By: Carl Burdick, Northern Kentucky University
Abstract:
The second movement of Pierre Boulez’s Douze Notations pour Piano from 1945 displays both conventional serial techniques and also foreshadows some of his later compositional hallmarks, including timbre and register as musical domains involved in serial processes. In this movement, Boulez emphasizes elements of serial structure with chromatic clusters, some of which occur in extreme registers. The starting pitch-classes of each melodic statement of the twelve-tone row are represented as a chromatic cluster in the bottom three keys of the keyboard at the beginning and end of the movement. Two pitch classes that are omitted from later row statements are presented as an irregular ostinato consisting of a chromatic dyad. The modifications made to these melodic row statements generate an increase in melodic perfect fifths, which is also reflected as an interval of transposition in a pair of chromatic clusters at the opening of the movement.
Select Bibliography:
Fray, David. Bach: Partita in D major, French Suite in D minor/Boulez: Douze Notations pour piano, Incises.
2007. Erato, compact disc.
Goldman, Jonathan. The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez: Writings and Compositions. Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
Griffiths, Paul. Boulez. Oxford University Press, 1978.
Hermann, Matthias. Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Vol. 2 in Materielen zur Musiktheorie. Staatlichen
Hochschule für Musik und Darstelende Kunst, 2001.
O’Hagan, P. “Pierre Boulez. ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu?’ An Investigation of the Manuscript Sources in Relation
to the Third Sonata.” PhD diss. University of Surrey, 1997.
About the Author:
Carl Burdick is a music theorist, tutor, and part-time faculty member at Northern Kentucky University. His research areas include form in Haydn’s early symphonies, temporal and notational representations of dysfluency in JJJJJerome Ellis’s music and poetry, and the early music of Pierre Boulez. Outside of music theory, Carl enjoys gardening, running, birding, and photographing the natural world.