This remains the only book on Boulez's life. He was not one to give-up personal details on his life, he said so to a reviewer arrongantly when he was newly appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic. Peyser had access to rehearsals,dinners,lunches and insider trades and gossip, and all that is here, but also we find Boulez at work, the conductor and composer, a rehearsal schedule in included here ;when he looked for an apartment or an eye doctor appointment. Peyser is not a creative person so the sorry side of the book is that it remains as an outsider looking in, for Boulez's creative secrets are not revealed simply from hanging around him as she did. No you need to have studied the Boulez aesthetic, where it comes from, from the roots of modernity, Mallarme, Paul Klee, Schoenberg and recently Francis Bacon.Those books do exist and excellent one by Dominic Jameux, and there are a few on specific aspects of the Boulez aesthetic, (harmony Lev Koblyakov, one on Mallarme,another on conducting,Jean Vermeil) I still enjoy re-reading this work, Peyser knows how to tell a good story, how to pick at details of the everyday, the excitement of creating and conversing.

John Cage was the first to introduce Pierre Boulez to the United States. In New York he took Boulez around visiting painters and musicians, this was the early Fifties. David Tudor(long a Cage friend) was performing Boulez's Second Piano Sonata for the first time. Bookstores were frequent stops and Boulez( we learn) never heard of the poet e.e.cummings, and bought a modest book of his poetry. Some thirty years later Boulez set a text of cummings for 22 unaccompanied voices. This correspondence was between two innovators coming from radically different places yet stopping at the same conceptual places. And it is a shame that this friendship fell out quickly,each going into radically different venues. Boulez although fascinated with chance procedures(which Cage had been working with the I Ching, Book of Changes at that time) Boulez was arrongantly fascinated by the aesthetic object,its history and attenuation, and has remained so since. This correspondence has frequent entries on the concept of indeterminacy, again Boulez comes to it via Mallarme, and aleatoric thinking, the throwing of the dice.Boulez sought a musical structure that contained the element of chance as in his Third Piano Sonata in the latter Fifties. Both however were at a creative place in modernity when the Western canon of structure and comprehensibility was falling itself.However it is odd for Boulez to this day thinks of his work as moments containing a "freedom" of something, when he conducts Mahler, he thinks of those passages that are freer than others,like a symphony is a dialogue between the two. Mahler's Sixth Symphony is the case in point. There are letters of Boulez to Cage, while in South America with the Barrault Theatre Company, one entry includes a description from Boulez that he is having a good time "milhauding" around, referring to Darius Milhaud the composer who frequently utilized folk elelments in his music by collecting them in volumes.Nattiez is a very sympathetic observer to this cause of modernity and the roots of things.

Although quite slim,this set of interviews is modest in proportions,yet it's always fascinating to read Maitre Boulez and his thoughts on composition. His "Jalons"a series of lectures he gave at the College de France from 1980 to 1990 available only in French, still reamins the definitive place for Boulez's thoughts on creativity. But here he talks of his recent works, 'Sur Incises', 'Anthemes' in some detail,as well as his conducting experiences in Chicago, doing Mahler. Also references to early thoughts, indeterminacy,aleatoric gesturing,and John Cage. And Di Pietro is quite versed in fashionable intellectual trajectories as the pessimism of Jean Baudrillard who Boulez comments on. The only disappointment here is there wasn't more. I read this in one sitting,one single train ride,you may as well.

This is an incredibly usefull work on Maitre Boulez. Jameux is a critic,journalist writer in attendance for numerous concerts with Boulez conducting, as well as interviewer of him. Originally published in French in the early Eighties, this translation is a primary source. It traverses all of Boulez's works with brief, yet focused analysis with a full range of understanding. If you are fascinated by the early Boulez(many believe more interesting than the middle Boulez,the realm prior to his"Repons") Jameux writes well on this early period the "Flute Sonatine" the early Rene Char settings"Visage Nuptial" and especially the powerfull "Second Piano Sonata" the use of rhythmic cells as a local structuring device. But Jameux also continues well into material on Boulez the conductor with lists of his performances and how Boulez captured the realm of modernity through ocean-hopping engagements,countless concerts of the Masters, Schoenberg,Berg,Webern,Bartok, Debussy,Stravinsky,Ravel. If you are looking for more advanced scholarship on Boulez,analysis of his works perhaps utilizing fractal thinking you will not find it here. Jameux's work is more to lay the first layer of information and materials never collected in one place on Boulez. It is a great odyssey to follow, Boulez the creator,and conductor, the life of an activist remaining a non-proselyte for the vigours of modernity.

