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Has anyone heard Boulez's "12 notations" for piano? They are very dissonant, but I think that they have a kind of veiled passion and emotion that goes beyond the notes. Music is music, even if there aren't exactly "nice" harmonies or if some of it is created at random (John Cage's chance) or purely out of intellect. I can see how Boulez's works can seem unlistenable, but it only takes a little persistence! The second sonata, as played by Pollini, is full of passion and spellbounding dissonant effects. Some of his ideas, like allowing the performer to choose the order of the movements, is very ingenious. The printed page, as noted by the following website, also looks very interesting! This site has more informantion on Boulez, http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/music/boulez_sonata.html .

I am dying to listen to those sonatas you always talk about, Crashtest. Where can I listen to them online? I couldn't find them on the classicalmidiconnection thingy

A midi would not allow you to properly listen this these works. I recommend buying the CD with Maurizio Pollini playing this sonata (Along with a ravishing performance of Stravinsky's Petrouchka, and the Webern Variations). Idel Biret also recorded all three on the Naxos label, and the cd is pretty cheap. I warn you though, you probably will be shocked and repelled by the sonatas on the first few four hundred million listenings. After you listen to it plenty, (You don't have to understand it, but just enjoy the almost chaotical atmosphere!) you might start to find it interesting. It isn't music like Mozart's, but it does make the piano sound like nothing you've ever heard! You kind of have to approach it in a primitive way at first, then let it evolve. If you do a search on www.emusic.com for Pi-Hsien Chen, you will find some short samples you can download for free(Or completely download if you are a member) of Boulez's works.

I found it for you, here it is: http://www.emusic.com/cd/10592/10592227.html

Thanks
Haha this is pretty interesting music. It's a bunch of beautiful noises

I sounds very hard to play though

I am going to have to get that Pollini recording. Even though I hate Pollini's style I think he must be good at this music where clarity and precision is the thing that matters the most.

pollini's recoding of it is excellent and his style does work very well for this type of music, his recoding of three movements by petrouchka..on the same cd is also excellent..

Its boulez's third sonata where the performer has the option to change the order of the movements

As I've mentioned on other posts, I have a big problem with the Boulez Second Sonata. I've only heard it once(in a live performance) and I really don't want to listen to it again. I don't think a piece should have to be listened to many, many times before it reaches the level of tolerable. I really feel pieces like the Boulez 2nd and Ives Concord can be enjoyed by less than 5% of people who regularly listen to classical music. I feel that only some composers and some professional pianists can hope to understand these works and possibly appreciate them. I think that part of Pollini's success in programing the Boulez 2nd may be due to the hair raising experience of watching someone who can actually play the notes do so(but not so much that most of the audience likes what they heard).

Bunch of noise, and gives contemporary music a bad name. I'll take 4:33 thank you.

I know it isn't something that you would listen to while trying to sleep, but it sure isn't noise! I enjoy it a different way than I would enjoy a Beethoven sonata, but I think that the way one listen's to a Bach Fugue (Intellectually listening, like following the different voices and harmonic modulations) is the same way one can listen to Boulez. Of course, In Bach, there is the element of undebiable beauty that can be said to be missing from these Boulez Sonatas. I guess thats why there is something for everyone out there!

What you have described is the joy of listening (which I grant), rather than anything to do with the music.

It's noise. The only reason we take it seriously is because the audience sits in mournful silence, with "high seriousness", and it is written on a page.

Cat tracks played on a big piano would also be taken seriously -- the audience would sit in the same mournful silence, with similar "high seriousness", and the music would be written on the page. You could get similar joy from using your listening tools. (in fact, I bet if you had a recording of same, and didn't know what you were listening to, you'd be able to receive similar pleasure.)

Doesn't change the fact that it's noise, and that if the audience had what they considered to be a choice, they'd vote with their feet.

Try programming a concert with three such pieces of nonsense, and see how many "highbrows" turn up. They'd prefer 4:33, preferably with a good book.

The joy of listening has nothing to do with music?

?!?!?!?!

