Joan Peyser (1930–2011)
Författare till Bernstein: A Biography
Om författaren
Verk av Joan Peyser
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Födelsedag
- 1930-06-12
- Avled
- 2011-04-24
- Kön
- female
- Nationalitet
- USA
- Födelseort
- New York City, New York, USA
- Dödsort
- Manhattan, New York, USA
- Bostadsorter
- New York, New York, USA
- Utbildning
- High School of Music and Art
Smith College
Barnard College (BA)
Columbia University (MA) - Yrken
- Musicologist
music writer
Biographer
pianist - Relationer
- Driggs, Frank (partner)
- Organisationer
- The Musical Quarterly (editor)
- Priser och utmärkelser
- Deems Taylor Award
- Kort biografi
- Joan Peyser was born Joan Goldstein to a Jewish-American family in New York City. When she was a child, her father changed her surname and her brother’s to Gilbert to protect them from anti-Semitism. Joan began studying music at age 5, and played a piano recital at Town Hall when she was 13. She went to the High School of Music and Art, where she also studied the viola. She attended Smith College for two years, then transferred to Barnard College to complete her bachelor’s degree in music. She then earned a master’s degree at Columbia University in 1956. In 1949, she married Herbert S. Peyser, later a psychiatrist, with whom she had three children. She began writing about music while still a student, publishing articles in Opera News and other publications. In 1966, an article in the Columbia University Forum led to a book contract for The New Music: The Sense Behind the Sound (1970). It was followeded by Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma (1976). In 1999, she combined the two books into a single volume, To Boulez and Beyond: Music in Europe Since The Rite of Spring. She also wrote biographies of Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin. Ms. Peyser was the editor of The Musical Quarterly from 1977 to 1984. Among her many prizes were six Deems Taylor Awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for excellence in writing on music.
Medlemmar
Recensioner
review of
Joan Peyser's The New Music
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 5-9, 2019
For my complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1115446-old-timey-new-music?chapter=1
I've been seriously involved w/ studying 'New Music' for something like the last 52 yrs. As such, it seemed a bit redundant to read this bk, esp since it's copyrighted 1971 & is far from representing anything 'new' in terms of my own personal chronology. Nonetheless, I decided to read it because I'd read Peyser's Boulez, Composer, Conductor, Enigma (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/622967-pierre-boulez ) & had enjoyed it very much so I wanted to read something else by her. In my review of her Boulez bk I wrote:
"I was immediately impressed by Peyser's writing b/c she seems to've pursued Boulez rapaciously regardless of his resistance to her writing this biography & b/c she actually seems to have some significant understanding of the music so her pursuit doesn't just come across as that of a malicious gossip."
&, once again, I was impressed by Peyser & glad I read the bk. Even though I'm far from ignorant, I still had things to learn from her & generally enjoyed her telling of it. Nonetheless, by the time she wrote the bk, her choice of featured composers, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, & Varèse, was already out-of-date. By my reckoning, the flood-gates of innovation cd be sd to've opened in 1885 w/ the early days of Charles Ives & Erik Satie but we might as well throw Scriabin in there too, eh?!
"Apparently precocious, Scriabin began building pianos after being fascinated with piano mechanisms. He sometimes gave away pianos he had built to house guests. Lyubov portrays Scriabin as very shy and unsociable with his peers, but appreciative of adult attention. Another anecdote tells of Scriabin trying to conduct an orchestra composed of local children, an attempt that ended in frustration and tears. He would perform his own amateur plays and operas with puppets to willing audiences. He studied the piano from an early age, taking lessons with Nikolai Zverev, a strict disciplinarian, who was also the teacher of Sergei Rachmaninoff and other piano prodigies concurrently, though Scriabin was not a pensioner like Rachmaninoff." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scriabin
But even those guys are not really my point. Obviously, all heck broke loose w/ John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Lejaren Hiller, & a zillion other people (for those of you unfamilar w/ the measurement term "a zillion", it means more humans than have been around on Earth for the last 134 yrs &, therefore, a ridiculous assertion on the part of the reviewer but meant to function here as an exaggeration for the sake of making a point).
The New Music has an Introduction by Jacques Barzun. Even though I've seen his name for many yrs (or, probably, decades) I haven't read anything by him & know close to nothing about him or his work. I'll speculate that he's an 'official' intellectual: i.e.: someone associated w/ academia & widely published & translated.
"Jacques Martin Barzun (/ˈbɑːrzən/; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, and classical music, and was also known as a philosopher of education. In the book Teacher in America (1945), Barzun influenced the training of schoolteachers in the United States.
"He published more than forty books, was awarded the American Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was designated a knight of the French Legion of Honor. The historical retrospective From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (2000), widely considered his magnum opus, was published when he was 93 years old." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Barzun
Okay, ok, k, I'm impressed. He almost made it to 105. Couldn't he've held out 'til his birthday?
"I happen to think that only in music have truly new directions been found, and that these are two and only two: electronic music and the 43-tone works and instruments of Harry Partch." - p x
Wow! That's a very dramatic assertion! &, uh, more than a little overstated. There have certainly been all sorts of new directions in various areas by 1971: I'd name FLUXUS, Structuralist Filmmaking, OuLiPo, Performance Art, Conceptual Art, Mail Art, etc.. But aside from that, in music, certainly John Cage, Giacinto Scelsi, Conlon Nancarrow, etc.. deserve mention. & why stick to just Harry Partch? If you want microtonality why not mention the earlier Alois Hába, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Julián Carrillo, etc? Dare I guess that it's b/c Barzun didn't know their work?
The Prologue states that:
"The story of twentieth-century music is in great part the story of how different composers coped with the annihilation of tonality, that particular system of organizing tones that was assumed after several centuries to be the natural law in music." - p xiii
That seems fair enuf. I wonder how many people think of it that way anymore? 48 yrs after this bk was copyrighted? I feel like I sortof left that dichotomy behind as soon as I started (d) composing in 1974.
"In his Dissonance Quartet, Mozart bypassed certain rules of tonal logic and thus elevated "disagreeable" sounds at the expense of agreeable ones." - p xiii
Never heard (of) it.
"The first movement opens with ominous quiet Cs in the cello, joined successively by the viola (on A♭ moving to a G), the second violin (on E♭), and the first violin (on A), thus creating the "dissonance" itself and narrowly avoiding a greater one. This lack of harmony and fixed key continues throughout the slow introduction before resolving into the bright C major of the Allegro section of the first movement, which is in sonata form.
