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Music and the Generosity of God pp 37–52Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Theological Stocktaking with Pierre Boulez

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Part of the book series: Radical Theologies and Philosophies ((RADT))

Abstract

This chapter introduces postwar music from Pierre Boulez, a contemporary of Cage, who represents “modern” pathology antithetical to the order of God for many theological commentators. In the 1950s, his brief experimentation with a compositional technique known as total serialism (also explored by modern composers such as Milton Babbitt and Karlheinz Stockhausen) sought to control in new works every musical value, including rhythm, pitch, dynamics, and attack, with restrictive and formulaic pre-compositional decision-making. Recent discourse about music and theology characterizes Boulez’s method of extreme musical control as a negation of any sense of musical contingency and order provided by God. I retell a short biography of Boulez with emphasis upon his religious education and reevaluate his postwar total-serial works such as Structures Ia in order to suggest that his musical innovation emerges in the face of societal ruin and that his creativity is generative for theological analysis of music more broadly conceived.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Begbie primarily develops his critical evaluation from an exchange of letters between Cage and Boulez spanning the years from 1949 to 1954.

  2. 2.

    Begbie 2000, pp. 186–88.

  3. 3.

    In Theology, Music and Time, though Begbie admits that the designation from Kris is “undoubtedly exaggerated” (192), “Control at the Price of Destruction” nevertheless serves as the subject heading to his introduction of Boulez in Resounding Truth (246).

  4. 4.

    Begbie 2007, pp. 246–47. Begbie includes a subheading above his discussion of Boulez in Resounding Truth that reads, “Control at the Price of Destruction.”In that section, he asks, “What was Nazism if not ‘control at the price of destruction,’ ‘order equivalent to disorder’?”

  5. 5.

    Catherine Pickstock, “Messian and Deleuze: The Musico-theological Critique of Modernism and Postmodernism,” Theory, Culture & Society December 25.7–8 (2005), 173–199.

  6. 6.

    Brown 2000, pg. 246.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., 251.

  8. 8.

    Jameux 1991, pg. 5.

  9. 9.

    Wolff 2001, pg. 27. Wolff speculates that perhaps Bach was ill or needed to tend to family matters. John Eliot Gardiner suggests that bullying also may have factored into Bach’s truancies. See Gardiner 2013, pg. 168.

  10. 10.

    For more on the unintelligibility of musical life specific to France in the time of Boulez’s rise as a composer, see Barenboim 2008, pp. 177–80.

    For more on Augustine’s divinely metered and proportioned universe, see Taliaferro 1939, pp. 144–147.

  11. 11.

    Jameux 1991, pg. 17.

  12. 12.

    “Boulez, Pierre,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 6th ed. Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Michael Kennedy, and Joyce Bourne Kennedy, eds. (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford UP, 2012). http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199578108.001.0001/acref-9780199578108-e-1247.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    See Ibid. This quotation from Boulez originally comes from a speech at the Paris Opéra, December 10, 1978, on the occasion of Messiaen’s 17th birthday. See also Boulez, “The Power of Example,” Boulez and Nattiez, 1986, 1990, pp. 418–20.

  15. 15.

    For a more detailed explanation of Schoenberg’s views of harmony, see Schoenberg and Adams 1948.

  16. 16.

    Boulez et al. 1991, pp. 7–9.

  17. 17.

    Ivan Hewett, on M. “Bach—the Voice of God in Human Form,” The Daily Telegraph 27 (2005).

  18. 18.

    Alison Rose, “A Viennese Interpretation of Moses: Arnold Schoenberg’s Jewish Identity,” Judaism 39.3 (1990).

  19. 19.

    Anne C. Shreffler, “Mein Weg geht jetzt vorüber: The Vocal Origins of Webern’s Twelve-Tone Composition,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 47.2 (1994): 320.

  20. 20.

    Ibid. From footnote 66 in Shreffler, “Was ich meine, wiirde Ihnen am besten meine Dichtung ‘Jakobsleiter’ (ein Oratorium) sagen: ich meine—wenn auch ohne alle organisatorischen Fesseln—die Religion. Mir war sie in diesen Jahren meine einzige Stiitze—es sei das hier zum erstenmal gesagt” (Arnold Schoenberg Lettern, 71 [Erwin Stein, ed., Arnold Schoenberg Briefe (Mainz: B. Schott’s S6hne, 1958), 70]). This letter evoked a cruelly anti-Semitic response from Kandinsky, which ended their friendship.

  21. 21.

    Griffiths 1978, pg. 21.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 22–23.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 23.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 24.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 26. Of Structures Ib Griffiths writes, “But, transfigured by the experience of compositional rigour, the turbulent variety of the earlier works now has the more abstract aspect of creative virtuosity.”

  26. 26.

    Peyser and Wuorinen 2008, pg. 136. Peyser helpfully notes , “Bach’s use of his own name in The Art of the Fugue provided the inspiration for this choice [from Boulez].”

  27. 27.

    Butler 1980, pg. 30.

  28. 28.

    Hill and Simeone 2007, pg. 24. Hill and Simeone 2005, pg. 156.

  29. 29.

    Begbie 2000, pp. 187–88.

  30. 30.

    Adorno 2006, pg. 102.

  31. 31.

    Boulez eventually admits, “Serialism is long dead.” For him, “It was killed by the same people who wrote it.”

    Michael Kimmelman, “Boulez’s Gentler Roar,” The New York Times January 6, 2010, 3. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/arts/music/10boulez.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1 [last accessed, July 7, 2017].

  32. 32.

    Bourdieu 1990, pp. 81–3.

  33. 33.

    The Bible, New Revised Standard Version.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 155–60.

  35. 35.

    Of course, the Grammy is generally ambivalently valued in the world of classical music. Boulez himself never accepted the awards in person. Yet whether these or other decorations of prestige like his Léonie Sonning Music Prize (1985, first given to Stravinsky in 1959), Kyoto Lifetime Achievement Prize in Arts and Philosophy (2009), or Edison Award (2010) mark distinction, Boulez without a doubt consistently and indelibly shaped modern music.

    Incidentally, his total of 26 awards ranks third just after Quincy Jones (27) for the all-time number of Grammy Awards won. Boulez far exceeds more popular acts including U2 (22), Michael Jackson (13), and the Rolling Stones (2). Classical music conductor Georg Solti (1912–1927) currently leads with 31.

  36. 36.

    Jameux 1991, 126.

  37. 37.

    Henrich and Pacini 2003, pg. 80.

  38. 38.

    Butler 1980, 163; fn. 9.

  39. 39.

    Rings 2011.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 5. Rings writes, “The models I develop here thus offer new ways of thinking about some very familiar aural experiences. The hope is that those aural experiences may be de-familiarized in the process, making us acutely alive to them again, and allowing us to sense tonal effects with renewed intensity, and in new ways. For surely one of the great values of music theory is its potential to refract, alter, and intensify musical experience, in ways both subtle and not-so-subtle, as new discursive concepts are brought to bear on the sonic stuff of music. Tonal music is no different from any other music in this regard: it admits of, and rewards, many modes of analytical engagement.”

  41. 41.

    Nattiez 2004, pg. 82.

  42. 42.

    Taylor 1987, pp. 168–69.

  43. 43.

    Smith 2007, pp. 255–56.

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  1. Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, USA

    Gerald C. Liu

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Liu, G.C. (2017). Theological Stocktaking with Pierre Boulez. In: Music and the Generosity of God. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69493-1_3

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