Pierre Boulez Studies (Cambridge Composer Studies)

Cambridge University Press, 10/13/2016
EAN 9781107062658, ISBN10: 1107062659

Hardcover, 408 pages, 25.3 x 18.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English

Pierre Boulez is acknowledged as one of the most important composers in contemporary musical life. This collection explores his works, influence, reception and legacy, shedding new light on Boulez's music and its historical and cultural contexts. In two sections that focus firstly on the context of the 1940s and 1950s, and secondly on the development of the composer's style, the contributors address recurring themes such as Boulez's approach to the serial principle and the related issues of form and large-scale structure. Featuring excerpts from Boulez's correspondence with a range of his contemporaries here published for the first time, the book illuminates both Boulez's relationship with them and his thinking concerning the challenges which confronted both him and other leading figures of the European avant-garde. In the final section, three chapters examine Boulez's relationship with audiences in the United Kingdom, and the development of the appreciation of his music.

Preface
Part I. The Context of the Late 1940s and 1950s
1. Pierre Boulez
composer, traveller, correspondent Edward Campbell
2. Traces of an apprenticeship
Pierre Boulez's Sonatine (1946/1949) Susanne Gärtner
3. Schoenberg vive Jessica Payette
Part II. The Evolution of a Style
4. 'A score neither begins nor ends
at most it pretends to'
fragmentary reflections on the Boulezian non finito Robert Piencikowski
5. Serial organisation and beyond
cross-relations of determinants in Le Marteau sans maître and the dynamic pitch-algorithm of Constellation Pascal Decroupet
6. 'Du Fond d'un Naufrage'
the quarter-tone compositions of Pierre Boulez Werner Strinz
7. Alea and the concept of the 'work in progress' Peter O'Hagan
8. Casting new light on Boulezian Serialism
unpredictability and free choice in the composition of Pli selon pli – portrait de Mallarmé Erling E. Guldbrandsen
9. Serial processes, agency and improvisation Joseph Salem
10. Listening to doubles in stereo Jonathan Goldman
11. Composing an improvisation at the beginning of the 1970s Paolo Dal Molin
Part III. Reception Studies
12. Pierre Boulez in London
the William Glock years Peter O'Hagan
13. Tartan from Baden-Baden
Boulez at the 1965 Edinburgh International Festival Edward Campbell
14. Pierre Boulez and the suspension of narrative Arnold Whittall.