Doesn't have to. Many a time I have enjoyed listening to the grass grow from a porch on a summer's evening, the hoot of an owl, or the purr of a cat. And many a day I have spent looking for the musical pattern in the racket made by a New York City subway train. (actually, 3 years!) I have received deep pleasure in listening. But it has absolutely nothing to do with music (which implies intentionality), except that it engages "MY" intentionality.

Let me recommend to you a book by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schaffer (I think that's how he spells it) called "Soundscape.

How do you define "music"? For examle, if the definition is "intentionality" then Boulez' works would qualify.

Ryan

I don't intend to get into an argument about the definition, nor even about what is "intentional" (if I put the paper in front of the cat, she'll walk on it, and, maybe, even pee, probably intentionally.)

It's still noise, and would be classified as such if people weren't so cowed into somberness when they enter a concert hall. And, I believe, they wouldn't be able to distinguish it from the "cat-notes" either, unless they were told to by the program guide. But I do hope they experience "the joy of listening"!

On this score, folks might enjoy Christopher Miller's new book "Simon Silber".

Music is NOT noise at all. It is a highly ordered variation of frequencies. Put a Microsoft windows cd in your car stereo and listen to the music that comes out of it. THAT is noise! It was not intended to code music. It therefore produces a noise. You could still enjoy it though by picking up some parts of it only (perception) and integrating them the way you want for them to mean what you want (integration)
When the composer creates a piece it will be composed relative to the mammalian ear, because evolution has designed the brain to pick up some variations of frequencies as soothing, and others as alarming. In addition you might associate a horrible sound with some good feeling, due to imagination or memory. This is why your emotion gets affected by the different combinations of frequencies varying with time. That is also why the effect will vary a lot from one individual to the other.

My dog does all of this very well, thank you. With purer intentions, I think, and carefully calibrated to the mammalian ear.

If I found a way to transcribe it for piano, and programmed it on the same program as the Boulez, I doubt that most people would choose the Frenchman's sonata over that of the dog.

Can't we admit it when we've been had? Still sounds like noise to me -- though as a previous poster said, it might be that I haven't heard it four million times.

You still haven't answered my question - why is Boulez noise and not music? By what definition?

Ryan

Why does it matter?

Everyone has different opinions of what music is - there is no "official" definition of music.

I've seen a lot of these "[insert contemporary piece here] isn't music" discussions on the internet over the years, and they all boil down to the same thing - people attempting to sound intelligent enough to convince other people to agree with their opinion.

Truth be told, there are far more interesting (and useful) questions than the tired old "Is Boulez music?"

For example:

What is to be gained by adopting a classical formal structure for a strictly atonal work? Does it function simply as a framework for the compositional process, does it act to guide listeners who may be more accostumed to that particular formal design, or is it possible that the perception of the dramatic arc inherent in sonata design might not always rely on tonal cues?

If we call Boulez's music noise, it amounts to ignorance on our part. When a new musical form is introduced, it always takes people, not the composer, time to understand it. Beethoven was misunderstood during his time, for example, his Op.106 (Which is an undeniable monster of a masterpiece) didn't really gain recognition much later after his death. I do not mean to compare Boulez to Beethoven, but he is just as daring as anyone. Schoenberg opened the door, almost like Bach in a sense, and others evolved. People in Mozart's time said that his pieces contained too many notes, and we laugh at that now. 200 years from now, peolpe will be laughing at what we say about music in the current age!

JS:

Your points are both interesting and deep. But first a question.

By tonality, shall we agree to mean the basing of a movement on one key and its more or less traditionally related harmonies (as in a classical sonata movement, or in a certain simpler sense, even a 32 bar tune) ? That's one possibilty. On the other hand, many people would probably call something tonal as long as the vertical harmonies lay recognisably within major and minor scales, disregarding how those harmonies were juxtaposed horizontally and not attaching undue importance to a home key.

I have heard the word used to describe both these things but the former is much stricter than the latter.

I take umbrage
at that remark. I am NOT ignorant. My daughter is a decorated 21st century composer. I know lots about old 20th century music. Boulez (in the 2nd Sonata phase) was not new then, and it isn't new now -- he was the end (the death knell) of serialism.

As for time to understand it, my dog could well say the same, but he has better things to do with his time.

