My full review of this bk is broken into 2 chapters starting here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/622967-pierre-boulez?chapter=1

review of
Joan Peyser's Boulez, Composer, Conductor, Enigma
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 15-25, 2018

My reading this bk isn't exactly completely strange but doing so illustrates how I come to do things sometimes. I'm very slowly compiling an online list of my "Top 100 Composers" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100Composers.html ). Pierre Boulez is on that list. Alas, as w/ so many of the composers mentioned there, I don't feel absolutely enthralled w/ his music. Making matters 'worse' is that I'm making webpages for each of the composers but putting off making the webpages for the composers most important to me b/c making them will be so time-consuming. Since Boulez is a minor major composer for me it'll be easier to make a webpage for him than for other composers whose work I like much more. That results in a skewed prioritizing.

Reading this bk is an example of "skewed prioritizing". My friend Brainpang got a copy of Georgina Born's bk entitled Rationalizing Culture — IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. He decided that he'd never read it so he asked me if I wanted his copy. I sd yes so he sent it to me. Since it's a present I prioritized reading it. However, since Peyser's bk covers Boulez's life up to the beginnings of IRCAM it seemed like I shd read it 1st & then read the Born. All this work, all this research for a composer whose work I'm only marginally enthusiastic about.

"On June 1, 1969, the New York Philharmonic announced the appointment of Pierre Boulez as its music director. He was to succeed Leonard Bernstein, the ebullient, gifted musical personality who had begun his career in the 1940s as the protégé of Serge Koussevitsky." - p 1

Hence begins the 1st paragraph of the "Introduction". As a 'setting of the stage' for English-language readers, it establishes Boulez as occupying a very prominent position in the classical music hierarchy of the US.

"The desire to escape from the severe discipline into which Boulez's idea had led moved whole sections of the new music world toward what he viewed as theatrical gimmickry and nihilism. Boulez accepted the Philharmonic post primarily to attack the situation. His purpose was to promote his own cause, to make familiar to large audiences the modern language in which he believed, in which form exercised a centripetal role." - p 2

Note that Peyser doesn't write "a central role" but "a centripetal role". Centripetal = "moving or tending to move toward a center.": SO is the reader to conclude that Peyser thinks that form isn't central but, instead, moves in that direction? That there either isn't anything in particular at the center or that there's something other than form? I think, more likely, she just liked the word "centripetal" more than "central".

I've already read one bk that focuses substantially on the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Bernstein, Benjamin Piekut's Experimentalism Otherwise - The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits, in wch the reader learns of the Philharmonic's infamous resistance to performing John Cage's "Atlas Eclipticalis".

"Piekut actually interviewed members of the NYP decades after their notorious "Atlas Eclipticalis" concert:

""In Mansfield's opinion, the twenty concerts performed in the Avant-Garde series "were a gimmick . . . to satisfy the critics, to satisfy the people who wanted to see some kind of special interest being . . . programmed." The view of the series as a kind of conciliatory yet marketable gesture is held by another member of the orchestra (who wished to remain anonymous), who in conversation with me characterized Moseley as "a press man. His question was always, 'Is it newsworthy?'" Though the organization's administrators may have felt pressure to support the cutting edge of contemporary composition, they were also responding to the avant-garde's considerable notoriety in the early 1960s. As the clarinetist Stanley Drucker, who had joined the orchestra in 1948 under Bruno Walter, remembers, "As an idea, it was very New York. New York has an audience for everything. Maybe some things get a smaller audience, but they're all patronized." Indeed, "showbiz" was a term that sprang to the bassist Walter Botti's mind in my interview with him." - p 32 " - "Experimental, Ism; Other, Wise": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/412180-experimental-ism-other-wise

Piekut's bk covers a small time & place: NYC, 1964. That's 5 yrs before the announcement of Boulez replacing Bernstein. Regardless of how it turned out, Bernstein's "Avant-Garde series" was far more 'Avant-Garde' than anything Boulez ever did w/ the Philharmonic — but Peyser's bk presents Boulez as if he's the 1st person to ever try to expand the Philharmonic's repertoire into the 20th century. What Boulez did do was foster a rather moronic anti-Americanism that probably appealed to the diehard 'loyalists' whose ancesters hadn't escaped the American Revolution to go to Canada:

