My New Music Blog

The New Classical

This was originally an assignment for journalism class, and then it turned into something I do on a regular basis. It's a blog about my experiences in music and about the new music scene, or how I see it. Here is an excerpt...

Today I met one of the most influential and extroadinary genious's of modern music, Pierre Boulez. By good fortune, my piano teacher, Joanna Chao, happened to be playing a piece of his at Juilliard with the Argento Chamber ensemble, Improvise for Dr. K, and Boulez was scheduled to come in for a private rehearsal with the musicians. Amost everyone in the room, about 20 people, were musicians (besides the camera man), and for a few moments there were such heavy hitters present as Ara Guzelimian, the former director of Carnegie Hall and now Dean of the Juilliard School, as well as Joseph Polisi, President of the Juilliard School.

As you can well imagine, I was completely and utterly awe-struck at the very chance of coming to watch Boulez rehearse with the musicians, and when I finally arrived, it was a rather remarkable occasion.

Boulez came in with an entourage of sorts, and then proceeded to greet the musicians who were to play his music. What followed was something I will never forget.

The musicians played first Boulez's Improvise for Dr. K, and second, Boulez's masterpiece, La Marteau sans Maitre. For each piece, they played with great clarity and precision, and were conducted masterfully by Michel Galante. Yet masterful isn't good enough for Pierre Boulez, and he made that very clear from the moment he entered the room.

Almost as soon as the musicians began to play Boulez stopped them, and he went on to demonstrate himself how the music should be played. By variously conducting himself and in concert with Galante, Boulez displayed a sense of musical perfection reserved for the Gods.

He obviously had many fascinating comments and anecdotes to say during the performance, so I will only mention a few.

One comment that struck me in particular was his insistance on playing the music "poetically". As precise and perfect as the musicians were, Boulez warned not to turn the music into something mechanical, but to allow it to be free and natural. Ironically, one of the ways to make music "seemingly" natural in the first place, is by tediously preparing beforehand. An example of this was the specifity of Boulez's comments, for he didn't always deal in metaphor. In fact most of the time he was showing Galante the technicalities of conducting the piece in terms of subdividing and phrasing.

The piece itself was fascinating to me, because I had only heard it once before, the night before on a recording actually! Anyway one of things that intrigued me about it was its use of timbral and coloristic effects, especially in regards to the percussion. The interaction betwen the voice and the alto flute was also quite beautiful, almost hauntingly so. I was reading that Boulez's earlier compositions are more serial in nature, and that Le Marteau was one of his first pieces to be more free formally and musically. Maybe the freedom that Boulez was trying to convey to the musicians was a freedom that even he had to discover, way back in 1954, when the piece was written.

After the rehearsal, Boulez warmly thanked the players and the audience, and went around to shake everyones hand. I was too chicken to strike up a conversation with him, but I did manage to pose for a picture.

What a day!

I'm the kid in the back poking my head out to get into the frame :toothygrin:

Hi.

Soooo... that's very nice. But what are we supposed to discuss here? (given that this was posted in a discussions forum)

Or, if we're not supposed to discuss anything, then I think (I'll let to the mods to decide) it should be moved to the Advertisements and Member Announcements forum.