... as Boulez ... became a cultural icon in both Europe and America, principally through his conducting, I became increasingly troubled by ... his dismissive attitude toward American music. Only Elliott Carter, the grand paterfamilias of American modernism, managed to squeeze through the infinitesimally small needle’s eye of Boulezian approval.
JOHN ADAMS, "John Adams on Boulez, a Composer Worth Wresting With", New York Times 26 November 2019 (italics mine).
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Some may say that the only troubling aspect of Boulez's "dismissive attitude toward American music" is that this attitude was well justified by the sorry state of American music in the 1970s. Be that as it may, the concert program below shows that Carter was not the only American composer whose music Boulez liked enough to perform it during his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. One such American composer was Carter's good friend Roger Sessions whose Third Symphony was given its first New York performance by Boulez in March of 1976. A few years after leaving New York for Paris, Boulez said: "I personally would like to see more Sessions works performed [in Europe] as I did in New York"[1].
I do not reproach John Adams for including a certifiably false statement in his review of the recently published collection of Boulez's lectures. Adams is a composer, not a musicologist or journalist. The blame belongs to the editorial staff at (what's left of) the once respectable newspapers. Having by now transformed journalism into a tool for Stalinist-Maoist re-education of the public, these corrupt and incompetent motherfuckers would rather count Greta Thunberg's pubic hair than make an effort to give their readers a truthful (or at least unbiased) account of anything, let alone of something as insignificant to most readers as the recent past of art music in America.
In the age of the internet, however, those who still care about the difference between facts and fantasies can do their own fact-checking. In the present case, not only we can know that Boulez conducted a Sessions symphony with the New York Philharmonic, we can actually hear one of these performances in a broadcast recording a copy of which I am fortunate to have in my collection. Those who like this symphony may find Boulez's coolly analytic approach to the score a fascinating alternative to the more dramatic interpretation of the work by Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony as heard in a broadcast recording from 1965.
1. Gable, D., "Ramifying Connections: An Interview with Pierre Boulez", J. Musicology, 4(1), 1985-1986, p.105.
13 comments:
Much later, and therefore after the period of which Adams speaks, Boulez publicly supported Augusta Read Thomas as well. Yet I often wonder how much sincere interest he had in her music, as opposed to simply feeling an obligation to support a composer that other CSO figures had already elevated.
Christopher,
My guess is that Boulez indeed thought well of A.R. Thomas' music when he recorded some of it. He was already a very famous and one of the highest-paid conductors, and I doubt he could be pressured by any musical organization to perform/record music he did not want to. Also, your comment reminded me that another American composer's music was liked by Boulez - that of Frank Zappa. He recorded a whole album of Zappa's music with Ensemble Intercontemporain, although I don't recall when this recording was made.
I also wonder why Adams did not consider Schoenberg's concertos (Op.36, 42) to be music of an American composer, written in America and (for Op.42) by an American citizen. After all, Lucas Foss and Andre Previn (both born in Berlin) are accepted as American (if German-born) composers. Why not Schoenberg whose music Boulez performed and recorded many times? That Schoenberg was not trained in America seems irrelevant, since neither were Carter, Copland, and many other US composers who went to Paris for their training.
Boulez also conducted Wolpe, Cage and Jacob Druckman during his tenure in New York, though I don’t know if he particularly liked them. Obviously, that was no bar to his conducting works, as the programme featuring Brahms’ Double Concerto bears witness. Boulez did not care for Brahms at all.
Is it the responsibility of editorial staff to fact-check the contents of book reviews, at least as far as matters like this are concerned? So far as I can tell, they don’t – it would be an extraordinary additional cost – and I’m pretty sure that respectable literary periodicals like the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books don’t, and regard it as the responsibility of the reviewers themselves. Their letters pages often include corrections of factual errors in reviews from previous editions. Readers expect journalists and writers to try and get their facts right but not the editorial staff to check them, particularly when it comes to book reviews. And let’s face it, no-one’s beyond reproach: we all make mistakes.
In any event, does something like this really justify such a disproportionate torrent of abuse? Any point worth making is just eclipsed by that kind of language, which is ironic given your advocacy of the careful and proper use of words.
Thanks for making Boulez/NY Phil performance available. I can't open the Martinon link to the file on mediafile. Is it still active?
Thanks again,
Wow - this performance is new to me. Thanks. Re: Colin Green's comment, I was not aware that Boulez had conducted any piece by Wolpe in New York, or anywhere else, for that matter. I hope to find out more about this.
John,
Boulez conducted a chamber piece (for trumpet and 7 instruments) by Wolpe once, at a student center of New York University (as part of his Prospective Encounters series). The Sessions symphony was played at three concerts at Avery Fischer Hall as part of the regular subscription season.
