An exemplary Boulez obituary
mainIt’s by Tim Page, in the Washington Post:
In later years, Mr. Boulez was by all accounts a gracious, soft-spoken and self-effacing gentleman, much beloved by the musicians he worked with. In his composition and his conducting — which he managed with the brisk efficiency of a bank teller giving change — he was the antithesis of the romanticized stereotype of egoistic, heaven-storming musician.
“Perhaps I can explain it best by an old Chinese story,” he said to his biographer, the late Joan Peyser. “A painter drew a landscape so beautifully that he entered the picture and disappeared. For me, that is the definition of a great work — a landscape painted so well that the artist disappears in it.”
Read full obit here.
“The artist disappearing in his art”
Wonderful words…
The reality of the music biz: Art disappearing behind artists.
Blame the audiences, not the artists.
His artistic “tragedy”: Not recognized with comparable gratification as a creator/composer than as an interpreter/musician, the price to be paid for a comfy life in the materialistic jet set.
Every serious endeavor in life has its price. The question is: which one will I pay?
What is “a violent, glittering and emotional music”? And when did music become a count noun?
When did music become a count noun?
According to the OED ‘music’ has served as a count noun since at least 1590: Sir P. Sidney ‘Arcadia’ iii. vi. sig. Ll7, “Musickes at her windowe, & especially such Musickes, as might … call the mind to thinke of sorow, and thinke of it with sweetnes.”
But perhaps the enquiry is rhetorical.
Not entirely rhetorical. I mean, Tim Page’s sentence would read just as clearly without the article. The Jacobean usage died out, probably before the close of the 17th century.
No, it did not. As clearly proved by the example that you yourself cite.
Was it used after 1700 and before about 1970, when we began seeing it in musical-academic circles as short-hand for “styles of” or “schools of”?
Yes.
And your reference to established usage in musical-academic circles provides yet further evidence of the currency of ‘music’ as a count noun.
I see. Any examples from those three centuries? Any examples today among ordinary people? Not sure that academic convenience constitutes an extension of our language.
It is unfortunate that you seemingly do not have the capacity to look these things up yourself, but the OED cites ten examples of ‘music’ as a count noun distributed between 1590 and 1985.
Internet literature searches yield further historical and recent examples, as well as a good number of works published under such titles as ‘World Musics in Context’ or ‘The Other Classical Musics’ or ‘Popular Musics of the Non-Western World’ and even ‘Musics of a Village Church: a View from the Organ Bench’ (must try to track that one down!).
It is hard to fathom what you understand by ‘ordinary people’, or why you should impose arbitrary limits on language merely because a certain usage has been employed by, among others, academics.
Thank you. Well, all four of those titles strike me as outgrowths of academic usage, which I consider to be short-hand, replacing missing words that ordinary people would without fail include. This is akin to jargon. I’ll have to take your word for the OED citations as I don’t have access.
Interesting that he hated Tchaikovsky and yet was gay and closeted himself.
Congratulations for the dumbest comment of the day.
And how do you feel about Tchaikovsky?
This comment is stupid in its ridiculous assumption that a gay man should “normally” like the music of a gay composer. Therefore, shouldn’t Boulez’s compositions be popular amongst gay men?
What is interesting is the combination of his being intensely closeted and hating, above all other composers it seems, the most visible gay composer. Was this ego-dystonic homosexuality?
http://psc.dss.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_mental_health.html
What is even more interesting is you obviously enjoying being considered as a complete idiot.
http://www.net-burst.net/help/self-hate.htm
I guess this means you do not view Boulez as having been an ego-dystonic homosexual and that the extreme control over the intimate dimension of his life has no significance.
I could not possibly relate ANY erotic interest to this man. And that is entirely irrelevant anyway, even in a musical sense.
Of course, people who are faithful in a 50-year relationship, as Pierre Boulez and Hans Messner apparently were with each other, do not normally generate public erotic tales.
That’s not the point. PB’s work is sterile, and its surfaces have the ‘sensuality’ of La Défense’, the pretenious skyscraper quarter at the end of the Champs Elisées.
The Marteau sans maître I heard in the Kollegienkirche last summer was anything but sterile, and a performance of Répons 20 years ago still resounds.
I’m a straight man and I hate One Direction. Presumably this also makes me odd.
Another exemplary obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html
The very opposite: lifeless, dry as dust.
Does not the moisture of life run through the heart of the beholder, Norman? Dry as dust, perhaps – but as such, one which Pierre would have appreciated, non?
I don’t think so: he was full of fun and liked a glass of wine.
So regrettable then, that he wrote all that non-wine music.
dry… not sweet. 😉
Tim’s might be poetry, NYTimes obit might be prose; but, both are worth reading and serve as appropriate tributes to this remarkable musician.