The music of Pierre Boulez initially presented to me an opportunity to discuss a fundamental flaw which I have found to be an encompassing quality of serial composition. Its seeming inability to achieve the harmonic and melodic expressive qualities which tonal music does (in favor of a sort of “audience unfriendly” style of composition) means that the music lacks a very basic quality of expression which many have argued to be an essential quality which distinguishes music from raw, unrefined sound. What I found interesting about Boulez’s First Piano Sonata (specifically, the first movement), though, was not the atonal, intervallic based melodic contour of the piece. More impressive are the dynamic, rhythmic, and metric tactics which Boulez employs to achieve the same expressive qualities which a tonal composition does, but without calling upon the traditional techniques of tonal harmony. How is it that Boulez’s piano sonata appears to be so expressive despite its use of large, dissonant intervals? This paper will first discuss the specific techniques which he uses in his sonata to achieve this expressivity, followed by a discussion beyond analysis, arguing whether or not the expressive qualities of Boulez’s piano sonata are actually intentional. Do these qualities of expressivity positively contribute to the overall purpose of his composition as “audience unfriendly” music, or are they simply a contradiction to the purpose of the music’s atonality?
Although the expressivity witnessed in Boulez’s First Piano Sonata has many roots, it is first important to understand the great extent which the composer has gone through to create the atonal melodic and harmonic contour of his composition, as it is this contrast of atonality against expressivity which creates the fascinating paradox of Boulez’s sonata. According to Peter Stacey’s text Boulez and the Modern Concept:
The intervals that are predominant in the works that Boulez holds in high regard are largely the intervals of the major seventh and the minor ninth, with the intervals of the tritone, the sixth, the minor seventh and the major ninth also playing a significant role. These intervals derive from the characteristic Webern series exhibiting strong internal thematic unity…Webern’s technique could be described as a technique of avoidance. All the intervals chosen avoid any reference to a tonal centre…1
What Stacey is suggesting here is that Boulez’s compositions build off of an intervallic Webernian technique by stringing together consecutive large, dissonant intervals in his phrase structure to prevent an allusion to a tonal center. Sure enough, Boulez’s sonata is built almost entirely out of large, dissonant leaps, with essentially no stepwise motion throughout the entire first movement. The result of this favoritism towards specific melodic intervals as a technique of “avoidance” is a sort of thematic unity built off of the repetition of intervals in similar (though not always identical) rhythmic context. What we are witnessing here is that, unlike Boulez’s later compositions (Structures, for example), he does not seem to forfeit every aspect of his sonata to a deterministic algorithmic control, and thus presents in his sonata an uncharacteristically expressive concept of thematic unity in an atonal setting.
This creation of thematic unity is additionally promoted in Boulez’s composition through his use of rhythmic continuity. Although a close analysis of the rhythmic patterns throughout the first movement would show that, as expected, there are no examples of exactly repeated phrases, there is nonetheless a clearly uniting quality about the sonata’s rhythmic themes. Boulez achieves this quality of thematic unity by varying only slightly the metric placement of each theme, creating a rhythmic pattern which, to the ear, appears to be an allusion to a previously stated rhythmic structure. However, a closer analysis of the sonata’s score would prove that these rhythmic structures which are aurally quite convincingly similar are in fact quite different.2
For example, in the first two measures of the first movement (figure 1) Boulez presents a figure which is as sporadic and unpredictable as the rhythmic structure of the entire piece. Here, we see a collection of large, dissonant intervals (minor 6th, major 13th, minor 9th, and others) placed in a rhythmic setting with no distinguishably accented strong beat (notice as well that there is no given time signature, though the piece is presumably in 4/4). Observe, now, in measure 11-12 (figure 2) we see a phrase whose rhythmic structure is at best vaguely reminiscent of what previously occurred in the first two measures (notice as well that the intervals used here are quite reminiscent of the first two measures). Here, we see a similarly incomplete eighth note triplet figure, yet its metric placement within the measure is clearly different from the first occurrence. This sort of displacement is applied throughout the next measure and a half, creating a figure which appears to be unique from the first two measures. This abstraction of rhythm coupled with Webern’s “intervals of avoidance” is very much a characteristic of serial composition, and on paper is not indicative of expressivity.
However, aurally, when these two figures are heard, the metric displacement of the second theme against the first is more or less irrelevant, as the difference between the two is quite minute (a very close analysis of the two contrasting themes will show that it is in fact no more than an eighth rest value displacing the two themes at any given point). Peter Heyworth describes this sort of rhythmic connection of themes best in his contribution to William Gluck’s Pierre Boulez, a Symposium:
The beginning of the first movement [takes] on something of the function of a first theme. However, these first bars are not a theme in the sense of a fixed, clearly-recognizable bit of music; they are a collection of intervals which usually appear in somewhat the same rhythmic garb, though never exactly the same.2
What Heyworth’s discussion clarifies here is that, although Boulez’s rhythmic structures are not identically the same, their appearance in similar “rhythmic garb” convinces the listener that we are in fact hearing a unifying theme. Despite the notational differences, this recognizable repetition of thematic material creates a unique sort of unifying quality not often associated with post-war serial composition. This thematic rhythmic quality coupled with a repetition of melodic intervals grants Boulez a musical space to elaborate upon his themes, particularly beyond its first repetition.
