Conductor
and composer Pierre Boulez (1925) has always sought to push boundaries and look
into the future musically. He is opposed to traditional music and was
considered a rebel at first as he used modern methods such as 12-tone composition to help him develop new approaches to sound.
Boulez
studied mathematics early on but soon switched to music at the Paris
Conservatory where Olivier Messiaen and René Leibowitz were among his
instructors. Over the course of his life he has inspired many young musicians
and even won twenty-six Grammys for recordings! Continuing his mission to
pursue modern music, Boulez founded a modern music series in 1954 known as
Domaine musical. The group represented music from composers including John
Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, and Luciano Berio.
Above
I mentioned the 12-tone method. This type of compositional approach is known as
serialism and is based on a pre-determined series of pitches from the chromatic
scale repeatedly used throughout a work. Boulez expanded this method into total
serialism—the application of serialism to items other than pitch including
durations and timbres. He was also known to provide options in some of his
pieces, giving the performer the opportunity to decide the order in which to
play things.
Below
you can listen to Boulez’s Le marteau
sans maître (1953-55). It uses a singer and chamber ensemble with various
percussion, alto flute, xylorimba, vibraphone, guitar, and viola. It contains
nine movements and uses settings on poetry by René Char. Notice the
Sprechstimme style of singing (type of singing that sounds similar to
speaking).
Next
time, join me as we talk about the use of Elvis in Michael Daughtery’s work!