As I already said, I have no intention of getting into the defining music trap. If music is defined by what people in overabundant countries go to hear when they want to sit quietly for several hours in uncomfortable chairs, that's fine with me. After all, I usually don't go for a walk for the purpose of listening to Rover.

But I honestly don't think you would be able to tell the difference between the music of 2nd sonata Boulez and that of my dog if they were presented in the same idiom and same performance context, except I honestly do believe that a very large proportion of the audience would prefer the music of my dog.

Now THAT I can agree with! People will laugh hysterically about the ancients who paid good money to listed to such crap.

What type of music does she compose? (Links?) I didn't mean to call you ignorant, just the general population's standards on music. Do you think that serialism was just a failure musically? Even though most of Boulez's works were composed decades ago, they are still overlooked in a sense. I know they are not musical masterpieces, but they (In they I mean the sonatas) are worthy of performance, and public appreciation. Music doesn't have to always be beautiful or nice, sometimes the very idea behind a work is good enough to listen to, but no necessarily to touch you emotionally. I don't think Boulez's music is totally without emotion or just randomly composed as you imply when you say your dog can compose the same (When translated from his idiom)

To my way of thinking, tonality includes both a vocabulary and a grammar. The vocabulary is made up of tertian harmonies and the grammar consists of the various tendencies of voice leading and harmonic progression.

To draw a parallel with language, in order for a sentence to be "in English" if it followed the rules of grammar and was made up of English words.

I think modern composers play with the same ideas. Some of Stravinsky's neo-classic works (Symphony in C, Concerto for Piano and Winds) fit in the "familiar vocabulary unfamiliar grammar" category. The concerto isn't really in a-minor, Stravinsky himself said it was more "on" A. It's like the following sentence:

"ate nice a sandwich I today."

Everybody knows what I mean in saying that, but I said it in an unfamiliar way. e e cummings, anyone?

On the other hand, Copland's Passacaglia works the other way, being a "familiar grammar, unfamiliar vocabulary."

Interestingly enough, I think the reaction to both pieces mirrors what might happen if I walked up to somebody and started chattering away. If I used familiar vocabulary (neo-classic Stravinsky), they might look at me funny, but they'd at least have a chance at understanding me. If I used correct grammar, but spoke using Hungarian words, they'd probably run to the nearest police station.

Food for thought anyway...

Most recently, she was one of the winners of the Waging Peace Through Singing competition at the Oregon Bach Festival (iwagepeace.com), one of only two U.S. composers under age 26 to win an "Emerging Composers Award.

Yes, I think serialism is a dead end. There is a plenty of music I can think which is neither beautiful nor nice, which is emotionally satisfying. I don't think Boulez' earlier music is overlooked; I think it is quickly becoming forgotten (and with good reason.)

And I don't think my dog's rumblings are in any way random either. Of course, you might have to listen to them four million times....

JS:

Okay, so what you are saying, if I'm not mistaken, is that some modern music is roughly analogous to Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce - e.g. "And the prankquean pulled a rosy one and made her wit forninst the dour". Normal grammar but different vocabulary. The whole trick though, surely, is that both grammar and vocabulary can be modified in ways which retain enough semblance to what has gone before to provoke the listener's brain into imposing meaning on what it hears. If Joyce had said "fdhkdh vchkhj njhjdj vhjfj " the change in vocabulary would have destroyed the grammar altogether, along with meaning. The two elements we are talking about are perhaps not quite as independent as we thought at first.

There has to be something produced in the listener's mind which he can call meaning. We cannot tamper with both grammar and vocabulary to such extent that the whole thing becomes a puzzle in finding meaning. Faced with such a conundrum, we may well consider our time better spent in staring at the spots on television before the channel is tuned.

At this stage we can return to your questions and couch the last in a slightly more general form, "Does any inherent relationship exist between syntax and semantic ?" In the light of our last two posts it would seem that the answer is yes, but that the connection is extremely complex. Now personally I see this lack of simple analysis as cause for rejoicing. It means that we can backtrack to a traditional form or an orthodox vocabulary and stand a rough chance of producing something of real original meaning by a small change.

