Structures (Boulez)

Structures I (1952) and Structures II (1961) are two

related works for two pianos, composed by the French
composer Pierre Boulez.

whether it concerned gures and phrases, or

development and form; I then wanted gradually, element after element, to win back the
various stages of the compositional process, in
such a manner that a perfectly new synthesis
might arise, a synthesis that would not be corrupted from the very outset by foreign bodies
stylistic reminiscences in particular. (Boulez
1986a, 61)

History

The rst book of Structures was begun in early 1951, as

Boulez was completing his orchestral work Polyphonie X,
and nished in 1952. It consists of three movements, or
chapters, labelled Ia, Ib, and Ic, composed in the order a, c, b. The rst of the second books two chapters
was composed in 1956, but chapter 2 was not written until 1961. The second chapter includes three sets of variable elements, which are to be arranged to make a performing version (Husler 1965, 5). A partial premiere
of book 2 was performed by the composer and Yvonne
Loriod at the Wigmore Hall, London, in March 1957.
This was Boulezs rst appearance in the UK as a performer (Griths 1973). The same performers gave the
premiere of the complete second book, with two dierent versions of chapter 2, in a chamber-music concert of
the Donaueschinger Musiktage on Saturday, 21 October
1961 (Sdwestrundfunk n.d.).

Structures II is, on the other hand, a reconstruction of

Structures I: its material is reused and rewritten, transformed into a new work with a more uid means of expression. This kind of reworking of an earlier piece
is quite common among Boulezs compositions, for instance recently the violin piece Anthmes (1991) was
transformed into Anthmes II (1997) for violin and electronics, or the solo piano Incises (1994/1997/2001) into
Sur Incises (1998).

2 See also
Time-point

3 Discography
75 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage 19211996.
12-CD set, mono & stereo. Col Legno Contemporary WWE 12CD 31899. [Munich]: Col
Legno Musikproduktion GmbH, 1996. CD 10, Col
Legno Contemporary WWE 1CD 31909, includes
the world-premiere performance of Structures pour
deux pianos, deuxime livre, played by Yvonne Loriod and Pierre Boulez.

Olivier Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensits highest of

three unordered divisions of the mode (Grant 2001, 61; Toop
1974, 144) or, less precisely, three series forms [caption:
for pitch, duration, dynamics, and articulation"]...treated as
unordered collections, (Whittall 2008, 172)( Play )which
Boulez, the pupil intending to teach the master a lesson, adapted
as an ordered series for his Structures Ia (Whittall 2008, 172)

Structures I was the last and most successful of Boulezs

works to use the technique of integral serialism (Hopkins
and Griths 2001), wherein many parameters of a pieces
construction are governed by serial principles, rather than
only pitch. Boulez devised scales of twelve dynamic levels
(though in a later revision of the score these reduced to
tenLigeti 1960, 4041), twelve durations, andfrom
the outsetten modes of attack (Ligeti 1960, 43), each
to be used in a manner analogous to a twelve-tone row.
The composer explains his purpose in this work:

4 References
Boulez, Pierre. 1986a. Necessit d'une orientation esthtique (II)". Canadian University Music Review/Revue de Musique des Universits Canadiennes,
no. 7:4679.
Grant, Morag Josephine. 2001. Serial Music Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-War
Europe. Music in the Twentieth Century, Arnold
Whittall, general editor. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0-521-80458-2.

I wanted to eradicate from my vocabulary absolutely every trace of the conventional,

1

6
Griths, Paul. 1973. Two Pianos: Boulez, Structures, Book 2. The Musical Times 114, no. 1562
(April): 390.

Jameux, Dominique. 1991. Pierre Boulez. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674-66740-9.

Husler, Josef. 1965. Klangfelder und Formchen: Kompositorische Grundprinzipien im II.

Band der Structures von Pierre Boulez. In liner
notes to Pierre Boulez: Structures pour deux pianos, premier livre et deuxime livre, 512. Alfons
and Aloys Kontarsky, pianos. Studio-Reihe neuer
Musik. Baden-Baden: Wergo Schallplattenverlag
GmbH. LP WER 60011.

Song, Sun-Ju. 2008. Music Analysis and the

Avant-Garde Compositions of PostWorld War II:
Four Case Studies. 2 vols. Ph.D. diss. Nathan,
Queensland: Queensland Conservatorium Grith
University.

Hopkins, G. W., and Paul Griths. 2001. Boulez,

Pierre. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie
and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
Ligeti, Gyrgy. 1960. Pierre Boulez: Decision and
Automatism in Structure Ia. Die Reihe 4 (Young
Composers): 3662. (Translated from the original
German edition of 1958.)
Sdwestrundfunk. n.d. "Donaueschinger Musiktage: Programme seit 1921: Programm des Jahres
1961". SWR website (Accessed 26 May 2013).
Toop, Richard. 1974. Messiaen / Goeyvaerts,
Fano / Stockhausen, Boulez. Perspectives of New
Music 13, no. 1 (Fall-Winter): 14169.
Whittall, Arnold. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Serialism. Cambridge Introductions to Music. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN
978-0-521-86341-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-52168200-8 (pbk).

EXTERNAL LINKS

Further reading
Boulez, Pierre. 1986b. Orientations.
Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-14347-4.

London:

Delige, Clestin. 1981. Deux aspects de l'univers

boulezien: Structures pour deux pianos quatre
mains. Critique, no. 408:47884.
DeYoung, Lynden. 1978. Pitch Order and Duration Order in Boulez Structure Ia", Perspectives of
New Music 16, no. 2:2734.
Febel, Reinhard. 1978. Musik fr zwei Klaviere
seit 1950 als Spiegel der Kompositionstechnik. Herrenberg: Musikverlag Dring. Second, revised and
expanded edition, Saarbrcken: Pfau-Verlag, 1998.
ISBN 3-930735-55-5.
Jameux, Dominique. 1989. Boulez: Le Marteau
Sans Matre. Programme booklet. CBS Masterworks CD MK 42619.

Wilkinson, Marc.
1958.
Some Thoughts
on Twelve-Tone Method (Boulez: Structure Ia)",
Gravesaner Bltter no. 10:1929.

6 External links
Critique of Structures book
tarist/Composer Victor Magnani

1A

by

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