"Mozart goes on to use chromatic and whole tone scales to outline fourths. Arch shaped lines emphasizing fourths in the first violin (C – F – C) and the violoncello (G – C – C' – G') are combined with lines emphasizing fifths in the second violin and viola. Over the barline between the second and third measures of the example, a fourth-suspension can be seen in the second violin's tied C. In another of his string quartets, KV 464, such fourth-suspensions are also very prominent.
"The second movement is in sonatina form, i.e., lacking the development section. Alfred Einstein writes of the coda of this movement that "the first violin openly expresses what seemed hidden beneath the conversational play of the subordinate theme"." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._19_(Mozart)
I wonder how many composers there were at the time who composed more innovatively but were written out of history as just too weird?!
"Schoenberg's first keyless movement ushered in the atonal period in Vienna in 1908." - p xiv
Peyser does specify "in Vienna". My immediate response to this was "Ives?", "Hauer?" — but Ives wasn't in Vienna & might be more appropriately linked to polytonality. Hauer she does get into in some detail & that's part of what makes this bk so good.
"Egon Wellesz, another early Schoenberg pupil, tells an interesting story about the development of the 12-tone technique in an August, 1961 issue of The Listener:
"It was in 1915 that a private in the Austrian army was sent to me because the military psychiatrists found that he was so neurotic and talked about music in such a peculiar way that they did not know what to do with him and wanted my advice. The man was Josef Hauer. Hauer had developed in his compositions the idea of 12-note rows which, according to his theory, had the same function as the nomoi, the type-melodies in Greek music. Though Hauer expressed his views in a very amateurish way, I found his ideas very interesting and his attitude toward music reminded me of Erik Satie. I think that my favorable report helped to get Hauer released from his work in an army office. Reti, of whose judgment Schoenberg thought highly, told him about Hauer's theories and compositions, and Schoenberg began to develop these ideas which led him to introduce the system of composition with twelve tones.
"There can be no doubt that Hauer was the first to construct rows of twelve notes—rather haphazardly—and to choose which one of them suited him best for a composition.
"Hauer, in fact, did not choose a single row for a musical work nor did he work w/ the "row" as we know it. Unlike Schoenberg, who insisted that one row provide all the material and thus ensure a sense of unitary perception, Hauer allowed that any number of 12-tone melodies could be combined within a single movement." - p 37
Maybe Hauer was doing something more interesting & inspired than working w/ a Schoenbergian "row". How wd we know? I just looked in my local library's catalog, whose music department is excellent & I found scores by him & at least one bk about his music theory but not one single recording of his work. Fortunately, my own collection at home succeeds where the library's collection fails.
The relevant record is called Wirkung der Neuen Wiener Schule im Lied featuring Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on vocals & Aribert Reimann on piano. It doesn't take much knowledge of Deutsch to translate the title as "Work of the New Vienna School in Song". There're 9 composers represented, Hauer is the 1st. His 2 songs are "Der gefesselte Strom" ("The Restrained Stream") & "An die Parzen" ("To the Fates") — both settings of Friedrich Hölderlin poems.
The liner notes of this record are mostly in German but the general essay is also provided in English. In it, Hauer is described as follows:
"Joseph Matthias Hauer (1883-1959) stood as a lone wolf in opposition to Schönberg. He claimed to have experimented with the twelve-tone series before Schönberg. Hauer worked with 44 basic patterns out of the 479,001,600 possibilities of com[b]ining the twelve tones. The soft mystic tone of his musical language was based on the conviction that music is "mathematics in its highest sense" and that atonal music represents the "personification of absolute musical objectivity". Hauer spent the end of his life in Vienna, half-forgotten, a recluse, misunderstood and outcast."
Hmm.. maybe I'm a reincarnation of Hauer.. who was he a reincarnation of?
Anyway, I like Hauer's 2 songs but it's not much to go on.
Peyser tells of Schoenberg writing a letter to Hauer on December 1, 1923:
""Let us write a book together, a book in whcih one chapter will be written by one of us, the next by the other and so on. In it let us state our ideas, exactly defining the distinctive elements, by means of objective but courteous argument trying to collaborate a little bit in spite of these differences: because of what there is in common a basis can surely be found on which we can get along smoothly and with each other."" - p 38
Nice one, Arnie. Too bad it didn't come to pass.
"Those opposed to dodecaphony, including such disparate composers as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Bartók, Milhaud and many Americans in the thirties and forties, found themselves thrust together under the large amorphous umbrella labeled "neoclassicism."" - p xv
I've always found Neoclassicism to be boring. It's odd to me that Peyser doesn't list Prokofieff in the above b/c I've always thought of his "Symphony No. 1" as a 'classic' of Neoclassicism (or is it pre-Neoclassicism?!). THEN came the "New Tonality" as part of Minimalism. Gag. Perhaps it's time to mention that I love Schoenberg's music but I'm not really that preoccupied w/ its dodecaphony b/c I'm not that preoccupied w/ pitch-specific work in general. For me, Schoenberg's a great 'Old Timey" composer. My big regret is that there aren't any Old Timey buskers who play "Pierrot Lunaire" or "Serenade" — maybe arranged for fiddle, banjo, & guitar. Heck O'Goshen, some harmonica & jaw harp wd be nice too.
"Schoenberg, by the age of twenty five, had heard each of Wagner's operas between twenty and thirty times and inherited Wagner's tyrannical mien." - p 4
I dated a woman who had seen "Harold and Maude" something like 113 times. What wd she have done if she'd been a filmmaker? I assume from the above that Schoenberg had witnessed the operas performed. That seems almost impossible. I admire his devotion but I think I might be satisfied w/ witnessing each of them once or twice. Imagine: If Wagner had met Schoenberg wd he've been less of an anti-Semite? As soon as I get my Time Credit Card bill pd off I'm going to take Schoenberg back to Wagner to see if I can nip Nazism in the bud.
"Several of Schoenberg's original group became disenchanted in the 1920's after Schoenberg proclaimed the 12-tone technique. Alfredo Casella accused the Viennese master of confining music in a narrow prison, and the Marxist Hanns Eisler, shifting to the principle of socialist realism, commented that his teacher had gone to the trouble of bringing about a revolution in order to be a reactionary." - p 7
I just listen to the music, ma'am. I've never heard anything by Casella, what I've heard by Eisler has some vitality but it ain't no Schoenberg by a long shot. As for Socialist Realism? Might as well call it death-to-creativity-by-propaganda. What exactly IS Socialist Realism Music? An 'impossibility' as far as I can tell. A picture of a tractor to try to get the farmers to update their farming techniques, ok. But music reduced to the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) so that people who don't understand music in the least can 'like' it? BAD IDEA. There were already musics meant for specific work situations, why not stick with them? Waulking music, e.g., in Scotland.
