From the rubble of World War II, a handful of European composers had the audacity to want to reinvent the music and break everything set: perhaps the most feared and respected of them out Pierre Boulez .
From the French genius, composer, conductor and teacher-Germany died today at age 90, will be remembered both their innovative works as his peculiar way of conducting the orchestra (provided he gave up the baton) .
But when the name Boulez rule, this will always also accompanied by his bluster and high-sounding declarations, in which the same presumed dead the father of twelve-tone Arnold Schoenberg called “blow the opera houses. “
So the common places are exhausted these days to define French as” iconoclastic “,” rebel “,” enfant terrible “or any adjective to make it clear that his was loaded against set out to build something new. He himself recognized, not in vain, “preferring a good debate with swords and sabers kind courtesy of convenience”.
Training
As many times between musical gifted, eight years Pierre Boulez small pieces could already play Chopin on the piano, but its capabilities go much further and extended to physics, chemistry or mathematics, career choice before to devote himself to music.
However, I always wanted to hide these gifts, remembered today as the newspaper Le Monde , to prevent his father compelled him to leave the music in order to focus on scientific studies.
Born March 25, 1925 in Montbrison (central France) within the bosom of a wealthy family. In the National Conservatory of Paris took classes in harmony with Olivier Messiaen and was taught by Rene Leibowitz in dissonant style of the twentieth century known as dodecafonismo , or twelve-tone music, which influenced him to form his identity sound.
Although later stepped forward in music history: He became the creator of serialism that, unlike dodecafonismo not only applied the concept of the series at the height of the notes, but other variables sound like the rhythms, dynamics and attacks.
Boulez went distancing of Messiaen, who burst into several of his legendary temper tantrums and in 1946 composed his first piano sonata a radical work while he earned his living playing light pieces at the Folies Bergeres.
In 1954, with the support of actor and theater director Jean-Louis Barrault, Boulez founded the Domaine musical in Paris, one of the first series of concerts devoted entirely to the interpretation of modern music. He was its director until 1967.
According to the Deutsche Grammophon -this seal with which he recorded throughout his trajectory- Boulez began his directing career in 1958 with the Orchestra Südwestfunk of Baden, Germany, where he had his residence.
From 1960 to 1962 taught composition at the Music Academy of Basel. His work as a teacher, director and composer made a decisive contribution to the development of music in the twentieth century and inspired new generations with its pioneering spirit.
His recordings received 26 Grammy awards, and other prestigious awards, including the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2012), the Grawemeyer Composition Prize (2001), the Wolf Prize in Arts in Jerusalem (2000), the Polar Music Prize (1995) of the Swedish Academy Music and Theodor W. Adorno Award (1992) from the German city of Frankfurt.
Works
Soon, in 1955, opens Marteau sans maitre (“Hammer without owner”), the centerpiece of twentieth century music, which crystallizes the challenge of the new generation of European composers royalties.
In keeping with his temperament, five years later signs a declaration in favor of insubordination in the Algerian war, which ostracized by all signatories. By then, however, the composer already moved to Germany in search of better means for its activity.
If anything distinguishes Boulez of his other contemporary artists is his work as conductor and as a teacher, I always led by the desire to divulge music hard to appreciate without preparation.
As a director, remains faithful to a repertoire in shining Debussy, Ravel and, above all, Mahler (a Boulez who idolizes, like Wagner), along with other big names like Bartok, Stravinsky or Schoenberg himself.
Boulez Director steals increasingly composer Boulez space.
Large it raffle orchestras and in 1971 landed in front of the New York Philharmonic, with high hopes of renewing his repertoire after the passage of Leonard Bernstein.
His six years as head of the New York institution fail to give the revolutionary turn had intended and in 1977, called by the then French President Georges Pompidou, returns to France to head the new Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic-Music, better known as Ircam.
musical inquiry becomes the new obsession of the master, and highly respected in their own country, where over the years acquired an artistic stature reserved for few.
Your maze pieces (he aspired to follow his music as a road had no end) become commonplace in concert halls in France and dedicates his efforts to the creation of his last major work: the Music City in the depressed district XX of the French capital.
Just one year ago it opened the Philharmonie , spectacular concert hall designed by Jean Nouvel, completing this ambitious project led by Boulez to take music their bourgeois and take it to heart multicultural Paris campuses.
No comments:
Post a Comment