Word: marteau
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Pierre Boulez' best-known work, Le Marteau sans Maitre (Hammer Without a Master), was first performed for a public of more than musical specialists at the 1955 festival in Aix-en-Provence. The critics from the newspapers of Marseille who had come up for the festival reviewed the work. In Rencontres avec Pierre Boulez, Antoine Golea remarks that the critics were "very prudent, as if walking on tip-toes." Probably much of the audience at Friday evening's concert of music by Boulez, Horatio Appleton Lamb Lecturer 1962-63, would have understood their prudence; for whether one reacts initially with...
...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...
...Marteau created a mild sensation at its first performance three years ago. After an interval in which Webern's fame has grown tremendously, Boulez' piece has become more accessible, although it remains a rather tough puzzle. Certainly it has far more surface attraction than the Stockhausen recorded here: Boulez call for alto flute, xylorymba, vibraphone, guitar, viola, and several exotic percussion instruments. Four of the nine sections are settings of surrealistic poetry by Rene Char; the contralto Margery MacKay displays here an engagingly warm and sensuous voice. Practically all of the music moves at a furious tempo; this speed, coupled...
...Marteau one recognizes Boulez' individuality; it is far from being merely French Webern played at high speed. Many listeners will be charmed by the piece--few will be charmed by Zeitmasse ("Tempo"), for woodwind quintet (with English horn substituted for horn). Where Boulez is witty and Gallic, Stockhausen is ponderous and Teutonic. The piece is based on an exceedingly complicated schedule of ratios, educations, and formula borrowed from the forbidding world of electronic music. What the uninitiated listener hears is a strange web of sound, frequently frightening and dense as all five instruments sweep from one extreme of their range...