subject: The Piano Sonatas By Pierre Boulez [print this page] The three piano sonatas of Pierre Boulez occupy an essential position in the piano literature from the 20th century.
Actually the piano is not central towards the work of nearly all composers from the century, because it ended up being too connected with composers from the nineteenth century. The thirty-two sonatas of Beethoven were for lengthy a constraining factor. Composers from the first half of the 20th Century attempted to flee out of this.
In most cases, major composers from the other half from the century have not composed anymore for piano, but a number of them more easily elected for that instrumental genre from which is the sonata.
Since 1945 the type of Beethoven is a solid point of reference for composers who have switched towards the particular form within the perspective of the renovation of musical language.
Boulez's Earliest Piano Sonata, carried out in 1946, features only two sections. It had been his earliest twelve-tone serialized work along with his "Sonatine" for flute and piano, and that he initially meant to dedicate it to Rene Leibowitz. However their friendship ended when Leibowitz attempted to create "corrections" towards the score. In composing this sonata, Boulez had great inspiration from Arnold Schoenberg's "Drei Klavierstucke", Op. 11.
The 2nd Piano Sonata dating from 1947-48 is a strongly original work which acquired Boulez a worldwide status.
The pianist Yvette Grimaud brought the world first audition on 29 April 1950. Through his friendship with the American composer John Cage, the composition was performed within the U.S. by David Tudor in 1950. The work is within four movements, lasting an overall total around half an hour. It's infamously hard to play.
Boulez's Second Piano Sonata (1947-8) marked his own radical and mature adaptation from the atonal twelve-tone method developed by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.
Boulez would continue to use serial concepts to any or all facets of music-rhythm, register, dynamics, et al. in the "Structures I" for 2 pianos (1951-2), fully developing that style in two large-scale works together with strong literary references: "Le marteau sans maitre" ["The hammer with no master"] (1953-5), after poems from the surrealist poet Rene Char, and "Pli selon pli" ["Fold upon fold"] (1957-62), set to poems of Mallarme.
The 3rd Piano Sonata was initially performed through the composer in Cologne and Darmstadt, in 1958, within a "preliminary version" of its five-movement form.
One motivating pressure of its composition was Boulez's need to explore aleatoric music. He has formerly released several writings, both demeaning this specific practice and recommending its reformation, prior to the composition of the sonata in 1955-57 and 63.
Boulez has released only two complete movements of the Sonata in 1963, along with a fragment of some others; the rest of the movements, in numerous stages of elaboration, remained not implemented to the composer's satisfaction.
From the published movements (or "formants", as Boulez calls them), the main one entitled "Antiphonie" is easily the most fully developed. The "formant" entitled "Strophe" may be the one least developed because the preliminary form.
A facsimile from the manuscript from the preliminary version from the remaining formant: "Sequence" was released by Schatz and Strobel in 1977, but was subsequently ongoing to almost two times its original length.
The movements are: 1. "Antiphonie" (unpublished aside from a part, known as "Sigle" [Siglum] 2. "Trope" 3. "Constellation" (released only in the retrograde version, as "Constellation-Miroir") 4. "Strophe" (unpublished) 5. "Sequence" (unpublished, aside from a facsimile of the preliminary-version manuscript)
In the 50's, starting with the 3rd Piano Sonata, Boulez played around with using what he calls "controlled chance", and then he formulated his particular sights on aleatoric music within the articles "Ala" and "Sonate que me veux-tu".
His utilization of chance, that he would later employ in works like "Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna" and "Domaines" is quite different from that within the works of for instance John Cage.
During Cage's music, the performers have frequently the freedom to produce completely unforeseen sounds, using the object of getting rid of the composer's intention in the music. In settings by Boulez, they merely get to choose from options which have been prepared at length through the composer. A technique that after put on the successiveness order of the sections, frequently referred to as "mobile form".