Here is the program for the concert featuring Wolpe piece:
https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/dd181876-aa6a-4a48-a144-f8e9ccfeff20-0.1/fullview#page/1/mode/2up
The following is from an obituary for Boulez:
A group of British critics, talking with him about British composers and knowing his general lack of enthusiasm in this area, were surprised when the name of Vaughan Williams came up and Boulez retorted: “Vaughan Williams … now he is interesting.”
And of course, Boulez conducted Frank Zappa on “The Perfect Stranger”. He said the following:
“Zappa stood out from the ranks [or rock music] because he refused to let himself ensconced in this, and shunned commercial logic. Provocative, leaning much to the Left, he loathed the market into which rock music had compromised itself. I have had much pleasure helping him along towards that goal, by working with him on the musical material, the form, the mobility of the language. But no, I do not see any successor to him. None that I would have met so far anyway."
I think the schism between Boulez and Cage tells us all we need to know about Boulez's provably "dismissive attitude" toward American music. Yeah, if the composer was into serialism of some sort, Boulez might have approved of, but not admired, him or her. While it's true he did conduct Charles Ives' "Browning Overture," I think Boulez was not ready for the drama and astringency of the great what I'll call " American dissonants" like Ruggles and Rudhyar who rejected music's turn to dodecaphony. Cage, whose "Apartment House 1776" Boulez deliberately murdered in his NYPhil performance, had no respect or understanding of the open-road, anything-goes musical philosophy that guided american music between 1915 and 1930. He just would not have been receptive to a work like Cowell's "Synchrony." This is a major shortcoming in this otherwise heavyweight champion of 20th century music. While he incorporated many elements of Balinese music into his work, he had no room in his repertoire for others of a more tonal bent like Lou Harrison and Colin McPhee who fell equally under its spell. As for the Brits, can you imagine him conducting Cardew's "The Great Learning"? Yes, he liked Birtwhistle and made some nice recordings of his music. But Boulez, who also feuded with Stockhausen, just couldn't widen his taste-orbit beyond a certain, in hindsight limited, point. I still think "Pli Selon Pli" is one of the ten greatest pieces of 20th century music, and relish Boulez's recordings of music he relished. But his 20th century sailed past the New World. It's a shame, he would have love some of Revueltas Varese-like orchestral works.
I think it should be borne in mind that Boulez regarded himself as a composer first, conductor second. He felt there was much Twentieth Century music that should be given wider exposure and performed better than hitherto, but as a general rule he only conducted music he liked, though when conductor of the BBC SO and NYP there were occasions when he was obliged to conduct certain works. There are so many highways and byways that I think it would be unrealistic to expect someone who for the majority of his life was only ever a guest conductor to cover music to which other conductors would be better suited. And if you compare his repertoire to that of other conductors, it was still very wide. He held very firm views on what music he thought was important but I don’t think that’s a problem, or particularly unique.
He was actually a very strong advocate of Birtwistle’s music – he conducted the premier of “Antiphones” – and his recordings of “Secret Theatre” and other works on DG and “Earth Dances” are outstanding. His precision pays dividends. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that Carter was the only American composer in whom he took a serious and long term interest. John Adams may have exaggerated a little but I think he’s fundamentally correct.
COLIN GREEN wrote:
>> I don’t think there’s any doubt that Carter was the only American composer in whom he took a serious and long term interest.<<
Edgar Varese was an American composer (albeit French-born). Virtually all of Varese's famous works were written in America, inspired by (at the time) the distinctly futuristic soundworld of New York City, premiered by American conductors leading American orchestras (e.g., Stokowski and the Philadelphia O.). And Boulez certainly had "a serious and long term interest" in Varese's music. He conducted Varese's works almost every season during his tenure in New York, and has recorded these works more than once.
So Adams did not exaggerate "a little" and was not "fundamentally correct". To my mind, he sounded like an aggrieved minimalist/Downtown composer who felt slighted by Boulez' dismissive attitude toward the kind of music Adams himself liked and composed.
That’ s correct, though I’m not sure how many think of Varese as an American composer. Ditto with your suggestion about Schoenberg. The last point is probably right. Shame on him for feeling aggrieved.
Davuid Federman: 'As for the Brits, can you imagine him conducting Cardew's "The Great Learning"?'
Actually I can't imagine anybody conducting any part of the Great Learning. I took part in the premiere of Paragraph 1 and the recordings of Paragraphs 2 and 7 - no conductor required. Nor, in my score, is there any indication of the need for a conductor in any of the 7 paragraphs as far as I can recall.
As has been pointed out Boulez was primarily a composer and IMHO a great one and they are not necessarily known for being open to the music of "competitors".
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