Le Marteau sans Maitre, or The Hammerless Master was after the Surreal poet Rene Char, he was part of the Resistance to the Nazis during World War 2. Boulez was the first to realize the creative implications of the dodecaphonic language begun by Arnold Schoenberg later Anton Webern. Serialism was a vigorous extension of the utilization of the profound number of 12, all of the tones in the tempered system. This 12 was extended to rhythm,duration, articulation and dynamics, so not only pitch was a point of organization.What this created was a situation where sound could now be projected in an infinite variety of shapes and designs. Serialism was a brief epoch like any epoch with a beginning middle and end, and it came to a marvelous end around the late Fifties. Its demise can be explained by the exhaustion of the language, of its music materials. Each work was an excursion into eradicating itself. Boulez, of his gneration was always the most musical, always with tangible gestures and emotive threads traceable to Debussy,or Webern or Messiaen, wheras composers like Stockhausen, or Nono, Berio,tried to erase this connection. Boulez brought an informed musical sensibility, an aesthetic of the sensuous, the exotic, and mysterious to his music,informed by World Music as well, as the instrumental constitution that Marteau suggests. Serialism had its problems however, structurally, it couldn't extend itself into larger forms,orchestration was also problematical, and there was a point where the complexity the density of the phrase existed purely for itself, for no one could hear it. Marteau however is a classic precisily because it harbored modest expressive goals, albeit within an incredibly complex structural plan.Koblyakov discusses Boulez's use of harmony, a concept others of his generation might well dismiss. And the fascination here is the analysis of points,and simultanaeities of density, how they function within locally from note to note and from movement to movement, how harmonies are constructed, their gradations and shape.Marteau unfolds as the three poems Boulez selected in three discreet sections composed of shorter movements, with what is now a classic avant-garde instrumental combination of voice, viola, alto flute, guitar and a large array of handheld percussion&(vibraphone).As a tribute to this works profundity, there were countless works by Boulez contemporaries with this identical set after. Boulez's aesthetic always sought the means toward multiplication, how a germ of an idea can sustain, refigure and reproduce itself. This is done here with reiteration of the materials of the serialized 12, with harmonies accreting and diminishing as the work progresses.How pitch reproductions can exist on alocal level within each movement and on a global level, within the entire work. Koblyakov impeccably traces these complex transformations of pitch with wonderful graphic tables equally exhaustive as the work. A full score of the work projected into screens defining the works relationships is also provided here.

