Boulez, Pierre

(b Montbrison, Loire, 26 March 1925). French composer and conductor. Resolute imagination, force of will and ruthless combativeness secured him, as a young man, a position at the head of the Parisian musical avant garde. His predecessors, in his view, had not been radical enough; music awaited a combination of serialism with the rhythmic irregularity opened up by Stravinsky and Messiaen. This call for a renewed modernism was widely heard and widely followed during the 1950s, but its appeal gradually weakened thereafter, and in the same measure his creativity waned. He began to be more active as a conductor, at first specializing in 20th-century music, but then, in the 1970s, covering a large and general repertory. Towards the end of that decade he turned his attention to an electro-acoustic music studio built for him in Paris, where he hoped to resume the effort to create a new musical language on a rational basis. After a brief hiatus, though, conducting became again his principal means of expressing his independence and clarity of vision.

1. Compositional career.

2. Conducting.

3. Compositional style.

WORKS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.W. HOPKINS/PAUL GRIFFITHS

Boulez, Pierre

1. Compositional career.

As a boy Boulez divided his attention between music and mathematics. He sang in the choir of his Catholic school at St Etienne, he enjoyed playing the piano; but his early aptitude for mathematics marked him out – at least in the eyes of his father, a steel industrialist – for a career in engineering. On leaving school in 1941, he spent a year attending a course in higher mathematics at Lyons with a view to gaining admission to the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. During that year he made what progress he could with music, cultivating his proficiency as a pianist and acquiring a grounding in theory.

It was the latter which stood him in good stead when he moved to Paris in 1942 and, against his father's wishes, opted for the Paris Conservatoire rather than the Ecole Polytechnique; he had failed the pianists' entrance examination. After three years he took a premier prix in harmony, having attended Messiaen's famous harmony class. Along with some of his contemporaries in Messiaen's class, he took exception to the hidebound curriculum of the Conservatoire and looked beyond its walls for instruction in counterpoint. This he studied privately with Andrée Vaurabourg, the wife of Arthur Honegger.

It was in Messiaen's class that Boulez, respected as well as encouraged by his teacher, first gave proof of exceptional abilities as a music analyst. Quick to detect genuine originality of craftsmanship, he equally quickly lost patience with music whose renown rested on anything less substantial. He viewed composition as a form of aesthetic research and demanded that it be conducted on stringently scientific (that is, logical) lines; in this light, the cult of personal stylistic development – a hangover from Romanticism – counted for nothing. Infected by a common zeal, Boulez and a number of his fellow pupils demonstrated their protest vocally at performances of works whose modernity they considered a facile and arbitrary disguise; not even the personal reputation of Stravinsky was sacrosanct, and many a lesser one was mercilessly deflated.

His own aesthetic researches at the time had led him to ‘a very clear awareness of the necessity for atonality’. When Schoenberg's pupil Leibowitz began to introduce dodecaphonic music to the French public, Boulez readily applied to him for instruction in serial techniques. Within a year his earliest published compositions (Notations, the Flute Sonatina, the First Piano Sonata, Le visage nuptial) had taken shape; his inventive energies had taken the route suggested by Schoenberg's Wind Quintet op.26 (which he had heard in 1945) and by the later works of Webern. Again, Boulez was subsequently to write: ‘Any musician who has not felt … the necessity of the dodecaphonic language is OF NO USE (‘Eventuellement …’, 1952, in Boulez, 1966)

On the recommendation of Honegger, Boulez was appointed musical director of the new Compagnie Renaud-Barrault in 1946. He thus laid the solid foundations of his career as a conductor with performances of theatre music, including specially composed scores by Auric, Poulenc and Honegger himself. (Roger Desormière, from whom he received guidance, could be considered his one ‘teacher’ of conducting.) Boulez was in charge of Milhaud's music for Claudel's Christophe Colomb when the company's production of the play was recorded on disc, and in 1955, the penultimate year of his association with the company, Boulez himself wrote the incidental music for their production of the Oresteia at the Bordeaux Festival.

The first works that made Boulez's reputation as a composer were those that came after his début pieces: the Second Piano Sonata and Le soleil des eaux. The latter, first given as a cantata in Paris in July 1950, grew out of some incidental music Boulez wrote for a radio production of Char's work of the same name, broadcast in April 1948. The music of the original version, reworked, became ‘Complainte du lézard amoureux’, and Boulez added to this a second movement, ‘La sorgue’. The scoring of the cantata, both impressionistically delicate and violent, has a hallucinatory clarity which accords well with Boulez's surrealist intentions.

In contrast with the one-movement Sonatina and the two-movement First Sonata, Boulez's Second Sonata is a monumental work in four movements. Avowedly modelled on Beethoven, its movements follow a sufficiently Classical pattern for the many facets of Boulez's style to be systematically deployed. The work's reputation grew less from relatively obscure early performances by Yvette Grimaud and Yvonne Loriod than from circulation of the score, which was published in 1950. This composition, more than any other, first spread Boulez's fame abroad: its first performance in Darmstadt (by Loriod in 1952) was one of the most eagerly awaited musical events of the postwar years, and through the advocacy of Tudor it reached the ears of the American avant garde.

Immediately afterwards came the Livre pour quatuor, which foreshadows much of the later development of Boulez's musical thinking. The work is in the form of a collection of movements, and it is left to the later development of Boulez's musical thinking. The work is in the form of a collection of movements, and it is left to the performers to select which will be given at any one performance. Thus the Livre anticipates those works of the late 1950s in which the performer is allowed to choose his own path through the music. Its immediate significance, however, was as a pointer towards the technique of ‘total serialization’. Stimulated by the last works of Webern and by Messiaen's Quatre études de rythme (1949–50), Boulez sought to develop a technique whereby the principles of serialism could be made to govern the timbre, duration and intensity of each sound, as well as its pitch. Some of the movements of the Livre pour quatuor may be considered as first sketches towards such a technique.

By 1951 Boulez had arrived at a stage where he could commit his first essays in the new technique to paper – and to magnetic tape. The resources of the studio for musique concrète run by Schaeffer under the auspices of French radio enabled Boulez to compose two Etudes in which the precise organization of timbres, durations and intensities could remain immune from the hazards of human performance. These hazards proved to be a real stumbling-block in Polyphonie X for 18 soloists (1950–51), which was composed for and performed at the 1951 Donaueschingen Festival. The last, and most successful, of Boulez's essays in total serialization was Structures I for two pianos (1951–2). Organization of timbres was here replaced by that of ‘modes of attack’, and the treatment of durations in particular became more flexible in the last two of the work's three sections. The first section was performed at a Paris concert in 1952 by Messiaen and the composer.