We are not obliged to keep on abolishing the thought of hundreds of years - wiping the slate clean, as it were, and rebuilding the universe. This process occurred so many times in the twentieth century and quite frankly I'm tired of it. My personal direction now tends toward development rather than innovation. I like meaning and I like others to perceive that meaning. I cannot enjoy this if I completely redefine my musical ethos to invalidate hundreds of years of the thinking of fine minds.

See, already I have become personal - hard not too. But I must go home and have my tea now. To be continued.

Shantik,

What if it really isn't noise, but is rather written in a musical language that you are not familiar with, don't understand, and don't appreciate? (and don't like).

Look at it from the other side of the coin - much of the world considers western classical music to be noise for these same reasons. Likewise many of us find music from other parts of the world to be noise, even though the people from these regions derive emotional enjoyment from it. We would probably also find music from much earlier times to be noise, even though it was loved by the people of those times.

Anyway, just thinking out loud...

Ryan

I am student of Carnatic music, and have played concerts on the veena to large audiences in India and Sri Lanka. I am familiar with the language of serialism, and and I think I understand it quite well (though not as well that of my dog.)

I think the principles behind late serialism are for the most part intellectually dishonest (a deliberate attempt to find music when the whole point is that there isn't any). At least John Cage is honest -- when people walk out of his performances, he considers it part of the piece! But late serialism, to me, is simply exploitation of the performance context, dressed up as something it is not.

I stand by what I said first, as knowledgable and informed listener, as one who understands multiple musical idioms, and gets joy from listening:

It's noise.

So is everyone who enjoys late serialism ignorant and uninformed? I found it hard to believe at first, but I have met people who honestly enjoy listening to music of this style.

Rather than thinking of late serialism as noise I think of it more as an experimental or theoretical language that never really catches on, probably just because people don't particularly like it. It strikes me as a very clean and efficient technique of composition. All notes get equal weight and there is little or no excess. The problem is that people don't tend to like things that are highly efficient and streamlined - they can sound cold and sterile. Real life is not clean, efficient or streamlined, and if it gets that way it starts to feel pretty cold.

Again, just thinking out loud.

Ryan

I'm going to have to jump onto the noise bandwagon and catch a ride. But this is only my opinion. It strikes me as noise, but I realize it may not strike every as such.

My view on the matter is, understanding the structure of the piece, the harmonics, or what the composer intended doesn't make it any more appealing. I still shrudder when I hear it (the 2nd sonata), I still think that it sounds like a child that doesn't know how to play trying to play the piano for the first time by banging on the keys, I still get a headache, and I still get very stressed when I hear it. And this is after I've given the sonata several chances of liking it.

To me, it just plainly sounds like the piece was composed to sound opposite of what humans NATURALLY enjoy. I didn't have to learn to love Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, etc..their music was immediately appealing. And because of this, I believe, they're still around today and will be for as long as music is alive.

No matter how much musical theory I know, or how open minded I am, I will never like Boulez's sonata or similar music. Maybe I have high musical standards or I have none at all. I have yet to figure this out.

What do humans "nuturally" enjoy, and why is it natural? Is it because that is what they were brought up listening to? My 4-year-old son loves Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Firebird, not because of natural anything. He loves them because of the visions they evoke in his imagination because he first heard them while watching the fantasia movies.

Ryan

I can't speak for everyone, and I didn't try, but the first time I heard, say Chopin, I loved it. It moved me to the point of making it a goal to play his music one day.

Maybe you're not borne naturally loving Beethoven, but I believe through life experiences with music and such you develop what you like and don't like, and then this becomes natural from then on. I would have to agree that if one that's never heard any piece of music, was to listen to Boulez's sonata repeatedly, he or she would probably grow a fondness of it and find "other" music annoying.

I grew up listening to a certain kind of music and it has thus become natural to me. When I say music, I'm implying of the sound, the coherence, and the sometimes simplicity to understand what the composer was intending to do and what's going to come next in the piece. The expectation is important to me. I don't find ANY qualities that I look for in music in Boulez or others. But as I have stated, this is all my opinion and preference.