This sort of elaboration is particularly the crowning quality of expressivity which I found to be in the first movement of Boulez’s First Piano Sonata. His variation in accents as well as dynamic elaboration makes use of this thematic repetition by building the expressivity of his sonata around the controlled dynamic of each repetition. Each time Boulez repeats a theme, we see a build up in these expressive qualities, resulting in a distinguishable appearance of a climactic arrival point, designating clearly definable sections without the use of traditional cadencial harmony.
Using the same thematic example, observe the reoccurrence of the rhythmic theme from measures 1-45 (pages 2-4). For the sake of argument, I will designate this portion of his sonata as the “first section.” Notice, in measures 1, 5, 11, 24, and 26, we see the recurrence of what is more or less the same “rhythmic garb” of Boulez’s original theme (you will notice that as the piece carries on, the idea of similar rhythmic garb becomes more and more apparent as a thematic concept). Despite the notational variation between the rhythms, however, each time the theme occurs, it’s dynamic is notated as either pianisamo (pp) or pianississimo (ppp). What Boulez achieves by recalling this theme periodically throughout the “first section” at such a quiet volume is a sort of overall unifying dynamic building up to measure 45 (marked “Beaucoup Plusallant,” p. 4, fourth system).
From measures 46-66 Boulez arrives at the climactic point of his piano sonata. Marked “Staccato Sempre” at the beginning of the section, we observe the greatest release of rhythmic energy in the entire piece within these twenty measures. Dynamically dominated by sforzandos and forte markings, it is quite clear that he intends for this section to be the most energetic portion of the piece (there is even an indication of an increase in tempo at measure 45). The rhythmic theme of the first section is not apparent anywhere in these twenty measures, indicating that Boulez is in fact introducing new, climactic material here.
At measures 67-75, however, this climactic texture abruptly breaks with a low octave sforzando cluster (measure 67) followed by the rhythmic theme of the first section. Though brief, these eight bars are enough for Boulez to create a break from his climax, creating the definitive structure of what Heyworth calls “preparation, tension, [and] resolution.”2 In other words, the two slower, quieter, rhythmically thematic sections surrounding measures 45-66 act as the preparation and resolution of the contrasting “tension” of Boulez’s sonata. What we are seeing here is a form-based artifact of tonal music put into use in a serial composition, creating the expressivity derived from form without the crutch of tonality. As a result, Boulez’s First Piano Sonata, more or less a representation of his early career (which was largely influenced by the expressionism of Arnold Schoenberg), portrays a lingering Romanticism at a time when post-war serialism was decisively not characterized by emotion or expression.
After a close examination of the first movement of Boulez’s First Piano Sonata, it seems that the appearance of this form based expressivity made possible by rhythmic themes and a repetition of melodic intervals is far too deliberate an attempt to couple expressionistic qualities with serialist atonality to be considered an unintentional allusion to the traditional forms of tonal music. The question remains, then, what is achieved by creating this link between serialism and expression? If the whole point of serial composition is to emancipate dissonance and therein liberate oneself from the limitations of tonality, then to place a serial composition within the confines of a strict “preparation, tension, resolution” form is to entirely contradict this sort of liberation. While there are compositions of Shoenberg’s where he wrote with this similar sort of expressionist style of serialism, a post-war composition of 1946 written in this style not only does not contribute to the defining qualities of serial composition at the time (that is, the deterministic control of algorithms in every aspect of a piece, largely employed in Boulez’s later pieces), but it is additionally very much riddled with contradiction. Why bother emancipating the dissonance of a composition when it is still confined to a specific structural form? What is the purpose of making a concerned effort to avoid melodic and harmonic expressivity in a composition when the same expressivity is still going to be portrayed through form? Thus, the argument of this paper is not (as I had first assumed would be) about the lack of expressive qualities often observed in “audience unfriendly” serial music- in fact, I found the expressive qualities of Boulez’s sonata quite enjoyable. More unexpected, then, is the appearance of so called “audience friendly” qualities seen in his “audience un-friendly” composition. The appearance of this expressivity is too much of a contradiction to allow this piece to achieve its purpose as a serial composition (that is, creating a higher degree of determinacy in a composition where there is a necessity for every notational mark in a score). As a result, I do not believe that this piece is very successful in its utility as a serial composition, precisely because of its expressivity or, for that matter, its aesthetically attractive qualities.
1. Peter Stacey, Boulez and the Modern concept (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), p. 10
2. Peter Heyworth, “The First Fifty Years,” in William Gluck, ed., Pierre Boulez: a Symposium (New York: Da Capo Press, 1986) p. 63
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