At the same time Boulez completed a first revision of his early cantata, Le visage nuptial. Originally written for two vocal soloists and a chamber ensemble, the work was reorchestrated for very much larger forces including a women's chorus. Densely orchestrated and richly polyphonic, the work reaches towards lyrical paroxysm and its style shares certain features with both Messiaen and the Expressionism of Berg. In two of its five movements (each a setting of a poem by Char) Boulez freely used quarter-tones (though he expunged these from his revision of 1986–9). It was not until December 1957 that the five-movement version was given its first performance, under the composer's direction, in Cologne.

The next five years saw a marked slowing down in Boulez's production as a composer. It was a period in which much of his musical thinking found expression in articles on technique and aesthetics, many of which are to be found in the collection Relevés d'apprenti. Perhaps the most notorious of all these writings was his ‘obituary’ in Score (1952) ‘Schönberg est mort’, in which he continued his protest against what he considered the inadequate working-out of musical discoveries. But this was also a period during which Boulez won wide and even popular acclaim for a work which very soon came to be thought of as a keystone of 20th-century music, a worthy companion to The Rite of Spring and Pierrot Lunaire: Le marteau sans maître (1953–5).

Unlike Boulez's earlier settings of Char's poetry, Le marteau sans maître is scored for a small ensemble; its contralto soloist is complemented only by alto flute, xylorimba, vibraphone, percussion, guitar and viola (fig.2). Char's three poems are embedded in a nine-movement structure of interlacing settings and related instrumental movements. Recalling the cellular style of late Webern, Boulez cultivated a certain rhythmic monotony, emphasized by his use of the percussion in some of the movements. This is offset by abrupt tempo transitions, passages of broadly improvisatory melodic style, and – not least of all – the fascination of exotic instrumental colouring, underlining the work's basically static conception.

In 1954, supported by the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault and by the patronage of Suzanne Tézenas, Boulez was able to found the Domaine Musical series of concerts. New works were given carefully prepared performances in programmes which included only those works of the past thought to be of special relevance to contemporary music. These ‘composers's concerts’ found an enthusiastic following in Paris, and set a pattern which has since been widely and successfully imitated. The Domaine Musical gave European premières of works by Stravinsky, Messiaen and many younger composers of different nationalities. Its concerts became a regular feature of Parisian musical life, and in 1967 Boulez was succeeded as musical director by Amy.

Following the success of Le marteau sans maître, Boulez began to be in considerable demand as a teacher of composition. He taught at Darmstadt annually from 1954–6 and four times again between 1960 and 1965; he was also professor of composition at the Basle Musik-Akademie (1960–63), a visiting lecturer at Harvard University (1963) and an active private teacher. It was at Darmstadt that he gave the series of lectures which were to become Penser la musique aujourd'hui. The book outlines in systematic fashion the developments of serial technique which followed Boulez's preoccupation with total serialization; in particular, it relates to the group of works (the Third Piano Sonata, Poésie pour pouvoir, Doubles, Structures II, Pli selon pli) he composed between 1957 and 1962.

By now the broadening of his serial techniques had led Boulez to an interest in the possibilities of open form. At one level, individual works were increasingly to be seen as parts of a greater whole, a ‘work in progress’, to be taken up again and reworked as the larger entity came to assume its own shape. The two Improvisations sur Mallarmé for soprano and percussion ensemble (1957) in this way became parts of Pli selon pli (1957–62), which then underwent intermittent change during a period of 30 years; an early version of its opening section, Don, gave rise to Eclat (1965), another continuing project; and Doubles, commissioned by the Lamoureux Orchestra for performance in 1958, was later expanded as Figures–Doubles–Prismes (1963), which is also in principle unfinished. But more far-reaching was the freedom Boulez now tended to give the performer. There are, for example, passages in Improvisation sur Mallarmé II that are marked ‘senza tempo’, leaving the soloist and conductor free to judge durations for themselves.

In the Third Sonata the performer has considerably more freedom of choice. Within certain limits, the order of the work's five movements may be freely selected; within movements themselves, the performer is offered a number of alternative routes, and must choose which passages to perform and which to omit. However, the composer's planned scheme of options represents a much firmer control over the work's identity than is to be found in such aleatory music as Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI. Only two of the sonata's movements have so far been published, the remainder having been withdrawn into the category of ‘work in progress’. Completed works of the period include Poésie pour pouvoir for orchestra and tape, and Structures II for two pianos. The former, based on a text by Michaux, continues the spatial exploitation of orchestral sound which Stockhausen inaugurated with his Gruppen. Structures II (1956–61) complemented the studies in serialism of 1951–2 with examples of a more developed and freer serial technique.

The extent of Boulez's new freedom is perhaps most amply demonstrated in Pli selon pli, a work for soprano and large orchestra in five movements, sub-titled ‘portrait de Mallarmé’. Extended passages in which the registers of notes remain fixed make for a new simplicity of style, particularly in the vocal writing of the three Improvisations which form the work's central core. The density of instrumental textures varies from the use of the full orchestra in the outer movements to the delicate chamber ensemble which accompanies the second Improvisation. The frequently ornate vocal style of the work does not preclude a somewhat expressionistic treatment of Mallarmé's text, but Boulez's real homage to the poet lies deeper, in the formal correspondences between his music and Mallarmé's poetic syntax.

Eclat for 15 instruments (1965) heralded a group of compositions in which Boulez turned his attention to variously constituted chamber ensembles of moderate size. This work, featuring an important solo piano part among the nine non-sustaining instruments of its original version, finally grew into Eclat/Multiples for orchestra. In cummings ist der Dichter for 16 solo voices and 24 instruments (1970, rev. 1986), Boulez invented a new type of chamber cantata; more concise than Pli selon pli, the work is another portrait of a poet, and is again built around a central ‘improvisatory’ section in which sustained notes alternate with violent vocal ejaculations.

The possibilities of open forms continued to exercise his imagination. In Domaines, for clarinet alone or with 21 instruments (1961–8), as in Poésie pour pouvoir and Figures–Doubles–Prismes, Boulez emphasized the role of spatial location in the distribution of the ensemble; the solo clarinettist moves among the work's six instrumental groups. The freedom given to the performers in determining the work's form is allotted alternately to the soloist and to the ensemble, under the leadership of the conductor. The original plan (1971) for ‘… explosante-fixe …’ sets out a wide range of possible forms for selection by the players involved, whose number and instruments Boulez does not prescribe. He returned in 1968 to his ‘work in progress’ then of longest standing, the Livre pour quatuor he had embarked on 20 years previously; he prepared a new version (Livre pour cordes) for full string orchestra of two of its movements which, in a further revision in 1988, were to become one.