While riding on the Paris Metro in the early Forties,during the War, a young Frenchmen had turned to his mentor and exclaimed that culture was at an end point , who will reorganize music, "You will,Pierre", said Messiaen.This collections of essays has now fascinating documentary value,for Boulez has moved on we all know, to larger realms in both universes of conducting and composition, and unpretenciously has kept the vision Messiaen had of his young student. Yet Boulez's aesthetic has not undergone a metamorphosis that is unrelated not totally unrecognizable from his youth.And all these essays are reflections and position papers, analyses,technical points like Sprechgesang and encyclopedic like entries. All were a means toward a comprehension of the situation in music at the end of the Second World War.The analytical essay "Stravinsky remains" is perhaps the most valuable item here . This is a dissection of his Rite of Spring, how the rhythm works like cells being placed together into mosaic-like patterns,creating textures,but truncating the rhythmic identities. "To the farthest reach of the fertile country" is an essay here inspired by a quote from Paul Klee, who has remained an enduring inspiration to Boulez to this day. This essay is on the implications of electronic composition, which in the early Fifties represented a new universe of sound and its conception. It was also dangerous, for how will it enter the realm of culture and creativity, how will electronics interface with the expressive concerns of form and content, and sonic manipulation. Recall that Boulez in his youth was a fiery activist for the cause of serial composition. Anyone who didn't follw this cause was useless and unimportant.He, for instance called for all opera houses to be burned to the ground, and loathed the likes of Verdi or Puccini exclaiming the vulgarity of their music. He also led jeering sections at concerts. But all this soon, to use his words, stopped,Boulez stopped barking like a dog outside. The infamous and misunderstood article "Schoenberg is Dead" is included here. Boulez never meant this title in a derogatory way, simply a ubiquitous use of the French phrase, the "king is dead", referring to the French Revolution. All Boulez meant was indeed modest, that Schoenberg's conception of the dodecaphonic language simply didn't extend itself into all the parameters of music.This is true of form in particular, where Schoenberg had retrogressed utilizing Baroque forms situated within atonal means. All of the grande auteurs that Boulez later conducted for the next thirty years are discussed in essay form: Alban Berg, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. There is also an essay on "Alea", the indeterminate aleatoric idea which fascinated Boulez at this time the Fifties, and triggered his lifelong interest in Mallarme. His Third Piano Sonata was the focus of this concept of introducing performative freedoms into a work, much like encountering the mobiles of Alexander Calder, where fixed shapes rotates and interrelate in forever newer configurations.Here Boulez gives indications why he intends to embark on this creative excursion citing points in history without introducing much technical detail.The original of the work entitled "Notes of an Apprenticeship" was published by Alfred A Knopf in 1968 and has been unavailable.

This book is an interesting collection of writings and speeches by conductor and erstwhile composer Pierre Boulez.

It has three parts. The first (200 pages) consists of pieces that deal with Boulez' attitudes and philosophy about composing and music. His theories are intellectually interesting, but devoid of musical inspiration. It seems that his low reputation as composer is well deserved.

The second part (also 200 pages) is the most edifying. He displays a deep understanding of the intricacies of the orchestra, and the interpretation of other composer's works. It demonstrates why he is such a reliable conductor.

The third part (100 pages) is the least interesting. It is a collection of personal memories and reminisces.

As a writer, one admires his courage in tackling subjects (like artistic taste) that so obviously open him up to ridicule. Few composers have explained their thought processes in a way so clearly understandable to the layman better than Boulez.

In summary, one comes to the conclusion that Boulez will be remembered, if he is remembered at all, as a conductor who produced some top notch recordings of Stravinsky and Debussy, and some mediocre Wagner operas.

I cannot add much to the other reviews, this is the full weight of Boulez from both worlds as conductor and creator of theory and music. Boulez always found inroads into the theory of his works, like the indeterminate, aleatoric Third Piano Sonata which includes an analysis here, great reading from tis documentary value. Also reflections on Debussy's Jeux, a seminal work for the post-war generation of composers, the epiphanic, the slow introduction of materials and their appraisal. The problem is that Boulez writes quite tersivily, in short bursts, much like the sonic poet he is. Also the work on Wagner's Ring is discussed quite well, the approach to faster tempi, and Wagner's free form almost leitmotiv, where these musical ideas float through. There is also much on administration, on creating IRCAM, and reflections on where Booulez came from, profiles of Desormiere,Hans Rosbaud, Hermann Scherchen. Boulez would frequent their rehearsals, a hands-on non credit education.

For anyone even remotely interested in the world of contemporary music and the volcanic changes that Pierre Boulez spearheaded in that conservative world from the 50's to the present, this is the essential book--a manifesto outlining the hopes, ideals, problems and successes that we face in the modern musical world. Every subject is covered here; from extensive essays and polemics to recording sleeve notes to interviews and tributes to musical colleagues and friends, Boulez leaves no subject untouched. What may seem at first dry and forbidding turns out to be, upon powerful and deep immersion, an inspiring and even moving text and 'calling' for the modern musician.

