Pierre Boulez - Sonatine

Sonatine, for flute & piano (1946; revised in 1949) An introduction followed by 4 linked movements: 1. Très librement-Lent — Rapide 2. Très modéré presque lent 3. Tempo scherzando 4. Tempo rapide Phillipe Bernold, flute Alexandre Tharaud, piano The Sonatine was initially written for the French flutist Jean Pierre Rampal, who after a failed negotiation with Boulez, refused to premier it. The work was finally premiered by Jan Van Boterdael and Marcelle Mercenier in Brussels in 1947, and the first performance of the revised version was held in Darmstadt in July 1956, by the Italian flutist Saverio Gazzelloni. Gazzelloni’s performance had the audience in such disbelief that it seems to have left mixed feelings about the piece to this very day. For a composer of Boulez’s stature, it is ironic that one of his first works—his Sonatine for flute and piano, otherwise known as his opus one—is seldom performed. After careful examination, it seems that the reason for the lack of interest in this work had both practical and academic causes. Practically, the Sonatine is extremely challenging for both the flutist and the pianist. The rhythmic complexity combined with sudden changes in tempi, register, dynamics, and meter, have created intimidating technical challenges for its performers. Most of the existing literature about this piece seeks to show how Boulez wanted to react against the older musical developments, even those of the Second Viennese School that formed the basis of his musical aesthetic. However, the very title of this work suggests a traditional model serving as a departure point for his new work. A Sonatine is usually shorter and lighter in character, and technically more rudimentary than a sonata, and it is exactly the opposite that Boulez achieves with this Sonatine. The Sonatine shows the start of his highly individual style, and yet, till this day, there is no appreciation and/or understanding for it in performance or pedagogy. Theodore Adorno was of the belief that Boulez’s “new” serial innovation depended on the tradition it embodied, rather than him trying to break with the past. Taking that into consideration, is it then possible that Boulez was, in an odd and kaleidoscopic way, celebrating his influences: the “tradition,” or the French modernist tradition more than he was rebelling? What Boulez considered classical and/or traditional defined his twelve-tone practice from 1945 to 1949. This was also Boulez’s explanation as to why the twelve-tone influence of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, all influenced him during this period. In a letter to John Cage in January of 1950, Boulez explained how he had ended what he termed his “classical period,” his final work in this style was his Livre pour quatuor, composed between 1948-1949. In addition, what he also adds in this letter is his admiration for Cage’s experimental music, and especially his prepared piano works. Boulez explains how he had used a grid of quarter tones, placed across the series in all its forms, which would give an infinite number for “complex sounds” as Boulez referred to it. Despite being able to trace a clear chronological lineage, Boulez’s twelve-tone practice appears paradoxical in the Sonatine. While modernist criticism overtly manifested itself against the predecessors and contemporaries alike, the predicament of traditionalism becomes particularly debated in the Sonatine. --Myles Roberts Art by Daniel Buren