The recomposition of older pieces became a major part of Boulez's creative life. Le soleil des eaux had already been revised in 1965; a version of Notations for enormous orchestra was begun in 1978; and in the 1980s several works were rethought, from Le visage nuptial through Pli selon pli to cummings ist der Dichter. Boulez – who has spoken also of amending Polyphonie X, Poésie pour pouvoir and Domaines, and has started at least the last of these tasks – felt that his growing experience allowed him to improve or extend what he had written in his twenties and thirties, but he was also committed to an aesthetics of proliferation, to a belief that, within the centreless universe of serialism, musical ideas held limitless potential for development. Hence the difficulty, too, of bringing pieces to a conclusion: major works that seem destined to remain unfinished include the Third Piano Sonata, Figures–Doubles–Prismes, Eclat/Multiples, ‘… explosante-fixe …’ and Répons, of which the last was designed to exploit the possibilities of digital sound manipulation that were being developed at Boulez's research facility, the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, which started to come into operation towards the end of the 1970s.

Proliferation is important also to the textures and forms of Boulez's later works, most of which are based either on the ‘… explosante-fixe …’ kit (a group including the orchestral Rituel, which is unusual for this composer in its monumental conception, in having been instantly completed and in having resisted change) or on a sequence of harmonies derived from a musical spelling of Paul Sacher's surname (Messagesquisse, Répons, the Dérive series).

More ambiguous is Boulez's commitment to the electronic medium. His hopes for IRCAM, expressed in manifestos, were that it would be a meeting-place for scientists, composers and performers, a laboratory in which the musical adventure of the 20th century could at last be continued – not the sophisticated electro-acoustic music studio it quickly became. If, nevertheless, he took advantage of what he had, and created Répons partly to show off IRCAM’s digital machinery for storing and transforming sounds in live performance, the electronic aspect here is perhaps less central than the opposition that had generated Eclat/Multiples, between tuned percussion (six soloists, amplified and altered) and a chamber orchestra of wind and strings (untransformed). Dialogue de l'ombre double (1982–5), a recomposition of Domaines, shows a far more integrated use of electronic voice-change, applied to a solo clarinet, and the development of ‘…explosante-fixe…’ into a concerto for MIDI flute (1991–3) does the same, within music characteristically caught between thrill and desperation. But the works of this period that show most inventiveness and control in terms of timbre are the extensions for large orchestra of the piano Notations (1945), from which Boulez had come to date his career as a composer.

Boulez, Pierre

2. Conducting.

Boulez's conducting career began with the Domaine Musical concerts, where he conducted many new works by young composers as well as his own Le marteau sans maître. In 1957, at the invitation of Scherchen, he conducted the first performance of Le visage nuptial in Cologne; during the next year, he not only conducted the première of Doubles in Paris, but participated with Rosbaud and the Grosses Orchester der SWF in the first performance of Poésie pour pouvoir. He was again invited to conduct the same orchestra when an early version of Pli selon pli was introduced in Cologne in 1960; meanwhile, he had become a guest conductor with the orchestra, and had taken up residence in Baden-Baden, partly as a gesture of revolt against French musical conservatism. (The German spa town remained his principal home for 20 years, until he returned to Paris to take charge of IRCAM and assume a position at the Collège de France.) Although always primarily concerned with the performance of 20th-century music, and notably that of Debussy, Stravinsky, Webern and Messiaen, he extended his repertory during this time to include a number of earlier works (by Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and others) with which he felt a special affinity.

After some years of alienation from the official musical world in Paris, Boulez returned there triumphantly in 1963 to conduct the first Paris Opéra production of Wozzeck. Very quickly he came to be in demand for a wide variety of occasions in many different countries. In 1964 he conducted a special concert performance of Hippolyte et Aricie for the Rameau bicentenary celebrations in Paris, in 1965 he was at the Edinburgh Festival to conduct Pli selon pli and in 1966 he was entrusted with Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival. In 1967 he became a guest conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra, with whom he made a number of recordings, and four years later he was appointed principal conductor of both the BBC SO and the New York PO. He relinquished these posts in 1974 and 1977 respectively. In 1976 he conducted the Ring at Bayreuth, in Patrice Chéreau's controversial production, and in 1979 at the Paris Opéra he had charge of the first production of Berg's Lulu in complete form. After this he reduced his conducting commitments drastically, but by the 1990s he was performing and recording frequently again, mostly in his favourite 20th-century repertory, but with some new acquisitions (Bruckner, Strauss).

Boulez's performances are primarily noted for their analytical clarity of sound: every note, even in complex scores, makes its point as a contribution to the whole. This proved an invaluable feature of Boulez's pioneering performances of new music, even though at first they were often hampered by some aridity in orchestral sonority. Given superior orchestras, the freshness of his approach gave particularly successful results in his performances of Debussy's scores, presenting a stark contrast with a long-standing tradition of impressionist cloudiness. A certain deliberacy of forward propulsion, admirably suited to many of the modern scores he performs (The Rite of Spring, for instance), can at other times impede the flow or overload the beat: the sensitivity of his musical ear is widely and justly renowned; the suppleness of his ‘muscle’ is less likely to claim such regard. He brings a composer's insight to the shaping of structure and form, and imagination to his interpretation of a work's aesthetic. This insight and imagination is also displayed in his verbal introductions to many of the works he performs, for he has continued, both in the concert hall and through the mass media, to be a most active propagandist and spokesman for the music of the 20th century.

Boulez, Pierre

3. Compositional style.

Boulez's famous phrase about ‘organized delirium’ (‘Son et verbe’, 1958, in Relevés d'apprenti, 1966) is a most useful starting-point for examining his style and aesthetics. ‘Delirium’ situates the music's essential poetics: it points to the post-Expressionist colouring of individualist subjectivism in which the humanism of Boulez's music has its deepest roots; and it directs the listener's attention to the unique inflections of the composer's voice. ‘Organization’, on the other hand, speaks of the effort to exteriorize expression in universal terms: it indicates the nature of the Platonic model to which Boulez relates his work, and instructs one to seek out the logic in its workings. Composers of Boulez's generation have commonly seen the inseparability of style and logic as a criterion of musical excellence; and it is within such terms as theirs that critical analysis of Boulez's music has most often been conducted.