Both the Kirkus and other Amazon review are on the mark with this book. I read this book as a great admirer of the composer and conductor and welcome any further knowledge into his 'larger than life presence' as an artist. The book which is divided into chapters separated by various topics and developed as a Q &A format. Whereas other books on Boulez ("Orientations" or Lev Koblyakov's Analysis of Le Marteau) deal with pitch analysis (almost exclusively in the latter), this book REALLY gives you insight into the inner-workings of the former conductor of the New York Phil and LSO. You become privy to his sense of programming, which of the 'dead' composers work get programmed and why, why the predilection for French composers (berlioz and ravel). Following the interview chapters are a pretty comprehensive list of all of the programs Boulez had done through 1995. It is definitely geared toward those who want to know more about this amazing conductor. You don't need to have a huge music background to understand this book, albeit some of the 'name' references of particular scores may be a bit confusing for the non-musical layman (for ex. referring to the Dance of the Earth, some might not know this as the last movement of Part I of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring) These are minor points but shouldn't discourage possible readers. Thank you Camille Naish for getting it into English for the rest of us!

A man with a formidable intellect as Boulez can discuss musical topics especially the inner depths of orchestral sound like no one else, quite literally. If you happen to be conversant in French and German, as well as English, well there is no shortage of fascinating reflections on the great modernist works of this century: Debussy,Berg,Schoenberg,Varese,Webern,Berio. Boulez knows each with a ferocious intimacy. These interviews are quite old, 1986 .Mr.Vermeil visited Boulez at his state-like home outside Baden-Baden,long a refuge for Boulez from the late Fifties, although now he's a mandarin not a bohemian serialist, as he once arrived. Vermeil is good at tracing many categories, Chapter headings and parts I found fascinating were "Choosing Works", "Rehearsing", "On Gestures", "Colleagues". There's more but it seems Mr.Vermeil never gets down deep into the discourse of the subject. He stays on the surface which is all right with me. We need anything today discussed on modernist music, a dead,dying language yet institutionalized,all which makes historical sense. Well it has been Boulez who has kept it (music)alive, extending its implications, much like Habermas might find agreeable. I guess what I'm looking for is "Boulez in rehearsal" what he focuses upon, his pace, his structure of the rehearsal, what musical problems are attacked first, orchestral balance, tempi,quality of sonority. And we never get that with Vermeil firing the questions. In this English translation however it includes a reprint from a seminar in New York at Carnegie Hall in 1993 with the Cleveland Orchestra,by seasoned new music writer Paul Griffiths. Mr.Griffiths I like very much, for he brings us right through onto to stage, close to the rehearsal proceedings with apprentice conductors. And Boulez has them try out their chops(technique) on "Chronochromie" by Messiaen and "Jeux" by Debussy, two problematic scores. "Jeux" you have a nuanced line o! f changing timbres. Also Boulez never discusses the real live composers who he admires, Ligeti,Berio,Birtwistle, I thought he might discuss their work and bring us up-to-date on the state of aesthetic strategy. I thought the French if nothing else are incestuous on their own cultural products and ideamaker/mongers. Boulez hardly mentions the young composers who have worked with him at IRCAM in Paris, the multimillion dollar center. Composers, Dufourt,Bonnet or Manoury are quite interesting,quite evocative and powerful in their works.Yet Vermeil asks no questions on the Parisian new music scene. I thought that would be a first hit. Still Vermeil did cover soemwhat untrodden ground with Boulez. I would equally thank Amadeus Press who translated it,wrenching it out of French mothballs for eternity.