"Waulking songs (Scots Gaelic: Òrain Luaidh) are Scottish folk songs, traditionally sung in the Gaelic language by women while fulling (waulking) cloth. This practice involved a group of women rhythmically beating newly woven tweed against a table or similar surface to soften it. Simple, beat-driven songs were used to accompany the work." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waulking_song
Or how about Bulgarian vocal music where tritones were used as piercing sounds to travel long distance between fields that people were working in? The point is, there's nothing organic or natural about Socialist Realism, it's just more control freaking imposed by idiots on people w/ imaginations.
Now Peyser depicts Schoenberg as thinking of hmself as having a divine mission. I think that's unfortunate but I still love the music & I've listened to almost all of it that I know of. For those of you who don't know his work I recommened the following:
1899 "Verklärte Nacht"
1901 "Brettllieder"
1902/03 "Pelleas und Melisande"
1903/05 "6 Lieder"
1906 "Kammer Symphonie"
1907/08 "String Quartet No. 2"
1910 "Fünf Orchesterstücke"
1909 "Erwartung"
1910 "Drei Kleine Stucke"
1911 "Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke"
1911 "Herzgewächse"
1912 "Pierrot Lunaire"
1920 "Mahler: Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen"
1920/23 "Serenade"
1921 "Suite for Piano"
1925/26 "3 Satiren Anhang"
1925 "Suite for Septet"
1930 "Begleitmusik zu Einer Lightspielszene"
1934 "Suite in G Major for String Orchestra"
1934/36 "Violin Concerto"
1942 "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte"
1942 "Piano Concerto"
1945 "I am Almost Sure, When Your Nurse will Change Your Diapers"
1945 "Prelude to Genesis Suite"
1946 "String Trio"
1947 "A Survivor from Warsaw"
1949 "Phantasy for Violin and Piano"
1950 "Modern Psalm"
"RODRIGUEZ: In the beginning was the Word. . . .
"SCHOENBERG: What else? What else can I do but express the original Word, which to me is a human thought, a human idea or a human aspiration?
"Thus it can be seen that Schoenberg's theme was a musical translation of an idea which, in its origin, was the Word of God. Schoenberg was a profoundly religious man and his most ambitious works were religious subjects. His last great opera, Moses und Aron, which he worked on throughout his life, ends: "But even in the wasteland you shall be victorious and achieve the goal: unity with God."
"Although in conversation and in his letters, Schoenberg frequently indicated a sense of despair at being chosen God's emissary on earth, he never questioned the fact that he was." - p 8
In all my decades of listening to Schoenberg I don't recall running across this "God's emissary on earth" business — so, even though I believe Peyser is a sincere researcher, I have to wonder whether there's an alternate biography that doesn't emphasize this. I reckon Peyser's accurate, though. I try to block out religion like billboards.
"The 12-tone technique put an end to a several-hundred-year period in which music was devoted to a dramatic-expressive ideal." - p 10
I think not. If there's ever been a "dramatic-expressive" composer, it's Schoenberg. Listen to his concertos, listen to "A Survivor from Warsaw", listen to "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte". I don't really think that tonality is necessary for a dramatic-expressiveness. A rubato, a crescendo anyone?
"And to the composer, 13 did represent the height of malevolent magic." - p 10
"This prompted him to number his measures, later in life, as 12, 12A and 14. "It is not superstition," he often said, "it is belief."" - p 11
Hey! I have a friend who will turn his car around if he sees a black cat crossing the street in front of him. So what if it's a Jaquar & the street's narrow?
"Arnold's parents arrived in Vienna shortly after the enactment of the 1867 Constitution which removed the legal inequities against the Jews.
"But anti-Semitism continued unabated. Sigmund Freud, for instance, was denied the post of associate professor at the University of Vienna although he had been teaching for seventeen years without a formal appointment. The world of music was also closed to Jews: Mahler had to renounce Judaism and be baptized in order to be eligible for the director's post of the Vienna Court Opera, a powerful organization administered by the Court Chamberlain." - pp 13-14
What. the. fuck?! Christians are such. a. drag. Take that president character for an example:
"Trump is a professed Presbyterian" - https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/21/politics/trump-religion-gospel/index.html
If Mahler had to be baptized to fill a position that he was obviously qualified for it seems only fair that Rump shd have to have his mouth washed out w/ soap everytime he lies if he's to stay president. At least we'd get the entertainment value of seeing him foam at the mouth. Of course, the thing about religious people, certainly about the ChristInane & the IsDumb, is that if you're religious you can commit ANY crime you damned well feel like & then back out of it unscathed by putting a really dumb & contrite expression on your face & telling 'God' you're sorry. Or lie — wch is more common. Then there's always God told me to do it.
"Forty years later Schoenberg described the reaction to Pelleas:
""The first performance, under my direction, provoked great riots among the audience and even the critics. Reviews were unusually violent and one of the music critics even suggested putting me in an insane asylum and keeping music paper out of my reach."" - p 20
For my complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1115446-old-timey-new-music?chapter=1… (mer)
Joan Peyser's The New Music
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 5-9, 2019
For my complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1115446-old-timey-new-music?chapter=1
I've been seriously involved w/ studying 'New Music' for something like the last 52 yrs. As such, it seemed a bit redundant to read this bk, esp since it's copyrighted 1971 & is far from representing anything 'new' in terms of my own personal chronology. Nonetheless, I decided to read it because I'd read Peyser's Boulez, Composer, Conductor, Enigma (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/622967-pierre-boulez ) & had enjoyed it very much so I wanted to read something else by her. In my review of her Boulez bk I wrote:
"I was immediately impressed by Peyser's writing b/c she seems to've pursued Boulez rapaciously regardless of his resistance to her writing this biography & b/c she actually seems to have some significant understanding of the music so her pursuit doesn't just come across as that of a malicious gossip."
&, once again, I was impressed by Peyser & glad I read the bk. Even though I'm far from ignorant, I still had things to learn from her & generally enjoyed her telling of it. Nonetheless, by the time she wrote the bk, her choice of featured composers, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, & Varèse, was already out-of-date. By my reckoning, the flood-gates of innovation cd be sd to've opened in 1885 w/ the early days of Charles Ives & Erik Satie but we might as well throw Scriabin in there too, eh?!
