Pierre Boulez Studies Cambridge Composer Studies Series

Pierre Boulez is acknowledged as one of the most important composers in contemporary musical life. This collection explores his works, influence, reception and legacy, shedding new light on Boulez's music and its historical and cultural contexts. In two sections that focus firstly on the context of the 1940s and 1950s, and secondly on the development of the composer's style, the contributors address recurring themes such as Boulez's approach to the serial principle and the related issues of form and large-scale structure. Featuring excerpts from Boulez's correspondence with a range of his contemporaries here published for the first time, the book illuminates both Boulez's relationship with them and his thinking concerning the challenges which confronted both him and other leading figures of the European avant-garde. In the final section, three chapters examine Boulez's relationship with audiences in the United Kingdom, and the development of the appreciation of his music.

Preface; Part I. The Context of the Late 1940s and 1950s: 1. Pierre Boulez: composer, traveller, correspondent Edward Campbell; 2. Traces of an apprenticeship: Pierre Boulez's Sonatine (1946/1949) Susanne Gärtner; 3. Schoenberg vive Jessica Payette; Part II. The Evolution of a Style: 4. 'A score neither begins nor ends; at most it pretends to': fragmentary reflections on the Boulezian non finito Robert Piencikowski; 5. Serial organisation and beyond: cross-relations of determinants in Le Marteau sans maître and the dynamic pitch-algorithm of Constellation Pascal Decroupet; 6. 'Du Fond d'un Naufrage': the quarter-tone compositions of Pierre Boulez Werner Strinz; 7. Alea and the concept of the 'work in progress' Peter O'Hagan; 8. Casting new light on Boulezian Serialism: unpredictability and free choice in the composition of Pli selon pli – portrait de Mallarmé Erling E. Guldbrandsen; 9. Serial processes, agency and improvisation Joseph Salem; 10. Listening to doubles in stereo Jonathan Goldman; 11. Composing an improvisation at the beginning of the 1970s Paolo Dal Molin; Part III. Reception Studies: 12. Pierre Boulez in London: the William Glock years Peter O'Hagan; 13. Tartan from Baden-Baden: Boulez at the 1965 Edinburgh International Festival Edward Campbell; 14. Pierre Boulez and the suspension of narrative Arnold Whittall.

Edward Campbell is senior lecturer in music at the University of Aberdeen and a member of the University's Centre for Modern Thought. He specialises in contemporary European art music and aesthetics. He is the author of the books Boulez, Music and Philosophy (Cambridge, 2010) and Music after Deleuze (2013).
Peter O'Hagan is a pianist specialising in the performance of contemporary music. He has performed Boulez's piano works at festivals in the UK and abroad, and in 2008 gave the London première of the unpublished three-movement version of the Third Sonata at Wigmore Hall with the composer's authorisation. He has recently completed a monograph, Pierre Boulez and the Piano (2016).