I first read this book before I became aquatinted with the 'New Musicology' of cultural criticism. I assumed it to be a sociological report, rather than a musicological one. I did think it odd that this 'sociologist' took such as consistently hostile viewpoint of the musicians within I.R.C.A.M. and thought that some of the scholarship was not very rigorous. I assumed that this was because it was a sociologist 'out of her element,' discussing issues, with which she was not familiar. I figured that she must have had a passing bad experience with the modernists and gone to study them, while complaining about them in revenge.
Later, in the course of studies in musicology, I came upon the strange camp of 'cultural criticism,' and was surprised to learn that there actually is a group that does not attempt to make a logical argument. This viewpoint holds that it is futile to quest after truth, because all there is for anyone is a viewpoint constructed of a culturally specific semiotic code, that we can only understand the world through that code, and that we are therefore always biased to the point of being unable to really know anything. Therefore, in this viewpoint there is no knowledge, only a culturally situated set of biases, and any attempt to assert truth is looked upon as merely some sort of cultural power play.
Georgina Born fits into this category. Her scholarship is good compared to many examples of the 'cultural critic' literature, many of which are purposefully obscure and jargonistic, merely to intimidate the reader with rhetoric. This is a trick that they ironically picked up from academia (who largely did that unintentionally). However, when there is no truth, why not try to assert yourself over the others with whatever means? When there is no truth, there are no lies. Postmodern thought has recently spawned individuals who regard systems of logic as merely culturally situated (and oppressive, biased) semiotic codes, with no relation to reality. Georgina Born uses good logic by comparison, but it should be noted that this research was probably inspired by the work of those others that I have just mentioned. One of the things that is necessary to pave the way for such criticism is the clearing aside of those pesky scholars that still think (God forbid) that it is possible to know something and that some things don't exist for the sole purpose of oppressing the proletariat, the woman, the African American, etc.
This book seems primarily motivated as a 'slam' (to use such as vulgar colloquialism) on the avant garde. Part of the doctrine of the avant garde was that they were supposed to be bringing the 'future' and destiny of a civilization back to it; they were prophets or 'cutting edge.' This of course implies that there was something to bring back; the idea of truth is implicit in the statement. The postmoderns have spent a good deal of their time trying to discredit the bulwarks of the avant garde and the study of music theory. This book is part of that endeavour. It does contain some interesting titbits and some food for thought (the avant garde and certainly the institution of IRCAM could use some reforms here and there, no one is perfect). My question of postmodern scholarship in general is 'if there is no truth, what is the purpose of study'? This study could have been so much more interesting if it incorperated more points of view on the issues raised by ICRAM as an institution. Instead, we only find the scholars of deconstructionism, cultural criticism, postmodernism, etc consulted... in short, the book is dominated by a totalitarianism of the left.

The edifice of IRCAM, Insitut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique, an underground mecca for the new in Paris, well Europe is to foster a marriage between the current potentialities in technology and creativity,music composition. Pierre Boulez its founder and developer said so much in 1976, as part of the publicity. "The creator's intuition alone is powerless to provide a comprehensive translation of musical invention. It is necessary for him to collaborate with scientific research worker inorder to envision the distant future." This is the first in English at least, profile of this historic institutionalization of new music, or the avant-garde. Although any of these terms are meaningless today. Who can define anymore, what a progressive endeavor is with the fragmentation of culture. Ms Born lived at IRCAM, it is housed in the lower bowels of the Pompidou Centre, the well-thought out royal blue and bright red smokestacks of architect Renzo Piano punctuating the 19th century ambience which is Paris. The red light area of Rue St Denis is walking distance and composers from all over Europe who work by invitation at IRCAM never fail to find inspiration away from the sterility of their work in composition. Ms Born is quite interesting for she projects the agenda here as a social one. She sees a larger frame than the music itself by drawing on thoughts of noted sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu has done so much as eqaute how, who and why listens to new creations in music. And we learn it is now and perhaps will always remain an elitist cadre of those who follow and nourish themselves with culture. We learn through MsBorn, how a composer works and how she/he makes proposals,structures for a work with the scientific aid of someone who specializes in the electronic/computer end of music. There is many times a fine line which separates the two. Each the composer for one must have some knowledge of the computer potentialities and the technician should be versed in the history of c! omposition, the achievements the avnat-garde has made since the end of the War. We find quite fascinating work with multiphonics, where a soloist, say a flutist or trombonist, sings and plays simultaneously. The result varies in an out-of-tune (at least to the traditional Beethoven ear) chord, quite arresting in its effectation. All these materials have been amply indexed, the composer merely chooses, from a table,and can hear the result from an in-house musician,vigorously versed in all the extended techniques. Ms.Born also reveals the dirty laundry at IRCAM the lack of a stable agenda at times, in the beginning years the politics, jettisoning founding members as Vinko Globokar, an equally gifted composer/trombonist. And Boulez the ultimate composer. He does stand well above anyone in Europe today. I should say did ,the Seventies and Eighties were the Boulez years of high power. Now he has retired, not even conducting as much the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a select ensemble of virtuosi,who have toured the world with IRCAM's message. And what might that be? Ms Born it's quite bizarre, she doesn't mentioned specific names in her wonderful profile. She was told not to, or perhaps the insights she received might result in retributions at higher levels, a guillotine might fall unexpectedly. So as you read through this book, composers and personnel are encripted in code. Quite mysteriously haunting. Foucualt in an interview with Boulez in the early Eighties said that music (and Foucault was not one to speak of music) that music of all the arts has certainly kept pace with technology. And that's wonderful except that IRCAM seems to be an elitist endeavor. It received the lion's share of all funding for all the arts in France. And when you consider that Paris houses 70% of French composers, yet only a handfull actually receive the knighted honor to work at IRCAM, it seems the avant-garde wastes no time in acquiring the kings robes to encript its content. Of all the music I've heard from IRCAM, I can't say I can ! distinguish one composer from another. All seem magnetized toward the use of metal instruments, percussion, very cold gestures. Peter Eotvos, Boulez first conductor-successor was the first to realize the severity at IRCAM didn't make interesting music. SO Mr.Eotvos turned an ear toward the accessible yet not obviously so. His "Chinese Opera" for the Ensemble is quite powerful and evocative. It seems the avant-garde cannot cope with the real world, Just like the wood the ancestors of Venice once brought in 550 AD to buttress their city which is now Venice. The wood will not rot as long as it remains submerged,as oxygen hits it, the real social world, it rots. Ms Born in one chapter the "Social Problems of Production" draws light on IRCAM's social problems. Also there is a generous accompaniment of photographs of the instruments and computer systems used. As for the future of music and IRCAM well it will persist as long as it remains submerged ,cloistered away from the vagaries of the real world.