With rare exceptions (notably in the Third Piano Sonata), Boulez's music displays its firmest foundations in linear, melodic thinking. In adopting and imaginatively developing the principles of Schoenbergian serialism in his organization of pitches, Boulez rapidly evolved a melodic manner of wide-ranging flexibility. The freedom with which he uses every possible tempered melodic interval is restrained only by a recurrent tendency of these intervals to fall into ‘characteristic’ aggregations, somewhat in the manner of Webern. This gives rise to melodic ‘cells’, which can be used in an overtly thematic manner, as in the early sonatas and in the Sonatina, whose form is modelled on that of Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie op.9, and from which the following examples are taken. Ex.1 shows a principal theme of the work and some of its later appearances. The figure x, taken from a characteristic opening flourish (ex.2), is later used, together with its inversion (x'), retrograde (x'') and retrograde inversion (x''') forms, as the basis of an extended development section (ex.3). The use of repeated notes in this example anticipates their appearance in the first movement of the Second Piano Sonata, where they help to articulate the motivic content.

In the works with orchestra of the late 1940s, instrumental overlapping tends to create a more obvious continuity of melodic line and there is correspondingly less emphasis on chiselled melodic-rhythmic cells. Even in those works of 1951–2 where Boulez was applying a technique of total serialization, there is not the marked discontinuity of horizontal line which characterizes the ‘point’ (isolated note) composition of Stockhausen's contemporary works (e.g. Punkte for orchestra). Melodic passages are given to individual instruments in Polyphonie X; indeed, in the first piece of Structures I, the use of constant dynamic levels and modes of attack does much to emphasize the continuous conception of each polyphonic strand. (The wide leaps in register between notes do not affect this fundamental continuity: they had been part of Boulez's melodic thinking for the piano since the time of the First Piano Sonata, as that work's second movement clearly shows.)

The broader serial thinking of subsequent years produced a distinctly more improvisatory melodic style – sometimes highly embellished, sometimes circling round a central note or group of notes. As an example of this, the writing for solo clarinet in Domaines is interesting – often a single note is decorated in a manner suggesting, in Boulez's own phrase, ‘a polyphony which remains latent’ (Boulez on Music Today, p.137). The opening of Improvisation sur Mallarmé I (ex.4) demonstrates the effect of a fixed ‘constellation’ of registers in melodic writing of this kind. Another, more incidental, feature of certain works of this period is the use of preponderant intervals, usually by means of a careful shaping of the registral scheme in an appropriate way; thus, much of Le marteau sans maître shows a preponderance of minor 3rds (see ex.5), and Improvisation sur Mallarmé II is likewise marked by major 9ths.

The fixing in register of a field of pitches over a comparatively long stretch of music is a rather sporadic phenomenon in Boulez, though he continues to resort to this technique in ‘… explosante-fixe …’. The static, decorative effect to which it gives rise is particularly evident in certain passages of Boulez's writing for the piano (in Structures II and Eclat, for instance); and in Don, the opening section of Pli selon pli, it notably draws the attention from the pitch structure to details of instrumental timbre. By contrast, Boulez went to the other extreme in his early works. Here he consistently avoided fixity of register by maintaining a steady flow of transpositions, even in the slower passages of orchestral writing occurring in Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux. Sometimes, indeed, the flow is so fast as blatantly to contravene the Schoenbergian guiding principle of octave avoidance (see exx.1d and 3).

Boulez's polyphonic thinking, unlike Webern's, is allied to a harmonic style of some density which has its roots not only in Schoenberg but in Messiaen too. This is evident in Boulez's richly sounding vertical aggregates and instrumental voicing, in his cluster effects, in his treatment of the extreme registers of the piano, and in his occasional use of organum-like parallel chord movement (see ex.1d; more complex examples are to be found in later works such as Eclat). Less obvious, although no less effective than parallel homophonic movement, are those passages dominated by preponderant harmonic intervals. The third movement of the Second Piano Sonata is haunted by major 2nds; and the character of Le marteau sans maître owes much to the deployment, both melodically and harmonically, of 3rds and 6ths (ex.5).

This example demonstrates one of the methods most commonly used by the serialists in their attempts to bring about a fusion between horizontal and vertical pitch structures. The melodic line in ex.5a contains a full range of intervals, yet for the most part it is developed from the sort of chordal spacing suggested in ex.5b, which is exclusively occupied with the minor 3rd and its inversion. (In the transcription of this example, certain details are omitted, notably the part for percussion.) It should be noted, however, that this type of fusion leaves the typical melodic and harmonic textures unaltered. The harmonic writing here is obstinately in four parts; and only the slight hint of ‘latent polyphony’ in the vocal line shows Boulez moving towards the textural fusion which marks the Third Piano Sonata.

The procedures Boulez came to use in order to produce suitably mobile pitch structures from serial premises are described in Penser la musique aujourd'hui. In the example he gives there, a melodic series is broken up into polyphonic segments (one- to three-part writing), each of which is thickened by ‘multiplication’ – that is, by transposing the same interval or chord onto each of its notes. (For example, if the segment F–G–B is multiplied by the interval C–E, the result is F(–A)–G(–B)–B(–D), i.e. F–G–A–B–B–D.) It is this technique of multiplication that represents the true ‘diagonal’ between melody and harmony. It is possible that Boulez had been consciously seeking this path from the very start; rapid flourishes using equal durational values (e.g. ex.2) frequently appear in the early works and may have been conceived, if naively so, as a fusion between vertical and horizontal writing. But it is only the later technique that represents a truly serial approach to textural density, offering a solution which had eluded Boulez at the time of his research into the possibilities of total serialization.

A way into the serialization of rhythm came from the arithmetical series of durational values in Messiaen’s Mode de valeurs et d'intensités. Boulez favoured the same approach (see Structures Ia), and his subsequent conception of musical time owes much to it. However, the ‘global’ organization of time and the performance of rhythms within time require greater differentiation than the exclusive use of such durational series offers. In Structures Ib, Boulez introduced regular subdivisions of the larger temporal units, and soon (see ‘Eventuellement …’, 1952) he was finding ways of incorporating a flexibility of rhythmical movement commensurate with that of his early works.

These works were firmly founded on a form of cellular rhythmic motivicism which derived from the practice of Messiaen. Small rhythmic groups could be varied and developed by using simple procedures of permutation, augmentation, diminution, extension and elision; in this way, a very small number of rhythmic ideas could engender enough rhythmic forms to sustain an extended composition. There are some simple examples of this in the Sonatina. The values marked x' in ex.1b are a regular diminution of the first three notes of ex.1a; and the first four values of ex.1b appear in a reversed form in ex.3 (x and x'; retrograde in x'' and x'''). As a means of articulating the thematic content of sonata forms, the technique has many advantages, and it corresponds admirably to the use of recurrent pitch aggregates.