"Boulez said he had been in Chicago at the time but that someone had quoted to him Babbitt's remark that a performance of a Babbitt piece in Lincoln Center was like a philosophy paper being read on the Johnny Carson show. Boulez attacked Babbitt's "ghetto' point of view and then put the knife deeply into America's back. There had been no strong musical personalities in the United States, he said, since World War II." - p 4

1st, I'm even less enthusiastic about Babbitt's music than I am about Boulez's. Babbitt doesn't even make it to my Top 100 Composers list (although he might be a 'runner-up'). That sd, I think Babbitt's quote is funny. He's saying outright that a prominent American cultural institution is more commercial than its PR image wd have the general public believe. Boulez, on the other hand, is just revealing his own extremely myopic ignorance. If I understand correctly, the above Boulez quote is from 1969 so we'll say that the period referred to as having "no strong musical personalities in the United States" is from 1945 to 1969. I'm sure Boulez was only referring to classical composers but the quote doesn't say that specifically so here's a somewhat off-the-top-of-my-head list of "strong musical personalities in the United States" in that era:

Art Ensemble of Chicago
Babbitt, Milton
Brant, Henry
Braxton, Anthony
Brown, Earle
Cage, John
Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band
Carter, Elliot
Coleman, Ornette
Copland, Aaron
Cowell, Henry
Crumb, George
Dolphy, Eric
Davidovsky, Mario
Davis, Miles
Doctor John the Night Tripper
Dodge, Charles
Druckman, Jacob
Ellington, Duke
Erb, Donald
Feldman, Morton
Foss, Lukas
Gaburo, Kenneth
Graettinger, Robert
Harrisson, Lou
Hendrix, Jimi
Hiller, Lejaren
Hovhaness, Alan
Hunt, Jerry
Kamin, Franz
Kraft, William
Lucier, Alvin
Mimaroglu, Ilhan
Mingus, Charlie
Mitchell, Joni
Partch, Harry
Reich, Steve
Reynolds, Roger
Schoenberg, Arnold
Shields, Alice
Siegmeister, Elie
Simone, Nina
Sonic Arts Union
Sun Ra
Taylor, Cecil
Varèse, Edgard
Velvet Underground
Wilson, Olly
Wolff, Christian
Wolpe, Stefan
Wuorinen, Charles
Zappa, Frank

..& that list is obviously very limited. I like most of the work by those above more than Boulez's so I think if Boulez had been more honest he might have sd: 'There have been no musical personalities close to or identical to me & my few European composer friends in the United States since World War II.'

I was immediately impressed by Peyser's writing b/c she seems to've pursued Boulez rapaciously regardless of his resistance to her writing this biography & b/c she actually seems to have some significant understanding of the music so her pursuit doesn't just come across as that of a malicious gossip.

"And so, for the next five years, through hundreds of hours of conversation, Boulez concealed a lot of his life from me. Just before I made my first trip to France I asked him for the address of René Leibowitz, his second and probably most important composition teacher. (Messiaen was his only other.) Boulez said, "Leibowitz is no friend of mine." I explained that I was not limiting my interviews to friends. "Of course," he answered, "you are preparing a document." Still, he did not help me to locate Leibowitz, who was then living in an apartment on the Left Bank. When I told Leibowitz my subject was Boulez, he became silent. Only after I explained that I was writing a history of midcentury music, in which Leibowitz had played a large role, did he begin to unfold his own story of the confrontation and terrible trouble with Boulez—including Boulez's efforts to wreck Leibowitz's career.

"A few weeks after our long conversation, Leibowitz died at fifty-nine of a heart attack. I wrote his obituary for the New York Times." - p 8

It seems like I've often sd that people who present their opinions as 'objectively true' & who, at least, have the appearance of being able to back up their assertions w/ great 'authority' are people who're going to 'go far' b/c the world is full of robopaths (aka 'sheep') who have no strong opinions of their own & who look to leaders to tell them 'what to think'. Boulez has had a highly 'successful' career b/c he is a substantial composer, a hard-working conductor, & b/c he meets the conditions of the opening sentence of this paragraph. I'm all for those 1st 2 characteristics, it's the last one that I find objectionable. Boulez sets himself up as an authority over just about everyone:

"Boulez wrote a letter attacking Craft's "sour mixture of incompetence and pedantry" and challenging the authorship of Stravinsky's writings, claiming what has subsequently been charged by others: that in the later years, they were not only written by Craft but not even reviewed by the aging master. Boulez ended by admonishing Craft to "stop imposing your insipid countenance on the features of a man who has nothing in common with your rancor, your impotence, and—in a word, your nothingness."" - p 9