"Apparently precocious, Scriabin began building pianos after being fascinated with piano mechanisms. He sometimes gave away pianos he had built to house guests. Lyubov portrays Scriabin as very shy and unsociable with his peers, but appreciative of adult attention. Another anecdote tells of Scriabin trying to conduct an orchestra composed of local children, an attempt that ended in frustration and tears. He would perform his own amateur plays and operas with puppets to willing audiences. He studied the piano from an early age, taking lessons with Nikolai Zverev, a strict disciplinarian, who was also the teacher of Sergei Rachmaninoff and other piano prodigies concurrently, though Scriabin was not a pensioner like Rachmaninoff." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scriabin
But even those guys are not really my point. Obviously, all heck broke loose w/ John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Lejaren Hiller, & a zillion other people (for those of you unfamilar w/ the measurement term "a zillion", it means more humans than have been around on Earth for the last 134 yrs &, therefore, a ridiculous assertion on the part of the reviewer but meant to function here as an exaggeration for the sake of making a point).
The New Music has an Introduction by Jacques Barzun. Even though I've seen his name for many yrs (or, probably, decades) I haven't read anything by him & know close to nothing about him or his work. I'll speculate that he's an 'official' intellectual: i.e.: someone associated w/ academia & widely published & translated.
"Jacques Martin Barzun (/ˈbɑːrzən/; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, and classical music, and was also known as a philosopher of education. In the book Teacher in America (1945), Barzun influenced the training of schoolteachers in the United States.
"He published more than forty books, was awarded the American Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was designated a knight of the French Legion of Honor. The historical retrospective From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (2000), widely considered his magnum opus, was published when he was 93 years old." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Barzun
Okay, ok, k, I'm impressed. He almost made it to 105. Couldn't he've held out 'til his birthday?
"I happen to think that only in music have truly new directions been found, and that these are two and only two: electronic music and the 43-tone works and instruments of Harry Partch." - p x
Wow! That's a very dramatic assertion! &, uh, more than a little overstated. There have certainly been all sorts of new directions in various areas by 1971: I'd name FLUXUS, Structuralist Filmmaking, OuLiPo, Performance Art, Conceptual Art, Mail Art, etc.. But aside from that, in music, certainly John Cage, Giacinto Scelsi, Conlon Nancarrow, etc.. deserve mention. & why stick to just Harry Partch? If you want microtonality why not mention the earlier Alois Hába, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Julián Carrillo, etc? Dare I guess that it's b/c Barzun didn't know their work?
The Prologue states that:
"The story of twentieth-century music is in great part the story of how different composers coped with the annihilation of tonality, that particular system of organizing tones that was assumed after several centuries to be the natural law in music." - p xiii
That seems fair enuf. I wonder how many people think of it that way anymore? 48 yrs after this bk was copyrighted? I feel like I sortof left that dichotomy behind as soon as I started (d) composing in 1974.
"In his Dissonance Quartet, Mozart bypassed certain rules of tonal logic and thus elevated "disagreeable" sounds at the expense of agreeable ones." - p xiii
Never heard (of) it.
"The first movement opens with ominous quiet Cs in the cello, joined successively by the viola (on A♭ moving to a G), the second violin (on E♭), and the first violin (on A), thus creating the "dissonance" itself and narrowly avoiding a greater one. This lack of harmony and fixed key continues throughout the slow introduction before resolving into the bright C major of the Allegro section of the first movement, which is in sonata form.
"Mozart goes on to use chromatic and whole tone scales to outline fourths. Arch shaped lines emphasizing fourths in the first violin (C – F – C) and the violoncello (G – C – C' – G') are combined with lines emphasizing fifths in the second violin and viola. Over the barline between the second and third measures of the example, a fourth-suspension can be seen in the second violin's tied C. In another of his string quartets, KV 464, such fourth-suspensions are also very prominent.
"The second movement is in sonatina form, i.e., lacking the development section. Alfred Einstein writes of the coda of this movement that "the first violin openly expresses what seemed hidden beneath the conversational play of the subordinate theme"." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._19_(Mozart)
I wonder how many composers there were at the time who composed more innovatively but were written out of history as just too weird?!
"Schoenberg's first keyless movement ushered in the atonal period in Vienna in 1908." - p xiv
Peyser does specify "in Vienna". My immediate response to this was "Ives?", "Hauer?" — but Ives wasn't in Vienna & might be more appropriately linked to polytonality. Hauer she does get into in some detail & that's part of what makes this bk so good.
"Egon Wellesz, another early Schoenberg pupil, tells an interesting story about the development of the 12-tone technique in an August, 1961 issue of The Listener:
"It was in 1915 that a private in the Austrian army was sent to me because the military psychiatrists found that he was so neurotic and talked about music in such a peculiar way that they did not know what to do with him and wanted my advice. The man was Josef Hauer. Hauer had developed in his compositions the idea of 12-note rows which, according to his theory, had the same function as the nomoi, the type-melodies in Greek music. Though Hauer expressed his views in a very amateurish way, I found his ideas very interesting and his attitude toward music reminded me of Erik Satie. I think that my favorable report helped to get Hauer released from his work in an army office. Reti, of whose judgment Schoenberg thought highly, told him about Hauer's theories and compositions, and Schoenberg began to develop these ideas which led him to introduce the system of composition with twelve tones.
"There can be no doubt that Hauer was the first to construct rows of twelve notes—rather haphazardly—and to choose which one of them suited him best for a composition.
"Hauer, in fact, did not choose a single row for a musical work nor did he work w/ the "row" as we know it. Unlike Schoenberg, who insisted that one row provide all the material and thus ensure a sense of unitary perception, Hauer allowed that any number of 12-tone melodies could be combined within a single movement." - p 37
Maybe Hauer was doing something more interesting & inspired than working w/ a Schoenbergian "row". How wd we know? I just looked in my local library's catalog, whose music department is excellent & I found scores by him & at least one bk about his music theory but not one single recording of his work. Fortunately, my own collection at home succeeds where the library's collection fails.
The relevant record is called Wirkung der Neuen Wiener Schule im Lied featuring Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on vocals & Aribert Reimann on piano. It doesn't take much knowledge of Deutsch to translate the title as "Work of the New Vienna School in Song". There're 9 composers represented, Hauer is the 1st. His 2 songs are "Der gefesselte Strom" ("The Restrained Stream") & "An die Parzen" ("To the Fates") — both settings of Friedrich Hölderlin poems.
The liner notes of this record are mostly in German but the general essay is also provided in English. In it, Hauer is described as follows:
"Joseph Matthias Hauer (1883-1959) stood as a lone wolf in opposition to Schönberg. He claimed to have experimented with the twelve-tone series before Schönberg. Hauer worked with 44 basic patterns out of the 479,001,600 possibilities of com[b]ining the twelve tones. The soft mystic tone of his musical language was based on the conviction that music is "mathematics in its highest sense" and that atonal music represents the "personification of absolute musical objectivity". Hauer spent the end of his life in Vienna, half-forgotten, a recluse, misunderstood and outcast."
