchestra. Although most critics applaud the intentions of bringing the best musicians together and providing them with complete freedom, the results have had little impact on the world of music.
Boulez answered those critical of IRCAM and the intentions of the institute in an interview with Dennis Polkow in The Instrumentalist, "The problem is that people interested in the new piece will not be attracted to the horses, and people brought in by the horses will not be interested in the new piece. He was good at telling jokes, and rehearsals with his own Ensemble Intercontemporain were conducted in a happy atmosphere in which the highest standards of attention and execution were simply taken for granted.
His personal life remained hidden — clearly not by accident, since he was reported as saying he would be the first composer to lack a biography.
He was devotedly served from the early s by his valet, Hans Messmer, and by his highly efficient assistant, Astrid Schirmer, and was close to his elder sister Jeanne and his younger brother Roger, who both survive him, as well as their children and grandchildren.
To some extent the relaxed Boulez was the result of his having finally got his own way in the things that mattered to him, something perhaps only a certain brutality, allied to genius, could have achieved: he explained in a TV interview that, to begin with, he was the dog barking outside the tent — now he was inside the tent he had no need to bark.
The caustic, peremptory tone of much of his writing is intended to wake us up. Age brought a softening of his stance on other topics too. If Boulez was intelligent enough to know his own value, he was also kind and without self-importance. Not all men in his position would happily stand in a corridor for 20 minutes between two three-hour rehearsals to record an interview, with technicians jostling his elbow; not all men would have been able to use the occasion to deliver themselves of a minute disquisition on Messiaen that could easily have been broadcast unedited.
Pierre Boulez obituary. French composer and conductor whose influence transformed the musical world. Pierre Boulez rehearsing with Ensemble Intercontemporain in February Pierre Boulez, classical music's maverick, dies aged Read more. Pierre Boulez, classical music's modern maverick: in pictures.
Pierre Boulez: 10 key works, selected by Tom Service.
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