Modern/ Postmodern. Translation from French, foreword and notes by Yu.N. Panteleeva

Abstract

The article “Modern / Postmodern” by the famous contemporary French composer, conductor and theorist Pierre Boulez, published for the first time in Russian, presents the text of his speech during the concert performed by the Ensemble InterСontemporain in Bordeaux in 1987. The typewritten original of text is kept in the Paul Sacher Foundation, and in printed form this material can be found in the second volume of the compilation of Boulez’ literary works Regards sur autrui, compiled by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Sophie Galaise. The article is devoted to the issues of modernism/ postmodernism in music, the problems of musical language and compositional technique. Boulez reinforces the generalized view of contemporary European music with specific examples and examines works by three major avant-garde composers. The compositions in question are György Ligeti’s Trio, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza for violin and two compositions by Boulez himself — Domaines and Dialogue de l’ombre double. The translation of this text is dedicated to the next “anniversary” issue of the journal “Sovremenny problemy muzykoznaniya” [“Contemporary Musicology”], one of the scholarly themes of which is the 95th anniversary of professor of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music Natalia Sergeevna Gulyanitskaya. The translator of the article, Yulia Panteleeva, had the honor of studying with this famous musicologist at the Academy on an individual basis in the late 1980s, and Pierre Boulez’ musical works comprised one of the first topics studied by her.