Pierre Boulez RIP

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Let´s hear it for Frank's answering machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2TtC1LtmFY&app=desktop

the end of an era doesn't really mean anything, other than that it is the era of the pierre boulez, sui generis in his own lifetime in that nobody else since mahler was so prominent in the two fields

as a conductor there are others of similar prominence from his generation still around

and as a composer kurtag (1926) is still around, and boulez' own conducting of him might be cited in evidence for his greatness; as at least not obviously undeserving in company of boulez, stockhausen, berio, ligeti, nono, xenakis, carter

difficult to really narrow that down to any essence beyond boulez and stockhausen (that being more wrt darmstadt/infamy/polemics than intrinsic difference)

Add crumb to kurtag IMO

Messiaen of course always sounds idiomatically post-serialist...

not really PB. And if he does, how? He sounds pretty obviously post Debussy and Ravel however, and it makes sense that IMO Boulez treats their music as if it is "post serialist" too...

he might have said 'usually' instead of 'always' but yes the whole rant was authoritatively subjective

as a teenager in the 80's, when I began dutifully reading through all those '20th century music' books (the ones mostly written in the 60's) -- it was striking to see Boulez more often than not posited as the foremost inheritor of the classical tradition. not just the Paul Griffiths books; if you were a writer trying to construct a linear narrative connecting all the works of western symphonic development and extending it into the future, in the 50's/60's his compositions were just obviously right at the center of the apparent line most people were drawing. then I'd get the records and I couldn't square them, they were wildly anachronistic! but also obsessively detailed and great. reading the first few chapters of 'Orientations' and the Cage Boulez letters cracked him for me.

Kurtág and Crumb are good calls for that-generation-not-quite-gone-yet!

Milton (and everyone itt) that domaine musicale box is beyond amazing and you need it. That's where the Pierrot Lunaire I listened to earlier comes from. Sound quality is not a problem.

xpost

He was definitely a hustler, and probably a visionary. Just not sure I share or appreciate that vision (in fact, I'm almost sure I don't). If you look at what happens at most prestigious university composition progams, Boulez (and the Darmstadt school in general) seems clearly the line that is followed and encouraged. However, there are plenty of dissenters -- including my hero and ex-Darmstadt'er Ligeti -- and based purely on his music, I don't see why there is any urgent reason to line up history just to arrive at Boulez's footsteps. And my god I am asking for a haunting today.

His conductor self had no trace of the hustler, on the other hand. There's no equivalent of Glenn Gould's Beethoven pisstake in Boulez discography

Was just reading the Conversations With Boulez book last month (or as much as Google books would let me read) and it's so awesome, mostly him talking about what works he programmed and why and how to make them work, a great antidote for the Boulez iconoclast image

I don't think there's been any urgency to that project since the 60's, outside of conservatory. in the decades since, the dissenters all won handily. I find those books on western classical tradition fascinating because the 60's were just about the last decade where you could coherently construct a claim of linear development nudged along by individual masters, and the poor people whose job it was to do so basically had Boulez.

xpost the domanine musicale box is not on spotify. nothing's ever on spotify.

And most of the dg Boulez on Spotify was added in the bad old days before universal music stopped watermarking their files, and is thus horrible sounding (notable exception: the Mahler box is unmarred)

Annoying because I really wanted to make a Spotify playlist for y'all but I can't do it with Sony only

Have UMG stopped watermarking their files? When did this happen? Most of the forum posts I saw about that a couple of years ago seemed to suggest that the complaints weren't getting much traction, especially as it wasn't as noticable with non-classical/acoustic material. I remember someone pointing out that the samples on DG's own site were cleaner than you got on iTunes.

Don't think anyone has won or lost. Boulez, Ligeti, Cage, Nono, Feldman and Stockhausen and all those people disagreed and fought with each other are all performed.

Over here the only things I don't see much of are the likes of Babbitt.

Ultimately its gone from Newton to Einstein and now beyond even that. Or you could also listen to minimalism too. All up for grabs.

Christian Wolff is still alive too btw.

Gottfried Michael Koenig

Xpost to my ears they stopped doing it around June 2013. Or they dialed it back to a level that's not evident to my hearing.

Gottfried Michael Koenig

― Anyway, it's not a three, it's a yogh. (Tom D.), Thursday, 7 January 2016 13:35 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I came to this thread to post Gottfried Michael Koenig not realizing I'd posted Gottfried Michael Koenig here five years ago. Anyway, Gottfried Michael Koenig is still alive and is now 94. Kurtág is older by ca. 9 months.

He died a few days ago

RIP gottfried michael koenig (b 1926), literally last man standing. along w/xenakis & GENDY + brün & "sawdust," GMK was one of the first to conceptualize synthesis at sample level w/his Sound Synthesis Program (SSP), allowing for micro<->macro organization https://t.co/mRNi7aaoqv pic.twitter.com/xmlW9Ftfws

— callahan (@IRCAM_official) January 3, 2022

I jinxed him by talking about him in this thread all the time.

Following the complete Domaine Musical recordings box on Accord, the complete Erato recordings box, and the complete Columbia recordings box...

https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/assets/asset_300x300/P0028948609154_1.jpg

https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/p51-i0028948609154

Might need to rob a bank for this

The Bartok, Debussy, Bruckner and Messiaen from his DG/Universal era are incredible. His Mahler cycle is uneven - #5,7 and Das Lied don’t really work and #6 and 9 are half brilliant. #1-4 and 8 are amazing. The Webern cycle and his own works are intoxicatingly exquisite which I understand is not what some people want from this music - I’ve seen a lot of preference for the Columbia versions as having more bite. I think this kind of jewelry for the ears is exactly what he does best as a conductor though and I mean that as high praise.

His Mahler 6 has always been my favourite version of that work. Recently I've been huffing his Schoenberg Pelleas, I love it so much.

Man his Mahler 6 is really close, there’s a lot I really love about it. I’m due a relisten, I’ve probably heard it ten times but not in the last three or so years