Whew! Boulez is definitely throwing stones from a glass house when he refers to "rancor" or "impotence" (his sex life apears to be non-existent). I don't know anything about the controversy regarding Craft & Stravinsky so I'll let that lie. What I do know is that I 1st heard what was then reputed to be the 'complete works' of Varèse conducted by Craft, that Craft recorded his conducting Antheil's "Ballet Mechanique", that Craft recorded his conducting what were then purported to be the complete works of Webern (1957), & of Schoenberg too. Not only did Craft do this but he did it before Boulez did — putting Boulez in an obviously secondary position as a 'champion' of the 'Viennese School' in the US. Craft cd honestly say: 'Been there, done that.' Hence, Boulez has to attack Craft's integrity in order to put Boulez at the top. The competitiveness of it strikes me as rather nasty, like dirty politics. Finally, making things even 'weirder' is that the 1st piece I ever heard by Boulez was "Le Marteau sans Maitre", Robert Craft conducting, when I got the Columbia Masterworks recording in 1974.

"Boulez's first project at Columbia was one that was very important to him: the complete works of Webern. Columbia had produced a Webern album under the direction of Robert Craft, but Boulez wanted to do one of his own. Boulez began discovering undiscovered Webern and also started to compose an essay about Webern that would be included in the package." - p 211

"Among the eager Webernians then was Pierre Boulez, who returns to be the mastermind of the new recordings, just as he was 30 years ago for a set made by CBS, now available on CD from Sony Classical. But there are differences. One is that the new box (Deutsche Grammophon 457 637-2; six CD's) is twice as large, including many works Webern withheld from publication.

"Some of these are juvenilia, imparting the unsurprising news that the composer at 16 was a talented, hopeful, somewhat incompetent beginner. His later rejects, though, include wonderful pieces, especially among the songs and instrumental movements he wrote in 1913 and 1914. During that period he gave thought to a sequence of orchestral pieces, some with solo soprano, rather in the manner of a distilled Mahler symphony. There might have been a similar string quartet with voice.

"Much later, though, Webern decided to issue sets of purely instrumental movements: the Six Bagatelles (Op. 9) for string quartet and the Five Pieces (Op. 10) for orchestra.

"This left out of account not only the song movements -- two with orchestra and the one with quartet are breathtaking -- but also quite a number of orchestral movements. Mr. Boulez includes five, and two extra bagatelles." - "MUSIC; A Complete Webern, With 'New' Works" by PAUL GRIFFITHS - AUG. 27, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/27/arts/music-a-complete-webern-with-new-works.h...

For people like myself who've immersed ourselves in recordings of the more innovative 20th century musics & in reading about the same, this bk is something that fleshes out personalities more than most. A recurring character is the pianist Paul Jacobs. Peyser depicts him as a major champion of adventurous 20th century classical music. I hadn't realized how active he was. In my own pantheon of such pianists people such as David Tudor & the Kontarsky Brothers feature more prominently. Nonetheless, I have recordings of Jacobs playing Schönberg, Bartok, Busoni, Carter, Messiaen, & Stravinsky — certainly an impressive repertoire but not the most 'cutting edge' of the possibilities. One of the many points of interest about this bk, for me, was learning more about Jacobs. I'll probably pick up any recordings by him that I don't currently have out of curiousity.

"Boulez's refusal to share facts, thoughts, and feelings is not limited to his relationship with me. Paul Jacobs, the specialist in twentieth century keyboard music who has known Boulez since the mid-50s, says Boulez uses relationships the way other people go to the movies. Boulez would not argue the point. He believes "everyone is replaceable." No one, in any case, knows Boulez well. "Neither I nor anyone," Jacobs maintains, "has ever been able to penetrate Boulez."" - p 13

Since I'm obsessed w/ cultural production both as a creator & as a critic & since I have very specific opinions on the subject(s) it's somewhat 'inevitable' that I found myself critiqueing Boulez's philosophical positioning.

"I believe a civilization that conserves is one that will decay because it is afraid of going forward and attributes more importance to memory than the future. The strongest civilizations are those without memory—those capable of complete forgetfulness. They are strong enough to destroy because they can replace what is destroyed. Today our musical civilization is not strong; it shows clear signs of withering. . . .

"The more I grow, the more I detach myself from other composers, not only from the distant past but also from the recent past and even from the present. Conducting has forced me to absorb a great deal of history, so much so, in fact, that history seems more than ever to me a great burden. In my opinion we must get rid of it once and for all.