A similar correspondence can be found in nonthematic music, where passages of varying rhythmic regularity can be set off against highly regular or highly irregular passages; this parallels the musical characterization that can be achieved by the control of pitch structures. The extreme regularity of the subdivisions in Structures Ib continues to represent one type of characterization, as, for example, in Domaines (see the writing for trombones in their ‘Miroir’ section). The harmonic example of Le marteau sans maître (ex.5b) shows how regularity of values can link up with motivic thinking. Irregular durations are generally formed by introducing ‘irrational’ subdivisions (a technique Boulez took over from Varèse and Jolivet) or by adding fractional values in the manner of Messiaen (ex.1 contains simple instances of both techniques). From the first, these rhythmic techniques were an important factor in the suppleness of Boulez's melodic style, especially in his writing for the voice. Ex.5a is a typical example of the masterly way in which he welds together rational and irrational, regular and irregular elements.

In many of his works, Boulez's approach to problems of musical form has been guided by a poetic text. In Le visage nuptial the relationship between text and musical form is particularly transparent: it is a curiosity of the final version of this work that, for all the vast orchestral resources Boulez could call upon, there are amazingly few bars of vocal inactivity. The text very closely determines the form of the music, even when (as in the fourth movement, ‘Evadné’) it is merely declaimed relentlessly in unpitched semiquavers. Le soleil des eaux shows a marked advance on this, and its instrumental interludes and wordless vocalise anticipate the commentary movements in Le marteau sans maître. In the later vocal works, the texts become ‘sources of irrigation’, the ‘centre and absence’ of the musical conceptions Boulez builds around them (‘Poésie – centre et absence – musique’, 1963, in Boulez, 1981). They continue to suggest forms, without dominating them.

The instrumental forms preferred by Boulez in the late 1940s are only superficially affiliated with the neo-classical movement. Sonata forms provided the merest skeleton, a pretext for thematic presentation and development at a time when Boulez's serial language was superbly equipped to follow those lines. His later forms are both more freely conceived and more sectional. Serial organization on a broad scale stimulates the invention of forms whose constituent parts are related only to one another, rather than to a pre-existing model. It also provides general criteria for linking structures in a number of alternative ways, thus clearing the way for the open forms Boulez used in, for example, the Third Piano Sonata and Domaines. In the Sonata the five movements, or ‘formants’, can be played in a number of different orders, always grouped round the central ‘Constellation’; the order and choice of sections within formants is similarly variable. In Domaines there are 12 sections to be played through in two groups of six, the order being chosen once by the soloist, once by the conductor.

To have gained a perspective in which serialism implies, and even logically entails such freedom, is one of the triumphs of Boulez's imagination. Yet the earlier works are far too convincing in themselves to be dismissed as preparatory exercises. Some critics have shown concern at the vast difference in character between early Boulez and post-1952 Boulez. The ‘musical scientist’ may indeed have satisfied his thirst for a system; but, so long as that system remains an open one, he is still free to go on making discoveries.

Boulez, Pierre

WORKS

vocal–orchestral

orchestral

full

chamber

unaccompanied choral

chamber and solo instrumental

vocal

3–11 instruments

1–2 instruments

piano

tape

incidental music

plans and projects

juvenilia

editions and arrangements

Boulez, Pierre

WRITINGS

most of the composer's articles, essays and lectures have been published in volume form; only uncollected items are listed separately

Musikdenken heute (Mainz, 1963/R; Fr. orig., Paris, 1964/R, as Penser la musique aujourd'hui; Eng. trans., 1971, as Boulez on Music Today)

Relevés d’apprenti (Paris, 1966; Eng. trans., 1968, as Notes of an Apprenticeship and, 1991, as Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship)

‘Technology and the Composer’, Times Literary Supplement (6 May 1977)

‘Through Schoenberg to the Future’, Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, (1976–7), 121–5

Points de repère (Paris, 1981; Eng. trans., 1986, as Orientations)

‘Le timbre et l’écriture’, Le timbre: métaphore pour la composition: Paris 1985, 541–9; Eng. trans. in CMR, ii (1987), 161–71

‘Necessité d'une orientation esthétique (II)’, Canadian University Music Review, (1986), 46–79 [part I in Points de repère]

‘Maestro Computer: Erforschung der neuen Tongrenzen’, Computermusik, ed. G. Batel, G. Kleinen and D. Salbert (Laaber, 1987), 37–47

with others: IRCAM: Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (Paris, 1987)

‘The Composer and Creativity’, Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, xi (1988), 107–22

with A. Gerzso: ‘Computers in Music’, Scientific American, no.258 (1988), 44–50

Jalons (pour une décennie) (Paris, 1989)

Le pays fertile: Paul Klee (Paris, 1989)

‘The Vestal Virgin and the Fire-Stealer: Memory, Creation and Authenticity’, EMc, xviii (1990), 355–8

with J. Cage: Correspondance et documents, ed. J.-J. Nattiez (Winterthur, 1990; Eng. trans., 1993, as The Boulez-Cage Correspondence

‘L'autodidacte volontaire’, Acanthes an XV: composer, enseigner, jouer la musique d'aujourd'hui, ed. C. Gilly and C. Samuel (Paris, 1991), 113–22

‘Zukunftsmusik: avenir de la musique’, Circuit, iii/1 (1992), 7–22

with others: Recherche et création vers de nouveaux territoires (Paris, 1992)

with A. Schaeffner: Correspondance 1954–1970, ed. R. Pereira de Tugny (Paris, 1988)

Boulez, Pierre

BIBLIOGRAPHY

interviews

M.D. Hastings: ‘M. Boulez’ Press-Conference’, MO, lxxxix (1965), 21–7

J. Buzga: ‘Interview mit Pierre Boulez in Prag’, Melos, xxxiv (1967), 162–4

‘Sprengt die Opernhäuser in die Luft!’, Der Spiegel (25 Sept 1967); Eng. trans. in Opera, xix (1968), 440–50

