Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1747549 in Books
• Published on: 1991-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 422 pages

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Customer Reviews

Primary source of materials on a modernist activist creator
This is an incredibly usefull work on Maitre Boulez. Jameux is a critic,journalist writer in attendance for numerous concerts with Boulez conducting, as well as interviewer of him. Originally published in French in the early Eighties, this translation is a primary source. It traverses all of Boulez's works with brief, yet focused analysis with a full range of understanding. If you are fascinated by the early Boulez(many believe more interesting than the middle Boulez,the realm prior to his"Repons") Jameux writes well on this early period the "Flute Sonatine" the early Rene Char settings"Visage Nuptial" and especially the powerfull "Second Piano Sonata" the use of rhythmic cells as a local structuring device. But Jameux also continues well into material on Boulez the conductor with lists of his performances and how Boulez captured the realm of modernity through ocean-hopping engagements,countless concerts of the Masters, Schoenberg,Berg,Webern,Bartok, Debussy,Stravinsky,Ravel. If you are looking for more advanced scholarship on Boulez,analysis of his works perhaps utilizing fractal thinking you will not find it here. Jameux's work is more to lay the first layer of information and materials never collected in one place on Boulez. It is a great odyssey to follow, Boulez the creator,and conductor, the life of an activist remaining a non-proselyte for the vigours of modernity.

Only goes up to the mid-1980s, but a pleasing study
Dominique Jameux's study of Pierre Boulez appeared in 1984, with a second edition in 1986, and was translated into English in 1991. While the book necessarily stops before some interesting things happened in Boulez's career, such as the revival of "...explosante-fixe..." and the completion of "Repons", it is one of the most detailed overviews of his life and work up to that point, and worth seeking out for Boulez fans.

Part I, "Trajectories" is the biographical portion of Jameux's work. It traces Boulez's life from birth through his youthful Paris iconoclasm, his groundbreaking works of the 1950s, the beginning of his conducting career in the 1960s, and finally the IRCAM era. Throughout Boulez is shown as a thoroughly fascinating man, a titan of his age, although Jameux isn't afraid to thrown in some criticism of his attitude. My only complaint about this biography is that often it doesn't place Boulez in enough context. For example, we know he taught at Darmstadt, but who were his colleagues and how did Boulez fit in?

The second part, "Commentaries", is a series of musicological analyses of twelve works. These are "Sonatine", the three piano sonatas, "Le Soleil des eaux", "Structures" (but only Book I), "Le Marteau sans maitre", "Pli selon pli" (in a shorter version than what is played nowadays), "Eclat" and "Eclat/Multiples", "Domains", "Rituel", and "Repons". I can only regret that "...explosante-fixe...", perhaps my favourite of his orchestral works, is not included.

While some of the theory gets heady for a layman, Jameux's study is essential reading for serious fans of the great French composer, conductor, and intellectual.