While music is pretty much a subjective thing and I have no problem with people having diffrent taste, one thing that does bug me is the 'art syndrome of intellectual pretentiousness.' You know the drill, there is some idiotic painting that is a mesh of colors and a horde of critics and art fans will spend hours trying to find the hidden meaning in the "masterpiece." Even if the painting is rubbish, in their attempt at being artistically intellectual they find ridiculous meanings and nonsensical value in an otherwiswe worthless painting.

To apply that to music, if someone honestly enjoys or sees value in this type of piece, its great that they can put up with such things. I think if their main reason for praising the work, or at the least defending it, is because of a sense of being
"objectivelly and musically fair" though ... that is a dishonest and silly approach since music is not a purely intellectual thing. That said, I enjoy all kinds of pianism, although I can easily understand why some people do not gravitate to something that sounds like it could be pounded out by clenching a fist and hammering the keyboard. Would you call that music? Would banging blindfolded on the keyboard be called music? In some alien clture the sound of a cylindrical saw being used on a table could be called 'music.' Does it make it good music that human beings have been culturally attuned to, however?

By the way, the piano is one instrument, in my opinion, where dissonance is plain horrendous. Has anyone ever heard a string quartet playing dissonant works? Creepy.
[edit, some more thoughts added]

SethW, where in Fort Worth are you?

In the southwestern extreme (The Summercreek region).

The Boulez is not just some paint on a white canvas! This music is as exciting as anything Chopin wrote, according to my tastes. When I say exciting, it is not to say that it would capture me like a Chopin etude, but it evokes certain feelings that are pleasurable. The first time I heard Beethoven, I almost fell asleep. The first time I heard Boulez, I skipped that track after 10 seconds. There was something I liked initially. Afterwards, interest started to spark, now I can listen to both with a critical ear and attention. The first movement of the 2nd sonata has great rhythm, it takes you along quite well. Some notes in other works are static, making the silence important. The dynamics are also used extraordinarily well; I would think that this makes it better than "Noise"!The best thing is, people's tastes are different , and that is what makes music great!

I agree with Shantinik and SethW that there is far too much dishonesty and pretentiousness in the world of 'avant garde' music and art. Those who have been 'educated' are compelled to express appreciation for things that are either not representative of the skills involved in creating them, or are intentional shams on the part of their creators (small c).

Art, music and dance patrons are cowed into accepting works that, for want of a better term, reek of self-importance. Students of art and musical composition are bombarded with the notions of 'pure' originality, iconoclasm and divergence. Teachers of art and composition yield to the pervasive atmosphere of 'modernity' in the creative arts.

This all sets up a vicious cycle in which the 'modern' forms of these arts exist in a vacuum; taught, produced and consumed by a closed community with no interaction with (and a deliberate thumbing of the nose at) the rest of society. The rift between "educated" (classical) and "folk" (popular) music has become wider than it ever has been. If they both continue in the same manner as they have for the past 80 years, only one will survive.

I hope I have made it clear in my previous posts that I think it is quite possible to enjoy "listening" to noise. I used to love the crescendo and rubato of the F train, and used to contrast it with the quieter rhythms of the BB. The silence following the doors opening at the 23rd and Ely Station (where no one ever got on or off!) was always eery, and struck me as particularly well-placed, our ears having just been affected mightly by our descent and then reascent under the East River. The rising high pitch section (from Queens Plaza to Roosevelt Avenue) made use of the special effects of the echo created by whooshing past local stations without stopping, and then pitch, rhythm, and dynamics as if by magic transformed as the train came to a halt.

And when I got home, on a good night, I could listen to the grass grow.

The point of late serialism was the intentional disruption of all pattern, so that whatever pattern was perceived was (mostly) created by the listener rather than the composer.

Well, big fat deal. It's still noise.

Shantink:
I am curious. Do you feel the same about some of his earlier pieces, such as "Marteau sans Maitre" and "Pli selon pli?"

No. First of all, "Marteau" is based upon a set of poems, from which they extract context and meaning. Secondly, it lacks the miserable angst experienced by the listener ("moi"!) in late serialism. Thirdly, the composer's intentions are at least identifiable!

Still wouldn't be my choice of music, but at least I wouldn't consider it intellectually dishonest.