G. Harewood: ‘Whither Opera?’, Opera, xx (1969), 922–31, 1026–31

M. Cotta and S. de Nussac: ‘L'express va plus loin avec Pierre Boulez’, L'express, no.979 (1970), 144

H. Pousseur: ‘Pierre Boulez’, VH 101, no.4 (1970–71), 6–11

M. Kendergi: ‘Pierre Boulez interrogé’, Cahiers canadiens de musique/Canada Music Book, no.2 (1971), 31–48

U. Stürzbecher: Werkstattgespräche mit Komponisten (Cologne, 1971), 46–57

O. Tomek: ‘Lösungen für unsere Zeit finden! Gespräch’ NZM, JG.132 (1971), 62–8

J. Bornoff: ‘Music, Musicians and Communication: 2. Pierre Boulez’, Cultures, i/1 (1973), 123–35

M. Stegmann: ‘Gespräch mit Pierre Boulez – Komponist und Dirigent’, Musik und Medizin, no.3 (1975), 49–53

Z. Peskó: ‘Gespräch mit Pierre Boulez’, Melos, xl (1973), 274–9; Eng. trans. in Tempo, no.127 (1978), 2–9

Par volonté et par hasard: entretiens avec Célestin Deliège (Paris, 1975), Eng. trans. as Conversations with Célestin Deliège (London, 1976)

B.A. Varga: Muzsikusportrék (Budapest, 1979)

J. Cott: ‘Sur l'état de la musique aujourd'hui’, Débat, no.33 (1955), 140–51

J. Beckman: ‘Et rum fuld af spelje: interview med Pierre Boulez’, DMt, lx (1985–6), 16–20

D. Gable: ‘Ramifying Connections: an Interview with Pierre Boulez’, JM, iv/1 (1985–6), 105–13

C. Gehlhaar: ‘Entretien avec Pierre Boulez – Paris, le 19 décembre 1985’, Komponisten des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Paul Sacher Stiftung (Basle, 1986), 351–8

‘“Messieurs, faites vos jeux”: Michel Foucault – entretien avec Pierre Boulez’, Débat, no.41 (1986), 179–88

P.M. Menger: ‘Du Domaine musical à l'Ircam’, Le Débat, no.50 (1988), 257–66; Eng. trans. in PNM, xxviii (1990), 6–19

P. Aradi: ‘Csak az igazán fontos dolgokat kell megőrizni’ [We should remember only what is really important], Kritika, no.6 (1989), 26–9

P. McCallum: ‘An Interview with Pierre Boulez’, MT, cxxx (1989), 8–10

Conversations de Pierre Boulez sur la direction d'orchestre avec Jean Vermeil (Paris, 1989); Eng. trans. as J. Vermeil: Conversations with Pierre Boulez: Thoughts on Conducting (Portland, OR, 1996)

J. Häusler: ‘Ich biege ein Stück Holz und plötzlich bricht es: Pierre Boulez im Gespräch’, ÖMz, xliv (1989), 290–95

L. Bayle: ‘Imagination ou bureaucratie: entretien avec Pierre Boulez’, InHarmoniques, no.6 (1990), 30–35

M. Lodge: ‘Pierre Boulez’, Canzona, no.33 (1990), 2–7

A. Ford: Composer to Composer: Conversations about Contemporary Music (London, 1993)

P. Szendy: ‘Le texte et son prétexte’, Genesis, no.4 (1993), 135–48

monographs and symposia

A. Goléa: Rencontres avec Pierre Boulez (Paris, 1958/R)

M. Cadieu: Boulez (Madrid, 1977)

J. Peyser: Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma (London, 1977)

P. Griffiths: Boulez (London, 1978)

M. Stahnke: Struktur und Ästhetik bei Boulez: Untersuchungen zum Formanten ‘Trope’ der Dritten Klaviersonate (Hamburg, 1979)

D. Jameux: Pierre Boulez (Paris, 1984; Eng. trans., 1991)

M. Andersen and M. Wenzel Andreasen, eds.: Pierre Boulez: komponist – dirigent – utopist (Copenhagen, 1985)

J. Fernández Guerra: Pierre Boulez (Madrid, 1985)

J. Häusler, ed.: Pierre Boulez: eine Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag am 26. März 1985 (Vienna, 1985)

T. Hirsbrunner: Pierre Boulez und sein Werk (Laaber, 1985)

W. Glock, ed.: Pierre Boulez: a Symposium (London, 1986)

J. Häusler, ed.: Über ‘Répons’: ein Interview – Variation über das Echo eines Schreis: eine Analyse (Kassel, 1986)

C. Samuel, ed.: Eclats/Boulez (Paris, 1986)

P.F. Stacey: Boulez and the Modern Concept (Aldershot, 1987)

D. Jameux and others: Répons/Boulez (Paris, 1988)

Boulez at the Barbican, London, 1989 [programme of BBC concert series]

L. Koblyakov: Pierre Boulez: a World of Harmony (Chur, 1990)

J. Häusler: Pierre Boulez in Salzburg (Salzburg, 1992)

J.-J. Nattiez, ed.: ‘Boulez au Canada: portrait d'impact’, Circuit, iii/1 (1992) [whole issue]

T. Muller, ed.: Jeux de Boulez (Rotterdam, 1994)

Pierre Boulez, Musik-Konzepte, nos.89–90 (1995)

Pierre Boulez II, Musik-Konzepte, no.96 (1997)

general studies

M. Scriabine: ‘Pierre Boulez et la musique concrète’, ReM, no.215 (1952), 14–15

J. Barraqué: ‘Rythme et développement’, Polyphonie, nos.9–10 (1954), 47–73

R. Craft: ‘Boulez and Stockhausen’, The Score, no.24 (1958), 54–64

A. Hodeir: La musique depuis Debussy (Paris, 1961; Eng. trans., 1961)

S. Bradshaw and R.R. Bennett: ‘In Search of Boulez’, Music and Musicians, xi (1962–3), no.5, pp.10–13; no.12, pp.14–18, 50

K. Boehmer: Zur Theorie der offenen Form in der neuen Musik (Darmstadt, 1967, 2/1988), 84ff

A. Whittall: ‘After Webern, Wagner: Reflections on the Past and Future of Pierre Boulez’, MR, xxviii (1967), 135–8

A.H. Cross: ‘The Significance of Aleatoricism in Twentieth-Century Music’, MR, xxix (1968), 305–22

G.W. Hopkins: ‘Debussy and Boulez’, MT, cix (1968), 710–14

B. Canino: ‘Boulez prima e dopo’, NRMI, iii (1969), 672–83

J.-P. Derrien: ‘Dossier Pierre Boulez’, Musique en jeu, no.1 (1970), 103–32

J. Häusler: ‘Fruchtland der Synthese: der Komponist Pierre Boulez’, Musica, xxiv (1970), 239–41

M. Fink: ‘Pierre Boulez: a Selective Bibliography’, CMc, no.13 (1972), 135–50

D. Hamilton: ‘The Prospective Encounters at the Philharmonic: Aims and Achievement’, Musical Newsletter, ii/4 (1972), 3–8