Hmm.. maybe I'm a reincarnation of Hauer.. who was he a reincarnation of?
Anyway, I like Hauer's 2 songs but it's not much to go on.
Peyser tells of Schoenberg writing a letter to Hauer on December 1, 1923:
""Let us write a book together, a book in whcih one chapter will be written by one of us, the next by the other and so on. In it let us state our ideas, exactly defining the distinctive elements, by means of objective but courteous argument trying to collaborate a little bit in spite of these differences: because of what there is in common a basis can surely be found on which we can get along smoothly and with each other."" - p 38
Nice one, Arnie. Too bad it didn't come to pass.
"Those opposed to dodecaphony, including such disparate composers as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Bartók, Milhaud and many Americans in the thirties and forties, found themselves thrust together under the large amorphous umbrella labeled "neoclassicism."" - p xv
I've always found Neoclassicism to be boring. It's odd to me that Peyser doesn't list Prokofieff in the above b/c I've always thought of his "Symphony No. 1" as a 'classic' of Neoclassicism (or is it pre-Neoclassicism?!). THEN came the "New Tonality" as part of Minimalism. Gag. Perhaps it's time to mention that I love Schoenberg's music but I'm not really that preoccupied w/ its dodecaphony b/c I'm not that preoccupied w/ pitch-specific work in general. For me, Schoenberg's a great 'Old Timey" composer. My big regret is that there aren't any Old Timey buskers who play "Pierrot Lunaire" or "Serenade" — maybe arranged for fiddle, banjo, & guitar. Heck O'Goshen, some harmonica & jaw harp wd be nice too.
"Schoenberg, by the age of twenty five, had heard each of Wagner's operas between twenty and thirty times and inherited Wagner's tyrannical mien." - p 4
I dated a woman who had seen "Harold and Maude" something like 113 times. What wd she have done if she'd been a filmmaker? I assume from the above that Schoenberg had witnessed the operas performed. That seems almost impossible. I admire his devotion but I think I might be satisfied w/ witnessing each of them once or twice. Imagine: If Wagner had met Schoenberg wd he've been less of an anti-Semite? As soon as I get my Time Credit Card bill pd off I'm going to take Schoenberg back to Wagner to see if I can nip Nazism in the bud.
"Several of Schoenberg's original group became disenchanted in the 1920's after Schoenberg proclaimed the 12-tone technique. Alfredo Casella accused the Viennese master of confining music in a narrow prison, and the Marxist Hanns Eisler, shifting to the principle of socialist realism, commented that his teacher had gone to the trouble of bringing about a revolution in order to be a reactionary." - p 7
I just listen to the music, ma'am. I've never heard anything by Casella, what I've heard by Eisler has some vitality but it ain't no Schoenberg by a long shot. As for Socialist Realism? Might as well call it death-to-creativity-by-propaganda. What exactly IS Socialist Realism Music? An 'impossibility' as far as I can tell. A picture of a tractor to try to get the farmers to update their farming techniques, ok. But music reduced to the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) so that people who don't understand music in the least can 'like' it? BAD IDEA. There were already musics meant for specific work situations, why not stick with them? Waulking music, e.g., in Scotland.
"Waulking songs (Scots Gaelic: Òrain Luaidh) are Scottish folk songs, traditionally sung in the Gaelic language by women while fulling (waulking) cloth. This practice involved a group of women rhythmically beating newly woven tweed against a table or similar surface to soften it. Simple, beat-driven songs were used to accompany the work." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waulking_song
Or how about Bulgarian vocal music where tritones were used as piercing sounds to travel long distance between fields that people were working in? The point is, there's nothing organic or natural about Socialist Realism, it's just more control freaking imposed by idiots on people w/ imaginations.
Now Peyser depicts Schoenberg as thinking of hmself as having a divine mission. I think that's unfortunate but I still love the music & I've listened to almost all of it that I know of. For those of you who don't know his work I recommened the following:
1899 "Verklärte Nacht"
1901 "Brettllieder"
1902/03 "Pelleas und Melisande"
1903/05 "6 Lieder"
1906 "Kammer Symphonie"
1907/08 "String Quartet No. 2"
1910 "Fünf Orchesterstücke"
1909 "Erwartung"
1910 "Drei Kleine Stucke"
1911 "Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke"
1911 "Herzgewächse"
1912 "Pierrot Lunaire"
1920 "Mahler: Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen"
1920/23 "Serenade"
1921 "Suite for Piano"
1925/26 "3 Satiren Anhang"
1925 "Suite for Septet"
1930 "Begleitmusik zu Einer Lightspielszene"
1934 "Suite in G Major for String Orchestra"
1934/36 "Violin Concerto"
1942 "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte"
1942 "Piano Concerto"
1945 "I am Almost Sure, When Your Nurse will Change Your Diapers"
1945 "Prelude to Genesis Suite"
1946 "String Trio"
1947 "A Survivor from Warsaw"
1949 "Phantasy for Violin and Piano"
1950 "Modern Psalm"
"RODRIGUEZ: In the beginning was the Word. . . .
"SCHOENBERG: What else? What else can I do but express the original Word, which to me is a human thought, a human idea or a human aspiration?
"Thus it can be seen that Schoenberg's theme was a musical translation of an idea which, in its origin, was the Word of God. Schoenberg was a profoundly religious man and his most ambitious works were religious subjects. His last great opera, Moses und Aron, which he worked on throughout his life, ends: "But even in the wasteland you shall be victorious and achieve the goal: unity with God."
"Although in conversation and in his letters, Schoenberg frequently indicated a sense of despair at being chosen God's emissary on earth, he never questioned the fact that he was." - p 8
In all my decades of listening to Schoenberg I don't recall running across this "God's emissary on earth" business — so, even though I believe Peyser is a sincere researcher, I have to wonder whether there's an alternate biography that doesn't emphasize this. I reckon Peyser's accurate, though. I try to block out religion like billboards.
"The 12-tone technique put an end to a several-hundred-year period in which music was devoted to a dramatic-expressive ideal." - p 10
I think not. If there's ever been a "dramatic-expressive" composer, it's Schoenberg. Listen to his concertos, listen to "A Survivor from Warsaw", listen to "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte". I don't really think that tonality is necessary for a dramatic-expressiveness. A rubato, a crescendo anyone?