As a non-expert reader seeking an introduction in the field, I "learn" on the first couple of pages about a list of composers - Beethoven among them - being born in Vienna. How much is the reader to believe of the information he doesn't already know better by himself?

In contrast to a previous reviewer, I found this volume interesting and well worth reading, if hardly up to its subtitle of Music in Europe Since the Rite of Spring. I think what happened was that Peyser intended to update her Boulez biography of 1975 (she says as much), had already started a book about music since the Rite, and finally gave up and combined the two in an unfortunate mishmash, adding bits and pieces of scattered information about other composers as it seemed appropriate to her. It is, however, simply untrue to say that Peyser makes Boulez out to be a saint. That she seems to have some personal feelings for him does not detract from her biography or its assessment of his music, which is certainly not always positive. That she would at least like to have a bias in Boulez's favor I wouldn't deny. Peyser's book does bring Boulez--an infamously private man--to life, and does actually help in approaching his music, whatever the flaws of the book may be. It would be a great buy in paperback. Do not look for any technical information, however: while not a Boulez expert, I might recommend Peter Stacey's Boulez and the Modern Concept as an approach for those familiar with some music theory.

This work is the combined result of two previous books by Peyser, the first a study of Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Varese; the second a biography of Pierre Boulez up to the mid-seventies. Although Peyser has edited her work to eliminate some overlapping material, and has added a short chapter on Boulez' last three decades, there is still a feeling of jerry-rigging and overall incompleteness that cannot be avoided, and one is left craving for more material on Boulez' latter life and composers from the late seventies on.

No matter. These flaws pale in comparison to the value of the work itself -- a lucid, emphatic, and highly readable account of modernism in music. Avoiding serious technical discussion that would alienate anyone but a composer, Peyser casts her subjects in a dramatic light, detailing their works in terms of impact, emotional content, and the challenges they either met or failed to overcome. Of course special attention is paid to Boulez, who emerges as a complex, thorny, enigmatic and passionate figure -- very much like his music, in fact. As Boulez is notoriously private, her objective and highly researched biography is doubly valuable, and some of the anecdotes are simply priceless.

Highly recommended to any enthusiast of modern atonal or experimental music.