Word: boulez
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...longest, Constellation, which lasts twelve and a half minutes, must come in the middle. The score of this format consists of groups of notes on long unfolding sheets. To make it easier for the performer to observe the different techniques of performance which Boulez requires for various constellations, the text is printed in red and green. The sound oscillates regularly in register and density, and Boulez seems to try to get every possible sonority out of the piano, like Debussy extrapolated fifty years into the future...
...opening Sonatina for Flute and Piano (1946) was, in Boulez' words, "my first stage on the path of serial composition." Boulez likened the four sections which follow the introduction of this single-movement work to the four movements of the sonata. At the same time, he says, there is an opposition between quasi-thematic motifs derived from the fundamental series of the work, and athematic uses of rhythmic cells, i.e., short rhythmic groups...
...occasional rhythmic stability, gave it the clearest coherence of the three works. Even after hearing the Sonatina repeatedly on records, it is impossible to say whether the performance was good or bad; one lacks a stylistic frame of reference. Only Charles Wuorinen, piano, Harvey Sollberger, flute, and Pierre Boulez can tell...
...sounds. At the same time, Ligeti has suggested, the breakdown of the tonality which required playing in one direction (forward) only, has created forms that can be passed through in several directions in time. As a result, Ligeti says, in the Third Piano Sonata, performed by Leonard Stein, Boulez makes "the interpreter the chauffeur, who can drive in any one of a number of directions along the routes planned by the composer and signposted in advance." In its initial form (Boulez always leaves himself the option of modifying his works), the sonata consists of five segments or "formants" which...
...nine movements of Le Marteau, Boulez presents three poems through the voice (Bethany Beardslee) and comments on them instrumentally. In each of the nine movements, Boulez uses a different ensemble chosen from the voice, alto flute (Harvey Sollberger), viola (Jacob Glick), guitar (Stanley Silverman), vibraphone (Paul Price), xylophone (Raymond Desroches), and percussion (Max Neuhaus). The texture of the sound is always clear, sometimes shimmering, sometimes punctiform, and always changing. With the flexibility of tempi and timbre goes an obvious fixity of notes and rhythmic patterns; certain intervals and rhythmic groupings recur constantly. And with all this planning, with all this...