"And to the composer, 13 did represent the height of malevolent magic." - p 10
"This prompted him to number his measures, later in life, as 12, 12A and 14. "It is not superstition," he often said, "it is belief."" - p 11
Hey! I have a friend who will turn his car around if he sees a black cat crossing the street in front of him. So what if it's a Jaquar & the street's narrow?
"Arnold's parents arrived in Vienna shortly after the enactment of the 1867 Constitution which removed the legal inequities against the Jews.
"But anti-Semitism continued unabated. Sigmund Freud, for instance, was denied the post of associate professor at the University of Vienna although he had been teaching for seventeen years without a formal appointment. The world of music was also closed to Jews: Mahler had to renounce Judaism and be baptized in order to be eligible for the director's post of the Vienna Court Opera, a powerful organization administered by the Court Chamberlain." - pp 13-14
What. the. fuck?! Christians are such. a. drag. Take that president character for an example:
"Trump is a professed Presbyterian" - https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/21/politics/trump-religion-gospel/index.html
If Mahler had to be baptized to fill a position that he was obviously qualified for it seems only fair that Rump shd have to have his mouth washed out w/ soap everytime he lies if he's to stay president. At least we'd get the entertainment value of seeing him foam at the mouth. Of course, the thing about religious people, certainly about the ChristInane & the IsDumb, is that if you're religious you can commit ANY crime you damned well feel like & then back out of it unscathed by putting a really dumb & contrite expression on your face & telling 'God' you're sorry. Or lie — wch is more common. Then there's always God told me to do it.
"Forty years later Schoenberg described the reaction to Pelleas:
""The first performance, under my direction, provoked great riots among the audience and even the critics. Reviews were unusually violent and one of the music critics even suggested putting me in an insane asylum and keeping music paper out of my reach."" - p 20
For my complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1115446-old-timey-new-music?chapter=1… (mer)
From the "now that he's dead, we can dish out the gossip" school of biography. Hey, I like lunchroom slander as much as anyone. It's a shame it is no help in accounting for the man's genius.
An interesting example of what happens when a biographer goes to work on a living subject, this book was written in the mid-'70's, not long after Boulez' tenure at the New York Philharmonic, a tempestuous relationship that left the orchestra, if not the audience, in need of the therapeutic guidance of someone like Zubin Mehta. There is a particularly fascinating sexual dynamic at play in Peyser's treatment of Boulez, who appears to have doggedly rejected development of his own sexuality beyond a purportedly hysterical affair early in his life. This brings to mind a quote by Lukas Foss about Boulez: "It's a pity there is no humanity there. Does he have sex? I think not. When men have no sex, they go after power in this big, obsessive way." So the book is a not-so-transparent power struggle between an author who wants to "capture" her subject, and a subject who wants, perhaps not unreasonably, to dominate his own biography.… (mer)
1 
jburlinson | 1 annan recension | Mar 25, 2013 |
jburlinson | 1 annan recension | Mar 25, 2013 | Priser
Du skulle kanske också gilla
Statistik
- Verk
- 10
- Medlemmar
- 400
- Popularitet
- #60,685
- Betyg
- 3.4
- Recensioner
- 6
- ISBN
- 28
- Språk
- 4
review of
Joan Peyser's Boulez, Composer, Conductor, Enigma
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 15-25, 2018
My reading this bk isn't exactly completely strange but doing so illustrates how I come to do things sometimes. I'm very slowly compiling an online list of my "Top 100 Composers" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100Composers.html ). Pierre Boulez is on that list. Alas, as w/ so many of the composers mentioned there, I don't feel absolutely enthralled w/ his music. Making matters 'worse' is that I'm making webpages for each of the composers but putting off making the webpages for the composers most important to me b/c making them will be so time-consuming. Since Boulez is a minor major composer for me it'll be easier to make a webpage for him than for other composers whose work I like much more. That results in a skewed prioritizing.
Reading this bk is an example of "skewed prioritizing". My friend Brainpang got a copy of Georgina Born's bk entitled Rationalizing Culture — IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. He decided that he'd never read it so he asked me if I wanted his copy. I sd yes so he sent it to me. Since it's a present I prioritized reading it. However, since Peyser's bk covers Boulez's life up to the beginnings of IRCAM it seemed like I shd read it 1st & then read the Born. All this work, all this research for a composer whose work I'm only marginally enthusiastic about.
"On June 1, 1969, the New York Philharmonic announced the appointment of Pierre Boulez as its music director. He was to succeed Leonard Bernstein, the ebullient, gifted musical personality who had begun his career in the 1940s as the protégé of Serge Koussevitsky." - p 1
Hence begins the 1st paragraph of the "Introduction". As a 'setting of the stage' for English-language readers, it establishes Boulez as occupying a very prominent position in the classical music hierarchy of the US.
"The desire to escape from the severe discipline into which Boulez's idea had led moved whole sections of the new music world toward what he viewed as theatrical gimmickry and nihilism. Boulez accepted the Philharmonic post primarily to attack the situation. His purpose was to promote his own cause, to make familiar to large audiences the modern language in which he believed, in which form exercised a centripetal role." - p 2
Note that Peyser doesn't write "a central role" but "a centripetal role". Centripetal = "moving or tending to move toward a center.": SO is the reader to conclude that Peyser thinks that form isn't central but, instead, moves in that direction? That there either isn't anything in particular at the center or that there's something other than form? I think, more likely, she just liked the word "centripetal" more than "central".
I've already read one bk that focuses substantially on the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Bernstein, Benjamin Piekut's Experimentalism Otherwise - The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits, in wch the reader learns of the Philharmonic's infamous resistance to performing John Cage's "Atlas Eclipticalis".
