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mlrPierre Boulez - Le marteau sans maître
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cpratt said in a comment There are very, very few things I liked twenty years ago that I still like today - which I quote out of context. This prompted me to think a bit. I do feel somewhat unqualified to participate in this meme. The questions are obviously oriented to a pop/rock view of music - definitely not my forte. Words such as hate, love, favorite etc. are broad and sometimes not very helpful applied to classical music. If someone said I hate Mozart, what could that possibly mean? You would immediately wonder about exposure, background - all kinds of things.
When someone returns years later to Monteverdi, or the Jupiter Symphony, or Opus 111, they rarely think how immature!, or it was just a phase, but usually rather how could I have missed so much?, or this means such different things to me in middle age than it did in my 20s. That is not to say that tastes don't change, or that musical classics are static. We evolve, our tastes evolve. But if you are fortunate enough to have Byrd or Marin Marais or Charles Ives or Mompou as a companion, they remain your companion. Maybe not always with the same intensity, but in some way, always present. They define us more than we define them.
The works of the recent past are more in flux. Returning to them, I can be startled to find how much less or how much more they mean than when I first encountered them.
One easy example: Phillip Glass. I had an interest in his work in the 70s, and I could kick myself for failing to see Akhnaten and Satyagraha at the Houston Opera in the early 80s. Though I respect him and his early music, which was undeniably iconoclastic, it didn't take me long to tire of his formulae. His newer compositions are wearying and unchanging, and I can't imagine returning to the early ones. (In all fairness, I usually tune him out instead paying close attention.)
Instead of choosing a piece by Phillip Glass, I think I'll choose a piece that seems different to me every time I return to it - sometimes I think it is brilliant, sometimes simply overworked, sometimes exquisite, sometimes austere. It is Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, one of the most famous pieces of the 50s avant-garde. Although it can sound quite free and improvised, every pluck, zip, and thump is meticulously notated. The clip is a brief choreographed excerpt from the end of 2nd movement. There is also a YouTube of the entire movement. I do not hate Le marteau. It is a wondrous composition that sometimes puzzles me. I think currently I prefer Boulez's later works, which sometimes verge on sound experiments, to his earlier more Webernesque pieces.
cpratt said in a comment There are very, very few things I liked twenty years ago that I still like today - which I quote out of context. This prompted me to think a bit. I do feel somewhat unqualified to participate in this meme. The questions are obviously oriented to a pop/rock view of music - definitely not my forte. Words such as hate, love, favorite etc. are broad and sometimes not very helpful applied to classical music. If someone said I hate Mozart, what could that possibly mean? You would immediately wonder about exposure, background - all kinds of things. When someone returns years later to Monteverdi, or the Jupiter Symphony, or Opus 111, they rarely think how immature!, or it was just a phase, but usually rather how could I have missed so much?, or this means such different things to me in middle age than it did in my 20s. That is not to say that tastes don't change, or that musical classics are static. We evolve, our tastes evolve. But if you are fortunate enough to have Byrd or Marin Marais or Charles Ives or Mompou as a companion, they remain your companion. Maybe not always with the same intensity, but in some way, always present. They define us more than we define them.
The works of the recent past are more in flux. Returning to them, I can be startled to find how much less or how much more they mean than when I first encountered them.
One easy example: Phillip Glass. I had an interest in his work in the 70s, and I could kick myself for failing to see Akhnaten and Satyagraha at the Houston Opera in the early 80s. Though I respect him and his early music, which was undeniably iconoclastic, it didn't take me long to tire of his formulae. His newer compositions are wearying and unchanging, and I can't imagine returning to the early ones. (In all fairness, I usually tune him out instead paying close attention.)
Instead of choosing a piece by Phillip Glass, I think I'll choose a piece that seems different to me every time I return to it - sometimes I think it is brilliant, sometimes simply overworked, sometimes exquisite, sometimes austere. It is Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, one of the most famous pieces of the 50s avant-garde. Although it can sound quite free and improvised, every pluck, zip, and thump is meticulously notated. The clip is a brief choreographed excerpt from the end of 2nd movement. There is also a YouTube of the entire movement. I do not hate Le marteau. It is a wondrous composition that sometimes puzzles me. I think currently I prefer Boulez's later works, which sometimes verge on sound experiments, to his earlier more Webernesque pieces.
