Der „Ethno-Serialismus“ des Pierre Boulez

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Subject according curriculum

Analysis, music theory seminar

Teachers

Prof. Sebastian Sprenger

Scope

Thursday, 10.30 - 12.00 Start: 9. 10. 2025

Room

BP 201

Duration

1.5 Semesterwochenstunden

Description

On the occasion of Boulez's 100th birthday, the seminar would like to approach his music primarily by asking what traces his lifelong fascination with non-European musical cultures has left behind in the maître's oeuvre.
As early as 1943, during his studies with Olivier Messiaen, Boulez practiced transcribing sound recordings from the collections of the ethnological museums in Paris. While his planned participation in a research trip to Cambodia was prevented by the outbreak of the Indochina War in 1946, a few years later the young composer had the opportunity to take part in the South American tours of the (theater) Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, for which Boulez composed and conducted stage music. His work on later standard works of serialism such as the song cycle "Le Marteau sans maître" (1954) was not only accompanied but also shaped by the impressions of music from the Peruvian Andes or the ceremonies of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion.
The influences of these and other musical forms on Boulez's own work, musical thinking and feeling range from direct coloristic borrowings to concepts of compositional technique - keyword "heterophony" - and temporal design to the vision of a serial "ritual music", for example in the composition explicitly titled "Rituel" (1974) in memory of his friend and conductor Bruno Maderna, who had died shortly before, in which a "post-religious" spirituality of the avowed agnostic Boulez at least becomes perceptible.
At the same time, it becomes clear that the early stages of his singular career took place in an era that was politically and culturally characterized by the often violent emancipation of former French colonies in Southeast Asia and Africa. Boulez's name - who had recently settled in Baden-Baden in southern Germany - was among the 121 signatories of the "Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la guerre d'Algérie" (Declaration on the right to conscientious objection in the Algerian war) in 1960, which led to a ban on entering his native France for years. However, the opening of the IRCAM (1977) made the return of the "prodigal son" all the more triumphant, and he has enjoyed the status of a cultural national treasure ever since - "Saint Pierre, priez pour nous" ...

Literature

Boulez, Pierre: Werkstatt-Texte, translated by Josef Häusler, Frankfurt a. M. u. a. 1972

Boulez, Pierre/Schaeffner, André: Correspondance 1954 - 1970, ed. by Rosângela Pereira de Tugny. Paris 1998

Campbell, Edward (ed.): Boulez in Context. Cambridge et al. 2025

Campbell, Edward/O'Hagan, Peter (ed.): Pierre Boulez Studies. Cambridge et al. 2016

Grabow, Martin: Invention, recycling, recomposition. Investigations into the inner interconnectedness of Pierre Boulez's life's work using the example of the notations. Hildesheim and others 2016

Losada, Cristina Catherine: Pierre Boulez, Latin America, and the European Avant-Garde after 1950, in: Musica Theorica 2021, V. 6.1

Credits

3 Creditpoints

Comments

Course for BA and MA students of all disciplines.
Please register by stating your degree program at sebastian.sprenger[at]hfmt-hamburg.de by 7. 4. 2025.
Proof of performance: Participation in 85% of the courses; presentation (preferred) or written term paper.

Modules

Musiktheoretisches Modul 1 Instrumentalisten Master, Musiktheoretisches Modul 2 Kirchenmusik A (Master), Wahlmodul freie Wahl (alle Studiengänge)