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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 April 2013
Sur Incises, first performed in 1998, is the most recent major work by Pierre Boulez, but there has been very little published writing discussing it, although Boulez himself discussed the piece in a lecture released on DVD. Like many of his recent works, Sur Incises reworks existing material – taking the short piano piece Incises and expanding it into a large-scale work for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists. This article examines how the gestures, harmonies and even the instrumentation of the earlier piece are ‘refracted’ – presented in multiple overlaid versions as if a prism had revealed the possibilities inherent in the original material. Sur Incises is discussed with reference to common concerns in Boulez's work since the 1970s – its use of quasi-thematic ‘signals’ to mark structure, its use of luxurious harmonic fields and chord multiplication, its virtuosic toccata material, and its use of the SACHER hexachord.
1 Boulez: Sur Incises; Messagesquisse; Anthèmes II. Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre Boulez, Deutsche Grammophon CD 463 475-2.
2 Sur Incises: A Lesson, Frank Scheffer and Andy Sommer (dir.), Juxtapositions DVD9DS15.
3 Wolfgang Fink, ‘Metamorphoses of Solo Music in Three Works by Pierre Boulez’, Boulez: Sur Incises, DG CD 463 475-2.
4 Meelberg, Vincent, ‘Touched by Music: The Sonic Strokes of Sur Incises’, in Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology, ed. Birdsall, Carolyn and Enns, Anthony (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 61–76Google Scholar.
5 Whittall, Arnold, The Cambridge Introduction to Serialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 205–09Google Scholar and Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 192–7Google Scholar. Robin Maconie, ‘Stockhausen 2000: A Retrospective’. http://www.jimstonebraker.com/maconie-st_2000.html, accessed 10/03/2013.
6 Goldman, Jonathan, The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez: Writings and Compositions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 174–85Google Scholar.
7 Griffiths, Paul, Modern Music and After (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, pp. 195.
8 O'Hagan, Peter, ‘Boulez and the Foundation of IRCAM’, in French Music since Berlioz, ed. Smith, Richard Langham and Potter, Caroline (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)Google Scholar, p. 328
9 Wolfgang Fink, ‘Wolfgang Fink in conversation with Pierre Boulez’, Boulez: Sur Incises; Messagesquisse; Anthèmes II, Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre Boulez, Deutsche Grammophon CD 463 475-2.
10 O'Hagan, ‘Boulez and the Foundation of IRCAM’, pp. 329–30.
11 Quoted in Di Pietro, Rocco, Dialogues with Boulez (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2001)Google Scholar, p. 38.
12 Fink, ‘Metamorphoses’, p. 4.
13 Maconie, Robin, Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005)Google Scholar, p. 89.
14 Boulez: Éclat/Sur Incises: A Lesson, Frank Scheffer and Andy Sommer (dir.), Juxtapositions DVD9DS15.
15 Sur Incises: A Lesson.
16 In the performances in Sur Incises: A Lesson and Sur Incises (DG CD 463 475-2).
17 Griffiths, Modern Music and After, p. 320.
18 Bradshaw, Susan, ‘The instrumental and vocal music’, in Pierre Boulez: A Symposium, ed. Glock, William (London: Eulenburg, 1986)Google Scholar, p. 206.
19 Campbell, Edward, Boulez, Music and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar, p. 206.
20 Quoted in: Mawhinney, Simon, ‘Composer in Interview: Pierre Boulez’, Tempo, No. 216 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 4.
21 Mawhinney, ‘Composer in Interview’, p. 5.
22 Bradshaw, ‘Instrumental and vocal music’, p. 210.
23 Griffiths, Modern Music and After, p. 320.
24 Mawhinney, ‘Composer in Interview: Pierre Boulez’, p. 4.
25 Rae, Charles Bodman, The Music of Lutosławski, 3rd ed. (London: Omnibus, 1999)Google Scholar, p. 130.
26 Bradshaw, ‘Instrumental and vocal music’, p. 223.
27 Goldman, Musical Language of Pierre Boulez, p. 175–6.
28 Whittall, Exploring Twentieth-Century Music, p. 197.
29 Whittall, Serialism, p. 205.
30 Boulez, quoted in Whittall, Serialism, p. 204.
31 ArnoldWhittall, ‘Boulez At 80: The Path from the New Music’, Tempo Vol. 59, No. 233 (2005)Google Scholar, p. 6.
32 Sur Incises: A Lesson.
33 Deliège, Irène, ‘Introduction: Similarity Perception ←→ Categorization ←→ Cue Abstraction’, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 2001), p. 237–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Meelberg, ‘Sonic Strokes’, p. 69.
35 These terms are taken from Sur Incises: A Lesson. The ‘seed’ is the SACHER-based figuration shown in Fig. 7.
36 See Donin, Nicolas and Goldman, Jonathan, ‘Charting the Score in a Multimedia Context: the Case of Paradigmatic Analysis’, Music Theory Online, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2008)Google Scholarhttp://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.08.14.4/mto.08.14.4.donin_goldman.html.
37 See Jonathan Goldman, ‘Understanding Pierre Boulez's Anthèmes: “Creating a Labyrinth out of Another Labyrinth”’ (MA Dissertation, Université de Montréal).
38 Quoted in Goldman, ‘Pierre Boulez's Anthèmes’, p. 106.
39 Goldman, ‘Pierre Boulez's Anthèmes’, p. 74.
40 For more on Boulez's work at IRCAM, see Jonathan Harvey, ‘IRCAM’, in Pierre Boulez: A Symposium, pp. 239–46.
41 Peyser, Joan, To Boulez and Beyond (Maryland: Scarecrow, 2008)Google Scholar, p. 234.
42 An oft-repeated but unsourced quote from Boulez in his 20s.
43 Pierre Boulez, ‘Boulez in Kyoto’, interview with Ichiro Nodaira at 2009 Kyoto Prize Workshop in Arts and Philosophy.
44 Pierre Boulez, ‘Pierre Boulez on Gustav Mahler’, interview for Universal Edition, transcribed at http://mahler.universaledition.com/pierre-boulez-on-mahler/, accessed 8/12/2010.
45 Sur Incises: A Lesson.
46 Di Pietro, Dialogues with Boulez, p. 69.
47 As can be seen in any of his published writings, most notably Boulez on Music Today, Bradshaw, Susan and Bennett, Richard Rodney (trans.) (London: Faber and Faber, 1971)Google Scholar.
48 O'Hagan, ‘Boulez and the Foundation of IRCAM’, p. 330.
49 Whittall, ‘Boulez at 80’, p. 11.
50 Whittall, ‘Boulez at 80’, 6.
51 Whittall, ‘Boulez at 80’, 11.
52 Quoted in Roberts, Paul, ‘The Chemins Series’, in Berio's Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis, ed. Halfyard, Janet K. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)Google Scholar, 125.
