Pierre Boulez - Structures, premier livre, chapitre Ia

[CaptainBluebear08]

I like this music and I don't care much what the author himself said about it at a given point in time. Boulez' is constant work-in-progress, so.

Thanks abdominizer; it's a very fine perf.

[ChocolateCakeLady]

random, considered a failure by Boulez himself...integral serialist work he calls it

[HOCOB]

полное говнище!

Total shit!

[AEFic]

In order to appreciate these kinds of work, the score is important, because the way the composer works to make their art is not just in an aurally aesthetic way. You just have to like it from a different angle. And I mean, maybe you won't, that's fine, I'm just trying to say why it's considered important. I never liked Picasso for a long time, but as I learned more about art history, I saw how he, despite being able to paint "well", painted his way, coming at painting totally differently.

[KhagarBalugrak]

@AEFic, right. When noise like this is considered to be music by the classical music world, then the classical music world is well on its way to committing cultural suicide.

[MERTx123]

but... what's the point? what is the purpose of this music, what is it trying to accomplish?

[deandusk]

@MERTx123 nothing. that's the point: there is no point. what's so difficult for you beauty-loving mammals to understand. i mean no offense, MERTx123, but didn't you ever get the feeling that you're living in an absurd world?

[MERTx123]

@deandusk Yes.

[lovesGenet]

This is very important music. Not sure his aesthetic of post-humanist values can be relevant it definitely can be sustained .Mind may not relate but it sounds necessary and the theories and his rigorous systemic approach had to happen!

[MERTx123]

@lovesGenet I agree. What I find interesting is that in the spectrum of control over musical composition, the result of total control (such as Boulez) and the result of utter non-control (my baby cousins banging notes on my piano) have the same aural effect. I really dislike this music but I recognize it's theoretical importance...

[jrwhorn2626]

@MERTx123 I think the bit about the baby is doing Boulez a slight disservice. I mean, I hate this music, but the painstaking control you alluded to of all the musical elements surely has some effect on the sound, doesn't it?

[chewbaccasball12]

@lovesGenet thats some real good intellectual masturbation . The only thing necessary about this crap is to shut it off. I mean seriously, who the fuck can understand all this complex mathematical gibberish only by hear ?? If it doesn't make audible sens, it doesnt make any sens at all.

[AEFic]

@chewbaccasball12 Not so, there are plenty of composers who hide overarching structures inaudibly within a piece, even Bach wrote canons that were often almost impossible to perceive simply by listening. Ligeti and Nancarrow also included such structures. Sometimes the structures are too deep to audibly perceive, this doesn't mean they are useless.

[chewbaccasball12]

@AEFic Well there kind of useless if they are impossible to hear. It may be there on the score, but the ear will never notice it so you might as well say it's not there. A piece should be structured on strong audible connection so an attentive listener may understand something and not totally get lost. You never get lost when you listen to Bach because and each notes, phrases and sections are connected to each other in a way that the ear can perceive.

[AEFic]

@chewbaccasball12 But the point to having structures, even if they aren't heard, is to give the piece a different kind of beauty. Take Nancarrow's piano study 37. It's a set of canons, but clustered in such a way as to make it inaudible without some visual reference. The point is, there's this level of intricacy tied into the piece, like a physics equation. Einstein's 'E = mc2' equation has it's own elegance, and similarly, there is a mathmatic beauty, contrasting with the musical dissonance.

[chewbaccasball12]

@AEFic With Boulez here, the ear is totally confused and you can't memorize anything at all, so you don't perceive the structure. The human ear is just unable to sort all this aural randomness.