P. Wapnewski: Richard Wagner: die Szene und ihr Meister (Munich, 1978)

S. de Nussac and F. Regnault, eds.: Historie d'un ‘ring’: ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ (L'anneau de Nibelung) de Richard Wagner – Bayreuth 1976–1980 (Paris, 1980)

F. Bayer: De Schönberg à Cage: essai sur la notion d'espace sonore dans la musique contemporaine (Paris, 1981)

R. Craft: ‘Stravinsky Pre-Centenary’, PNM, xix (1981), 464–77

J.-E. Marie: ‘Inverse Function: Differentiation and Integration in Messiaen and Boulez’, Sonus, ii/1 (1981), 26–33; v/1 (1984), 36–60

‘Dossier Pierre Boulez’, L'avant-scène opéra, no.36 (1981), 162–97

J. Ardoin: ‘A Ring Diary’, OQ, i (1983), no.2, pp.4–10; no.3, pp.25–32

J.-J. Nattiez: Tétralogies: Wagner, Boulez, Chéreau (Paris, 1983)

R. Craft: Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ii (London and New York, 1984)

H. Dufourt: ‘De Schönberg à Boulez: logique et dialectique de la création musicale’, Esprit, no.99 (1985), 21–36

M. Foucault: ‘Pierre Boulez: l'écran traversé’, Silences, no.1 (1985), 11–15; repr. as preface to P. Boulez: Jalons (pour une décennie) (Paris, 1989), 19–22

I. Founberg: ‘“Serialisten” Pierre Boulez’, DMt, lix (1984–5), 120–37, 231–46, 351–62

G. Schubert: ‘Werkidee und Kompositionstechnik zur seriellen Musik von Boulez, Stockhausen und Ligeti’, Die Musik der fünfziger Jahre, ed. C. Dahlhaus (Mainz, 1985), 48–71

C. Deliège: Invention musicale et idéologies (Paris, 1986)

H. Dufourt: ‘Pierre Boulez: musicien de l'ère industrielle’, Komponisten des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Paul Sacher Stiftung, ed. F. Meyer, J.M. Jans and I. Westen (Basle, 1986), 371–80

J. Häusler: “‘Boulez selon Boulez”: fragmentarische Bemerkungen zu den theoretischen Schriften’, Komponisten des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Paul Sacher Stiftung, ed. F. Meyer, J.M. Jans and I. Westen (Basle, 1986), 359–70

D. Jameux: ‘Gustav Mahler et Pierre Boulez: Parallèlisme/Divergences’, Gustav Mahler: Paris 1985, 73–82

J.-F. Pioud: ‘Pierre Boulez: l'énergie créatrice’, Etudes, no.364 (1986), 497–508

D. Jameux: ‘Mallarmé, Debussy, Boulez’, Silences, no.4 (1987), 191–202

F. Leclère: Premières pierres (Paris, 1987)

J.-J. Nattiez: ‘Chanter le Ring’, Canadian University Music Review, viii (1987), 78–133

R. Kapp: ‘Die Schatten des Urbilds des Doubles: vorsichtige Annäherung an eine Figur – René Leibowitz’, Musiktheorie, ii (1987), 15–31; Eng. trans. as ‘Shades of the Double's Original: René Leibowitz's Dispute with Boulez’, Tempo, no.165 (1988), 2–16

R. Cogan: ‘Science, Music Values and the Study of Music: Mozart, Tibetan Chant, Boulez II’, Sonus, viii/2 (1987–8), 16–35

E. Costère: ‘Dialectique des hauteurs chez Schönberg et Boulez’, Revue internationale de musique française, no.27 (1988), 83–100

K.-K. Hübler: ‘Errungenschaften des Serialismus: Pierre Boulez und die zahmen Wilden der Neuen Musik’, MusikTexte, no.23 (1988), 3–5

A. Padilla: ‘Partir hacia lo desconocido, con pasión: el pensamiento estético-musical de Pierre Boulez’, Araucaria de Chile, no.42 (1988), 139–55

A. Edwards: ‘Unpublished Bouleziana at the Paul Sacher Foundation’, Tempo, no.169 (1989), 4–15

D. Gable: ‘Boulez's Two Cultures: the Post-War European Synthesis and Tradition’, JAMS, xliii (1990), 426–56

S. Galaise: ‘Pierre Boulez: les cours de Bâle’, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, iii (1990), 9–10

E. Humbertclaude, ed.: (Re)lire Souvtchinski (La Bresse, 1990)

H. Dufourt: Musique, pouvoir, écriture (Paris, 1991)

J. Aguila: Le Domaine Musical: Pierre Boulez et vingt ans de création contemporaine (Paris, 1992)

‘Sammlungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung’, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, v (1992), 1–12

G. Born: Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (Berkeley, 1995)

M. Breatnach: Boulez and Mallarmé: a Study in Poetic Influence (Aldershot, 1996)

A. Williams: New Music and the Claims of Modernity (Aldershot, 1997)

S. Heinemann: ‘Pitch-Class Set Multiplication in Theory and Practice’, Music Theory Spectrum, xx/1 (1998), 72–96

R. Nemecek: Untersuchungen zum frühen Klavierschaffen von Pierre Boulez (Kassel, 1998)

studies relating to particular works

G. Ligeti: ‘Pierre Boulez: Entscheidung und Automatik in der Structure Ia’, Die Reihe, iv (1958), 38–63; Eng. trans. in Die Reihe, iv (1960), 36–62

H. Michaux: ‘Genèse des trois “Poésies pour pouvoir”’, Melos, xxv (1958), 308–10

M. Wilkinson: ‘Some Thoughts on Twelve-Tone Method (Boulez: Structure Ia)’, Gravesaner Blätter, no.10 (1958), 23–9

G. Ligeti: ‘Zur III. Klaviersonate von Boulez’, Die Reihe, v (1959), 38–40; Eng. trans. in Die Reihe, v (1961), 5–8

K. Stockhausen: ‘Musik und Sprache’, Die Reihe, vi (1960), 36–58; Eng. trans. in Die Reihe, vi (1964), 40–64 [on Le marteau sans maître]