"Piekut actually interviewed members of the NYP decades after their notorious "Atlas Eclipticalis" concert:
""In Mansfield's opinion, the twenty concerts performed in the Avant-Garde series "were a gimmick . . . to satisfy the critics, to satisfy the people who wanted to see some kind of special interest being . . . programmed." The view of the series as a kind of conciliatory yet marketable gesture is held by another member of the orchestra (who wished to remain anonymous), who in conversation with me characterized Moseley as "a press man. His question was always, 'Is it newsworthy?'" Though the organization's administrators may have felt pressure to support the cutting edge of contemporary composition, they were also responding to the avant-garde's considerable notoriety in the early 1960s. As the clarinetist Stanley Drucker, who had joined the orchestra in 1948 under Bruno Walter, remembers, "As an idea, it was very New York. New York has an audience for everything. Maybe some things get a smaller audience, but they're all patronized." Indeed, "showbiz" was a term that sprang to the bassist Walter Botti's mind in my interview with him." - p 32 " - "Experimental, Ism; Other, Wise": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/412180-experimental-ism-other-wise
Piekut's bk covers a small time & place: NYC, 1964. That's 5 yrs before the announcement of Boulez replacing Bernstein. Regardless of how it turned out, Bernstein's "Avant-Garde series" was far more 'Avant-Garde' than anything Boulez ever did w/ the Philharmonic — but Peyser's bk presents Boulez as if he's the 1st person to ever try to expand the Philharmonic's repertoire into the 20th century. What Boulez did do was foster a rather moronic anti-Americanism that probably appealed to the diehard 'loyalists' whose ancesters hadn't escaped the American Revolution to go to Canada:
"Boulez said he had been in Chicago at the time but that someone had quoted to him Babbitt's remark that a performance of a Babbitt piece in Lincoln Center was like a philosophy paper being read on the Johnny Carson show. Boulez attacked Babbitt's "ghetto' point of view and then put the knife deeply into America's back. There had been no strong musical personalities in the United States, he said, since World War II." - p 4
1st, I'm even less enthusiastic about Babbitt's music than I am about Boulez's. Babbitt doesn't even make it to my Top 100 Composers list (although he might be a 'runner-up'). That sd, I think Babbitt's quote is funny. He's saying outright that a prominent American cultural institution is more commercial than its PR image wd have the general public believe. Boulez, on the other hand, is just revealing his own extremely myopic ignorance. If I understand correctly, the above Boulez quote is from 1969 so we'll say that the period referred to as having "no strong musical personalities in the United States" is from 1945 to 1969. I'm sure Boulez was only referring to classical composers but the quote doesn't say that specifically so here's a somewhat off-the-top-of-my-head list of "strong musical personalities in the United States" in that era:
Art Ensemble of Chicago
Babbitt, Milton
Brant, Henry
Braxton, Anthony
Brown, Earle
Cage, John
Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band
Carter, Elliot
Coleman, Ornette
Copland, Aaron
Cowell, Henry
Crumb, George
Dolphy, Eric
Davidovsky, Mario
Davis, Miles
Doctor John the Night Tripper
Dodge, Charles
Druckman, Jacob
Ellington, Duke
Erb, Donald
Feldman, Morton
Foss, Lukas
Gaburo, Kenneth
Graettinger, Robert
Harrisson, Lou
Hendrix, Jimi
Hiller, Lejaren
Hovhaness, Alan
Hunt, Jerry
Kamin, Franz
Kraft, William
Lucier, Alvin
Mimaroglu, Ilhan
Mingus, Charlie
Mitchell, Joni
Partch, Harry
Reich, Steve
Reynolds, Roger
Schoenberg, Arnold
Shields, Alice
Siegmeister, Elie
Simone, Nina
Sonic Arts Union
Sun Ra
Taylor, Cecil
Varèse, Edgard
Velvet Underground
Wilson, Olly
Wolff, Christian
Wolpe, Stefan
Wuorinen, Charles
Zappa, Frank
..& that list is obviously very limited. I like most of the work by those above more than Boulez's so I think if Boulez had been more honest he might have sd: 'There have been no musical personalities close to or identical to me & my few European composer friends in the United States since World War II.'
I was immediately impressed by Peyser's writing b/c she seems to've pursued Boulez rapaciously regardless of his resistance to her writing this biography & b/c she actually seems to have some significant understanding of the music so her pursuit doesn't just come across as that of a malicious gossip.
"And so, for the next five years, through hundreds of hours of conversation, Boulez concealed a lot of his life from me. Just before I made my first trip to France I asked him for the address of René Leibowitz, his second and probably most important composition teacher. (Messiaen was his only other.) Boulez said, "Leibowitz is no friend of mine." I explained that I was not limiting my interviews to friends. "Of course," he answered, "you are preparing a document." Still, he did not help me to locate Leibowitz, who was then living in an apartment on the Left Bank. When I told Leibowitz my subject was Boulez, he became silent. Only after I explained that I was writing a history of midcentury music, in which Leibowitz had played a large role, did he begin to unfold his own story of the confrontation and terrible trouble with Boulez—including Boulez's efforts to wreck Leibowitz's career.
"A few weeks after our long conversation, Leibowitz died at fifty-nine of a heart attack. I wrote his obituary for the New York Times." - p 8
It seems like I've often sd that people who present their opinions as 'objectively true' & who, at least, have the appearance of being able to back up their assertions w/ great 'authority' are people who're going to 'go far' b/c the world is full of robopaths (aka 'sheep') who have no strong opinions of their own & who look to leaders to tell them 'what to think'. Boulez has had a highly 'successful' career b/c he is a substantial composer, a hard-working conductor, & b/c he meets the conditions of the opening sentence of this paragraph. I'm all for those 1st 2 characteristics, it's the last one that I find objectionable. Boulez sets himself up as an authority over just about everyone:
"Boulez wrote a letter attacking Craft's "sour mixture of incompetence and pedantry" and challenging the authorship of Stravinsky's writings, claiming what has subsequently been charged by others: that in the later years, they were not only written by Craft but not even reviewed by the aging master. Boulez ended by admonishing Craft to "stop imposing your insipid countenance on the features of a man who has nothing in common with your rancor, your impotence, and—in a word, your nothingness."" - p 9
Whew! Boulez is definitely throwing stones from a glass house when he refers to "rancor" or "impotence" (his sex life apears to be non-existent). I don't know anything about the controversy regarding Craft & Stravinsky so I'll let that lie. What I do know is that I 1st heard what was then reputed to be the 'complete works' of Varèse conducted by Craft, that Craft recorded his conducting Antheil's "Ballet Mechanique", that Craft recorded his conducting what were then purported to be the complete works of Webern (1957), & of Schoenberg too. Not only did Craft do this but he did it before Boulez did — putting Boulez in an obviously secondary position as a 'champion' of the 'Viennese School' in the US. Craft cd honestly say: 'Been there, done that.' Hence, Boulez has to attack Craft's integrity in order to put Boulez at the top. The competitiveness of it strikes me as rather nasty, like dirty politics. Finally, making things even 'weirder' is that the 1st piece I ever heard by Boulez was "Le Marteau sans Maitre", Robert Craft conducting, when I got the Columbia Masterworks recording in 1974.
"Boulez's first project at Columbia was one that was very important to him: the complete works of Webern. Columbia had produced a Webern album under the direction of Robert Craft, but Boulez wanted to do one of his own. Boulez began discovering undiscovered Webern and also started to compose an essay about Webern that would be included in the package." - p 211
"Among the eager Webernians then was Pierre Boulez, who returns to be the mastermind of the new recordings, just as he was 30 years ago for a set made by CBS, now available on CD from Sony Classical. But there are differences. One is that the new box (Deutsche Grammophon 457 637-2; six CD's) is twice as large, including many works Webern withheld from publication.
