Pierre Boulez: The Formative Years

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Part I: A Path Toward Integrating Serialism
Acknowledgements
Notes on Sources and Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
A Short Primer on Boulez's Sketch Types and Procedures
Chapter 1: From Pianist to Composer
Rural Roots
Transitioning to Paris
Chapter 2: Student Efforts
Influences versus Teachers
Specters of Messiaen
Leibowitz and Dodecaphony
The Emergence of an Original Voice
Chapter 3: Conventional Titles, Unconventional Forms
Structuralism, Surrealism, Schloezer, and Char
The Sonatine for flute and piano
The First Piano Sonata
Souvtchinsky, Souris, and the Second Piano Sonata
Part II: The Challenges of Integral Serialism
Chapter 4: Before Integration
Experimenting with Cage
Failure without Defeat: Polyphonie X
Chapter 5: Self-Ordained
Stockhausen and the Studio
The Death of Schoenberg
The ABC's of Structures, Book 1
Chapter 6: Other Theatrics
The Tremendous Influence of Incidental Music
Boulez's Kunstlerroman: Marteau as Cumulative Synthesis
Postlude-The Darmstadt School
Part III: Testing the Limits of Serialism
Chapter 7: Competing Trajectories
How blocs sonores Changed Everything
A Triptych, Part I: L'Orestie and the Theater
A Triptych, Part II: More Structures
A Triptych, Part III: A Third Sonata
Chapter 8: The Politics of Poetics
A New Approach to Prose
Darmstadt, Revised
Chapter 9: Stereophony and Spirals
Virtual Doubles: Figures-Doubles-Prisms
Spiraling Poetry: Poesie pour pouvoir
Chapter 10: An Expanding Universe
Becoming Bourgeois (and a Conductor)
The Power of Unpublished Works: Strophes and Don for piano
Chapter 11: Folding Space and Time
Improvisation I
Improvisation II
Improvisation II
Bookends: Tombeau and Don
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

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As an integral figure in twentieth-century music, Pierre Boulez innovated new musical ideas through extraordinary creative processes. His formative years tracked his compositional development from his confrontations with serialism to drafting one of his major works, Pli selon pli, in the early 1960s. Part biography, part survey, Pierre Boulez: The Formative Years situates Boulez and his compositions among a complex network of influences. To best understand Boulez's creative process, author Joseph R. Salem organizes the book into three parts. First, Boulez's early life, training, and education provide biographical context for his career. Salem provides a fresh, revisionist perspective of the composer's life by drawing upon a mix of primary and secondary sources. Second, the brunt of the biography situates Boulez's musical works and experimentation among a host of contextual contexts. In place of scores and complicated musical analyses, Salem employs sketches as a visual metonym. The sketches denote Boulez's continual ability to self-reform, accept feedback from his peers, mentors, and family members, and revitalize old material. Third, Boulez's legacy is associated with contemporaneous aesthetic movements and artistic challenges. While his creative processes undoubtedly influenced music today, Boulez remains a controversial, even taboo, figure among contemporary musicians and audiences. A book that both celebrates and critiques its subject, The Formative Years urges a reconsideration of narratives and discussions surrounding Boulez's life and works.

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