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A Case for Tonality in the Twentieth Century
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11217 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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5 / 1986 |
3,029 Words |
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David Eaton
David Eaton is music director of the New York City Symphony. |
It has been almost eighty years since Viennese composer Arnold Schonberg composed his first atonal works and began the march towards what he called "the emancipation of dissonance." By renouncing tonality as a viable means of expression, Schonberg was challenging a system of musical thought and theory which had existed for two hundred years. Schonberg's twelve-tone technique captured the imagination of a new generation of composers, and this new system of composition (and its inherent compositional rationale) was eventually to be come the most significant force behind the evolution of musical thought in the twentieth century.
Of all those whose musical lineage can be traced to Schonbergian thought, Pierre Boulez stands as a giant among his contemporaries. He is the high priest of the avant-garde, the "greatest living exponent of twentieth-century music" as proclaimed by The New York Times. Composer, conductor, administrator, lecturer--Boulez has won high praise from even his most severe detractors as an indefatigable champion of new music.
Boulez is currently the director of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in France and conductor of the Ensemble InterComtemporain, the institute's resident orchestra.
In 1970, when Boulez was music director for both the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he was asked by French President Georges Pompidou to become director of a music research institute which was to become part of a national center for contemporary art in Paris (now known as the Center Pompidou). Boulez had already been experimenting in the realm of electronic music, and the IRCAM
... (1998 of 18676 Characters)
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