"Some of these are juvenilia, imparting the unsurprising news that the composer at 16 was a talented, hopeful, somewhat incompetent beginner. His later rejects, though, include wonderful pieces, especially among the songs and instrumental movements he wrote in 1913 and 1914. During that period he gave thought to a sequence of orchestral pieces, some with solo soprano, rather in the manner of a distilled Mahler symphony. There might have been a similar string quartet with voice.
"Much later, though, Webern decided to issue sets of purely instrumental movements: the Six Bagatelles (Op. 9) for string quartet and the Five Pieces (Op. 10) for orchestra.
"This left out of account not only the song movements -- two with orchestra and the one with quartet are breathtaking -- but also quite a number of orchestral movements. Mr. Boulez includes five, and two extra bagatelles." - "MUSIC; A Complete Webern, With 'New' Works" by PAUL GRIFFITHS - AUG. 27, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/27/arts/music-a-complete-webern-with-new-works.h...
For people like myself who've immersed ourselves in recordings of the more innovative 20th century musics & in reading about the same, this bk is something that fleshes out personalities more than most. A recurring character is the pianist Paul Jacobs. Peyser depicts him as a major champion of adventurous 20th century classical music. I hadn't realized how active he was. In my own pantheon of such pianists people such as David Tudor & the Kontarsky Brothers feature more prominently. Nonetheless, I have recordings of Jacobs playing Schönberg, Bartok, Busoni, Carter, Messiaen, & Stravinsky — certainly an impressive repertoire but not the most 'cutting edge' of the possibilities. One of the many points of interest about this bk, for me, was learning more about Jacobs. I'll probably pick up any recordings by him that I don't currently have out of curiousity.
"Boulez's refusal to share facts, thoughts, and feelings is not limited to his relationship with me. Paul Jacobs, the specialist in twentieth century keyboard music who has known Boulez since the mid-50s, says Boulez uses relationships the way other people go to the movies. Boulez would not argue the point. He believes "everyone is replaceable." No one, in any case, knows Boulez well. "Neither I nor anyone," Jacobs maintains, "has ever been able to penetrate Boulez."" - p 13
Since I'm obsessed w/ cultural production both as a creator & as a critic & since I have very specific opinions on the subject(s) it's somewhat 'inevitable' that I found myself critiqueing Boulez's philosophical positioning.
"I believe a civilization that conserves is one that will decay because it is afraid of going forward and attributes more importance to memory than the future. The strongest civilizations are those without memory—those capable of complete forgetfulness. They are strong enough to destroy because they can replace what is destroyed. Today our musical civilization is not strong; it shows clear signs of withering. . . .
"The more I grow, the more I detach myself from other composers, not only from the distant past but also from the recent past and even from the present. Conducting has forced me to absorb a great deal of history, so much so, in fact, that history seems more than ever to me a great burden. In my opinion we must get rid of it once and for all.
"—Pierre Boulez, 1975" - p 19
The above statement, taken literally, calls for total amnesia if it were taken to the extreme that the bombast seems to call for. We wd have amnesia, we wdn't even speak a language, let alone remember our names or know how to drive a car or ride a bike, let alone conduct an orchestra.
It seems flagrantly obvious that it's important to maintain a balance in society: a balance between conserving & creating. I'm all for conserving, e.g., libraries & food growing & distribution systems — to name obvious things. There is no such thing & never has been a civilization "without memory", nor cd Boulez point to one. It seems equally flagrantly obvious to me that Boulez detaches himself from other composers b/c he wants to proclaim himself the 'greatest, most distinct composer', one of a kind n'at. I doubt that any serious scholar of contemporary classical music feels as strongly about Boulez's work as he apparently does. To me, he tries & tries again to be on the 'cutting edge' but always ends up amongst the blunted razors. "Le Marteau sans Maitre" (1955) ain't shit in contrast to Schönberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" (1912), IMO, & the list goes on & on.
As for "Today our musical civilization is not strong; it shows clear signs of withering. . . . "?: To put it mildly, I find that an insupportable assertion. But, then, Boulez wants to be the one who defines what "musical civilization" is & his definition is apparently going to be to the detriment of everyone but himself. If a vital "musical civilization", one that isn't "withering", is one in wch there's healthy new growth (to continue to use the biological metaphor) in abundance then I think it's accurate to claim that there's more new growth & healthy cross-pollination than ever hostorically known before. The fear might be more of a metaphorical 'cancer', an overabundance, rather than a withering. I, for one, am not worried about a 'cancer' of "musical civilization" any more than I am of a "withering". Boulez's proclmation strikes me as so ludicrous that it's hard for me to even imagine the sheep baaaaaing along w/ it.
I'm primarily interested in & enthusiastic about music from 1885 to the present — but I have no desire to have the music prior to 1885 no longer conserved/performed. In fact, I wish that music as far into the past as there was music were something that we cd still hear now. I'd love to be able to hear music as it was performed in 2000BC.
At the same time that I'm often repulsed by Boulez I have to at least give him credit for saying things that few people wd dare to say. The next paragraph exemplifies this:
"Boulez saw benefits in the German occupation of Paris. "The theaters were crowded. People could not leave the cities and all of them jammed into concert halls. I went to a concert given by my own piano teacher and could hardly get into it. The Germans virtually brought high culture to France."" - p 25
Ahem. Um.. weren't the occupying Germans nazis? & weren't they killing & imprisoning & torturing hoards of people? '. Sheesh. I find it interesting that Boulez can make such a politically blasphemous statement but I can't exactly say I agree w/ it!!
"In 1944 when Boulez entered the advanced harmony class, he had heard only Messiaen's Variations for Violin and Piano. Boulez admits that he was initially awed, but soon the awe turned to disdain. Sometimes he is harsh on Messiaen today: "Messiaen never really interested me. His use of certain Indian and Greek rhythms poses a problem—at least to me. It is difficult to retrieve pieces of another civilization in a work. We must invent our own rhythmic vocabulary, following the norms that are our own. Even in my earliest pieces, I was aware of that."" - p 31
Oh, lardy. There he goes pontificating again! Why is it "difficult to retrieve pieces of another civilization in a work"? It's just something that one decides to do in whatever way one decides to do it. These 'laws' that Boulez is constantly laying down are a primary impediment to his being a truly GREAT composer instead of a 2nd rate excellent one.… (mer)