M. Butor: ‘Mallarmé selon Boulez’, Melos, xxviii (1961), 356–9

G.W. Hopkins: ‘Le soleil des eaux’, Tempo, no.68 (1964), 35–7

H.U. Lehmann: ‘Figures–Doubles–Prismes’, Tempo, no.68 (1964), 34–5

R. Henderson: ‘Le soleil des eaux’, MT, cvi (1965), 673–4

M. Chanan: ‘Boulez's Eclat/Multiples’, Tempo, no.95 (1970–71), 30–33

J. Grimm: ‘Formaspekte der 2. Klaviersonate von Boulez’, SMz, cxii (1972), 201–5

I. Stoïanowa: ‘Pli selon pli: portrait de Mallarmé’, Musique en jeu, no.11 (1973), 75–98

R. Gehrlach: ‘Pierre Boulez und Stéphane Mallarmé: ein Fragment über das Artfizielle’, Über Musik und Sprache, ed. R. Stephan (Mainz, 1974), 70–92

R. Stephan: ‘Bemerkungen zu Pierre Boulez's Komposition von René Chars Klage der verliebten Eidechse’, Zur musikalische Analyse, ed. G. Schuhmacher (Darmstadt, 1974), 441–51

I. Stoïanowa: ‘La Troisième sonate de Boulez et le projet mallarméen du Livre’, Musique en jeu, no.16 (1974), 9–28

I. Stoïanowa: ‘Verbe et son “centre et absence”’, Musique en jeu, no.16 (1974), 79–102

A. Cross: ‘Form and Expression in Boulez' Don’, MR, xxxvi (1975), 215–30

A. Trenkamp: ‘The Concept of “Aléa” in Boulez's “Constellation-Miroir”’, ML, lvii (1976), 1–10

L. DeYoung: ‘Pitch Order and Duration Order in Boulez Structure Ia', PNM, xvi/2 (1977–8), 27–34

R. Febel: Musik für zwei Klaviere seit 1950 als Spiegel der Kompositionstechnik (Herrenberg, 1978)

U. Siegele: Zwei Kommentare zum ‘Marteau sans maître’ von Pierre Boulez (Tübingen, 1979)

R.T. Piencikowski: ‘René Char et Pierre Boulez: esquisse analytique du Marteau sans maître’, Schweizer Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, iv, ed. J. Stenzl (Stuttgart, 1980), 193–264

M. Beiche: ‘Serielles Denken in Rituel von Pierre Boulez’, AMw, xxxviii (1981), 24–56

C. Deliège: ‘Deux aspects de l'univers boulezien: Structures pour deux pianos à quatre mains’, Critique, no.408 (1981), 478–84

M.J. Worton: ‘Archipel et labyrinthe: l'importance de la poésie de René Char pour la musique de Pierre Boulez’, Interférences, no.13 (1981), 55–69

R. Black: ‘Boulez's Third Piano Sonata: Surface and Sensibility’, PNM, xx (1982), 182–98

M. Denhoff: ‘Rituel von Pierre Boulez: Anmerkungen zur Raum- und Zeit-Konzeption’, Festschrift Emil Platen zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. M. Gutiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn, 1986), 208–19

S. Goldet: Quatuors du 20ème siècle (Paris, 1986)

S.D. Winick: ‘Symmetry and Pitch-Duration Association in Boulez' Le marteau sans maître’, PNM, xxiv (1986), 280–321

A. Bonnet: ‘Ecriture and Perception: on Messagesquisse by Pierre Boulez’, CMR, ii/1 (1987), 173–209

F. Jedrjzewski: ‘La mise en oeuvre du principe dodécaphonique dans la 1e sonate de Pierre Boulez’, Analyse musicale, no.7 (1987), 69–76

J.-J. Nattiez: ‘Repons et la crise de la “communication” musicale contemporaine’, InHarmoniques, no.2 (1987), 193–210

C. Deliège: ‘Moment de Pierre Boulez: sur l'introduction orchestrale de Répons’, InHarmoniques, no.4 (1988), 181–202

J. McCalla: ‘Sea-Changes: Boulez's Improvisations sur Mallarmé’, JM, vi (1988), 83–106

W.G. Harbinson: ‘Performer Indeterminacy and Boulez's Third Sonata’, Tempo, no.169 (1989), 16–20

A. Baltensperger: ‘Marginalien zu einem Manuskript von Pierre Boulez’, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, iii (1990), 15–22

U. Mosch: ‘Disziplin und Indisziplin: zum seriellen Komponieren im 2. Satz des Marteau sans maître von Pierre Boulez’, Musiktheorie, v (1990), 39–66; responses by T. Bösche, ibid., 253–70, and G.F. Haas, ibid., 271–3

W. Wentzel: ‘Dynamic and Attack Associations in Boulez's Le marteau sans maître’, PNM, xxix (1991), 142–70

P. McCallum: ‘Deuxième Sonate – Que me veux-tu? Sonata Form in the First Movement of Boulez's Second Piano Sonata’, SMA, xxvi (1992), 62–84

A. Piret: ‘Pierre Boulez: Troisième sonate pour piano’, Analyse musicale, no.29 (1992), 61–74

B. Ramaut: ‘Dialogue de l'ombre double de Pierre Boulez: analyse d'un processus citationel’, Analyse musicale, no.28 (1992), 69–75

H. Sandroff: ‘Realizing the Spatialization Processing of Dialogue de l'ombre double by Pierre Boulez’, Inernational Computer Music Conference: San Jose, CA 1992, 202–5

A. Edwards: ‘Boulez's Doubles and Figures–Doubles–Prismes: a Preliminary Study’, Tempo, no.185 (1993), 6–18

J.S. Lee: ‘Mimesis and Beyond: Mallarmé, Boulez, and Cage’, Writings about John Cage, ed. R. Kostelanetz (Ann Arbor, 1993), 180–217

R. Nemecek: ‘Tendenz und Kontinuität im frühen Klavierschaffen von Pierre Boulez’, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, vi (1993), 18–22

R. Pereira: ‘La Troisième sonate de Pierre Boulez’, Dissonanz, no.36 (1993), 4–7

R.T. Piencikowski: ‘“Assez lent, suspendu, comme imprévisible”: quelques aperçus sur les travaux d'approche d'Eclat’, Genesis, no.4 (1993), 51–67

A. Williams: ‘Répons: Phantasmagoria or the Articulation of Space’, Theory, Analysis and Meaning in Music, ed. A. Pople (Cambridge, 1994), 195–210

P. O’Hagan: Pierre Boulez: Sonate “que me veux-tu”: an Investigation of the Manuscript Sources in Relation to the Third Sonata and the Issue of Performer Choice (diss., U. of Surrey, 1997)

S. Chang: Boulez’s “Sonatine” and the Genesis of his Twelve-Tone Practice (Ann Arbor, 1998)