Word: marteau
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...enfant terrible of French music during his younger days, Boulez is capable of fighting desperately for what he believes in-primarily, Boulez's own precise brand of serialism, Webern, and the two most important "traditionalists" in his life, Stravinsky and Debussy. His own music (notably Eclat, Le Marteau sans Maitre, fresh, glittering, mobile works filled with a constant sense of surprise that belies their tight structure) reflects his individuality. An acknowledged egotist ("And you can be sure, as I grow older I will become even more so"), Boulez possesses a blazing aphoristic gift for denouncing all those...
Boulez, who lives in Baden-Baden, knows better than most conductors how the music of his own time should sound, since he himself has composed some of the best of it (Eclat, Le Marteau sans Maítre). When he takes to the podium, he brings along insight, evangelism, an insider's care, and the ability to get what he wants from an orchestra. This is why he has become one of the most sought-after guest conductors in Europe and the U.S. It helps explain why, in the space of only a few years, his recordings of Schoenberg...
...listening to music as thoroughly organized as, may, Le Marteau sans Maitre, one does not hear the grammar. Commenting in Die Reihe on another work of Boulez, Gyorgy Ligeti observes: "Seen at close quarters, it is the factor of determinism, regularity, that stands out; but seen from a distance, the structure, being the result of many separate regularities, is seen to be something variable and chancy, comparable to the way the network of neon lights flashes on and off in main street; the individual lamps are indeed exactly controlled by a mechanism, but as the separate lights flash...
...second half of the program, the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Arthur Weisberg, performed Le Marteau sans Maitre (1955). The title and conception of the work derive from a set of poems of the same name published in 1934 by Rene Char. The poems are cruel, surrealistic visions of the war Char anticipated, and it is unfortunate that the program included none of them. An example (in translation...
...nine movements of Le Marteau, Boulez presents three poems through the voice (Bethany Beardslee) and comments on them instrumentally. In each of the nine movements, Boulez uses a different ensemble chosen from the voice, alto flute (Harvey Sollberger), viola (Jacob Glick), guitar (Stanley Silverman), vibraphone (Paul Price), xylophone (Raymond Desroches), and percussion (Max Neuhaus). The texture of the sound is always clear, sometimes shimmering, sometimes punctiform, and always changing. With the flexibility of tempi and timbre goes an obvious fixity of notes and rhythmic patterns; certain intervals and rhythmic groupings recur constantly. And with all this planning, with all this...