Pli Selon Pli

The great French poet Mallarme may have been shocked to hear what sort of music Boulez wrote to accompany his poems, but the word-setting, though hardly hummable, has a strange beauty all of its own, and acutally lends more melody to this work than you'll find in most atonal pieces--after all, an orchestra can play just harmony and rhythm, but a soprano can only sing a melody, no matter how large the leaps it makes. Christine Schafer dispatches Boulez's difficult lines well--she may be slightly troubled by the high note near the end, but it comes out clearly and maybe is even more convincing this way. Who wouldn't find it tough?

But, in true Boulez fashion, no matter how beguiling the vocal lines it is ultimately the orchestra which dominates. This is no tragedy, however, because in M. Boulez we have one of the master orchestraters of all time. You can see from the pictures included in the liner notes what a battery of percussion is at the disposal of the Ensemble InterContemporain, and Boulez makes good use of all of it. The shimmering sonorities are instantly attractive.

Let me qualify that: they will be attractive assuming the listener has had some experience appreciating atonal music. It would be possible to fall in love with this at first listen, but I doubt if that happens often. It took me a couple years of slowly testing the water to warm up to 12-tone music, but I'm glad I persevered. Nonetheless, my family, who have little tolerance for modern art, give me a very hard time if I listen to this on anything but my headphones. However, if you've bought this and hate it, I recommend giving it a few more chances. You might well warm up to its unusual sound-world, as I did.

Anyway, the glittering, otherworldly sonorities of this masterpiece are, as usual, played with virtuosic panache by the doyens of avant-garde orchestral works, the Ensemble InterContemporain. This orchestra was founded by Pierre Boulez, so they are his definitive interpreters and respond well to his direction. This stuff is pretty beatless, so I don't even know exactly how it would be conducted or how the players follow Boulez's beat, but he has a true rapport with the Ensemble and everything comes off with clarity and precision.

I really like this whole work, but if I don't have time to listen to all of it I'll probably hear the beginning, then head for the denouement--the final movement is all orchestral until the very end, when the single, beautifully creepy line "Un peu profond ruisseau calomine la mort" is sung (it means "A trickling stream we villify as death"). I think the orchestral part really does sound like a stream or river, but I'm not sure Boulez would appreciate me saying that. Anyway, listening to Christine Schafer sing that line, with all the altitudinous writing, then whisper "la mort", followed by the tremendous finality of the last chord, is spine-tingling and unforgettable. The end probably ranks as my favorite part.

If you're a fan of atonal works, or brilliant orchestration in general, this should be on your shelf. It will stretch your ears, but, if you're open to this repetoire, it will very likely make them tingle with delight, too.

The many times predictable pointillism of the vocal lines in the self-contained "Improvisations sur Mallarme" for soprano and percussion ensemble of "Improvisation sur Mallarme I" "Le vierge. . ." and, "Improvisation sur Mallarme II" "Une dentelle s'abolit",are difficult.These three"Improvisations" represent different approaches to settings of sonnets. The 'First Improvisation'(according to the interview here with Boulez) is more playful,less strict,the 'Second Improvisation', there is more direct connections between the musical imagery and the text.Yet you always feel the music, the "hanging" timbres ringing moments of vibraphone,harp and piano,i.e.the sustaining exergue are simply timbral "blankets" for the text to attach itself quite evocatively.There is a restrained sensuality in the vocal lines here throughout this work,sung so complellingly by Ms.Schafer, as if they belong to another dimension,for we become overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of instrumental colour.

I thought the rupture, the break with conventional time, that implied the innovations within the serial music was a realm Boulez sought to escape.And here the soprano has more an instrumental demeanor about it, unwilling to break from that undefined role.For aside from the Italian cadre,(Berio and Nono),serialism did not foster a wealth of works for the voice.Only with the introduction of budding electronic means did masterworks occur(as Stockhausen's "Gesang der Junglinge" and Berio's "Visage" Nono's utilization of political text(Canto sospeso" was innovative in all respects. They had their own means of escape from this structural tyranny. For serialism within a short span of time (roughly 1950 to 1959) exhausted itself. Adorno had said as much, who was around,attending concerts, and lecturing himself at Darmstadt Courses, and came to terms with these youngsters,as not being modern enough, or refusing to challenge oneself outside of technical innovation. Serial music seemed to be about itself and nothing more,and the tyranny of creative invention simply recoiled on itself with simply trying the untried, a work for three orchestras,(Stockhausen) a work with voice and percussion(Berio),or two pianos (Boulez). Serialism simply demanded new packages and products, not new content. And this was something Boulez had felt in searching fof another context, one where one needn't use all 12 tones. In the wonderful interview here with Wolfgang Fink, he says as much, "I found it unbearable to use all 12 tones. . . ".

I'm still undecided if the Five Movements here (pli selon pli) actually hang together,and imply,constitute one unified realm, even within the Boulez cognitive field of posing structural freedom of the music's discourse, its creative implications, with an'unfreedom', again something he found profoundly within Mallarme's "Livre" and concept of "alea",chance but with a conscious, controlled unfreedom, something quite different from Cage's pureposless purpose of Zen indeterminacy.The music of chance and musical graphics recall ran faster toward its demise than Boulez's aleatoricism.For instance I still find usefull,and compelling moments in Boulez's 'Third Piano Sonata', and realistically there is yet to be a definitive performance of it. Rosen's and Psi-Chein's and Claude Helffer's are all simply 'readings', and useful guides.Whereas Cage's "Music of Changes"his first focused chance extended work, I find nothing left to think through, as if the work's realization had already occured decades ago.
Boulez's first movement here in "pli selon pli" is a recitation with enormous orchestral forces. It was in 1960, where a provisional premiere had occurred, originally here a piano solo, a soprano was added based on Mallarme's "Don du poeme" and first performed in Cologne June 13, 1960. This was followed by "Improvisations" of 1957-1960, and then an incomplete version of "Tombeau". Since that time "Don" became a piece for large orchestra with voice, as an oppositional counterweight to "Tombeau". "Tombeau" itself exhibited Boulez's ongoing interest in finality ( his dedication to Maderna "Rituel" etc), accumulates itself as it unfolds, as an inevitability of time, further weighing, coaxing the materials to take on, to burden themselves with more distinctions, more internal musical references, more layers added, accreted, and diminshed,but inevitably onward moving,toward greater thresholds of complexity placing itself in a forever impacted realm of musical statement.So these two pillars"Don" and "Tombeau" were the containers for the three "Improvisations", and something I still don't feel convice. The 'Improvisations' grew as self-contained works,with pitched percussive instruments, piano, harp, celesta, crotales,vibraphone, and percussion as developed "sonnets"that drew particular attention to the single melodic line,and timbres and rarely do they suggest the orchestral forces to come.Perhaps that was the subversive element at work here,to transcend from the private instrospections(of the three "Improvisations") to the overtly theatrical with the orchestral canvas,("Don", and "Tombeau") a labyrinth.
Boulez's aesthetic sense of timeless time is remarkable where the moments always seem to float, as Mallarme's imagery of white, blanche swan, frozen and opaque does. And the musical percussive moments suggests an ambiguity, this rarefied air, are well prepared, this is what time and work over long periods renders to the Boulez aesthetic, this sense of durational telescoping this uninhabited place where only the imagination, where only jouissance in the Lacanian sense only occurs between moments, in the crevices,behind shapes and forms, as spider webs, as encrustations to the text as implications.Christine Schafer, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain gives great hard edges to this music, and Boulezian clarity is an obvious feature.