"—Pierre Boulez, 1975" - p 19

The above statement, taken literally, calls for total amnesia if it were taken to the extreme that the bombast seems to call for. We wd have amnesia, we wdn't even speak a language, let alone remember our names or know how to drive a car or ride a bike, let alone conduct an orchestra.

It seems flagrantly obvious that it's important to maintain a balance in society: a balance between conserving & creating. I'm all for conserving, e.g., libraries & food growing & distribution systems — to name obvious things. There is no such thing & never has been a civilization "without memory", nor cd Boulez point to one. It seems equally flagrantly obvious to me that Boulez detaches himself from other composers b/c he wants to proclaim himself the 'greatest, most distinct composer', one of a kind n'at. I doubt that any serious scholar of contemporary classical music feels as strongly about Boulez's work as he apparently does. To me, he tries & tries again to be on the 'cutting edge' but always ends up amongst the blunted razors. "Le Marteau sans Maitre" (1955) ain't shit in contrast to Schönberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" (1912), IMO, & the list goes on & on.

As for "Today our musical civilization is not strong; it shows clear signs of withering. . . . "?: To put it mildly, I find that an insupportable assertion. But, then, Boulez wants to be the one who defines what "musical civilization" is & his definition is apparently going to be to the detriment of everyone but himself. If a vital "musical civilization", one that isn't "withering", is one in wch there's healthy new growth (to continue to use the biological metaphor) in abundance then I think it's accurate to claim that there's more new growth & healthy cross-pollination than ever hostorically known before. The fear might be more of a metaphorical 'cancer', an overabundance, rather than a withering. I, for one, am not worried about a 'cancer' of "musical civilization" any more than I am of a "withering". Boulez's proclmation strikes me as so ludicrous that it's hard for me to even imagine the sheep baaaaaing along w/ it.

I'm primarily interested in & enthusiastic about music from 1885 to the present — but I have no desire to have the music prior to 1885 no longer conserved/performed. In fact, I wish that music as far into the past as there was music were something that we cd still hear now. I'd love to be able to hear music as it was performed in 2000BC.

At the same time that I'm often repulsed by Boulez I have to at least give him credit for saying things that few people wd dare to say. The next paragraph exemplifies this:

"Boulez saw benefits in the German occupation of Paris. "The theaters were crowded. People could not leave the cities and all of them jammed into concert halls. I went to a concert given by my own piano teacher and could hardly get into it. The Germans virtually brought high culture to France."" - p 25

Ahem. Um.. weren't the occupying Germans nazis? & weren't they killing & imprisoning & torturing hoards of people? '. Sheesh. I find it interesting that Boulez can make such a politically blasphemous statement but I can't exactly say I agree w/ it!!

"In 1944 when Boulez entered the advanced harmony class, he had heard only Messiaen's Variations for Violin and Piano. Boulez admits that he was initially awed, but soon the awe turned to disdain. Sometimes he is harsh on Messiaen today: "Messiaen never really interested me. His use of certain Indian and Greek rhythms poses a problem—at least to me. It is difficult to retrieve pieces of another civilization in a work. We must invent our own rhythmic vocabulary, following the norms that are our own. Even in my earliest pieces, I was aware of that."" - p 31

Oh, lardy. There he goes pontificating again! Why is it "difficult to retrieve pieces of another civilization in a work"? It's just something that one decides to do in whatever way one decides to do it. These 'laws' that Boulez is constantly laying down are a primary impediment to his being a truly GREAT composer instead of a 2nd rate excellent one. ( )

An interesting example of what happens when a biographer goes to work on a living subject, this book was written in the mid-'70's, not long after Boulez' tenure at the New York Philharmonic, a tempestuous relationship that left the orchestra, if not the audience, in need of the therapeutic guidance of someone like Zubin Mehta. There is a particularly fascinating sexual dynamic at play in Peyser's treatment of Boulez, who appears to have doggedly rejected development of his own sexuality beyond a purportedly hysterical affair early in his life. This brings to mind a quote by Lukas Foss about Boulez: "It's a pity there is no humanity there. Does he have sex? I think not. When men have no sex, they go after power in this big, obsessive way." So the book is a not-so-transparent power struggle between an author who wants to "capture" her subject, and a subject who wants, perhaps not unreasonably, to dominate his own biography. ( )