The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez Writings and Compositions [Paperback]

A fresh look at the musical universe of arguably one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century.Focusing on Pierre Boulez's most recent works and writings, this study places the influential composer in a new light, avoiding the usual narrow emphasis on his early period. It includes a detailed guide to five key musical works from the post-1975 period to exemplify concepts developed in Boulez's writings.Focusing on Pierre Boulez's most recent works and writings, this study places the influential composer in a new light, avoiding the usual narrow emphasis on his early period. It includes a detailed guide to five key musical works from the post-1975 period to exemplify concepts developed in Boulez's writings.Pierre Boulez is arguably the most influential composer of the second half of the twentieth century. Here, Jonathan Goldman provides a fresh appraisal of the composer's music, demonstrating how understanding the evolution of Boulez's ideas on musical form is an important step towards evaluating his musical thought generally. The theme of form arising from a grammar of oppositions  the legacy of structuralism  serves as a common thread in Boulez's output, and testifies to the constancy of Boulez's thought over and above his several notable aesthetic and stylistic changes. This book lends a voice to the musical works by using the writings  particularly the mostly untranslated collected Coll?ge de France lectures (19761995)  to comment on them. It also uses five musical works from the post-1975 period to exemplify concepts developed in Boulez's writings, presenting a vivid portrait of Boulez's extremely varied production.1. Introduction; Part I. Form as Opposition in the Writings of Pierre Boulez: 2. Writings from the first period: serialist doctrine, the open work, and strategies of rhetorical displacement; 3. A portrait of Webern, a self-portrait of Boulez; 4. Form, thematicism and perceptual categories in the writings from the 1970s to the presel£ª