Editing Pierre Boulez (section)

===''Le Marteau sans maître'' and ''Pli selon pli''===
''Structures, Book I'' was a turning point for Boulez; from here on he loosened the strictness of total serialism into a more supple, gestural music: "I am trying to rid myself of my thumbprints and taboos", he wrote to Cage.<ref>Campbell, 13.</ref> The most significant result of this new freedom was ''[[Le Marteau sans maître]]''{{refn|group=n|name=marteau}} (1953–1955), described by Griffiths and [[Bill Hopkins (composer)|Bill Hopkins]] as a "keystone of twentieth-century music".<ref name="Hopkins and Griffiths"/> Three short poems by Char are the starting-point for three interlocking cycles. Four movements are vocal settings of the poems (one is set twice), the other five are instrumental commentaries. According to Hopkins and Griffiths the music is characterised by abrupt tempo transitions, passages of broadly improvisatory melodic style and exotic instrumental colouring.<ref name="Hopkins and Griffiths"/> The piece is scored for contralto soloist with alto flute, [[xylorimba]], vibraphone, percussion, guitar and viola. Boulez said that the choice of these instruments showed the influence of non-European cultures, to which he had always been attracted.<ref>Boulez (1976), 67.</ref>

[[File:Stephane Mallarme.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|alt=head and shoulders photograph of middle-aged white man with neat beard full head of greying hair|[[Stéphane Mallarmé]]]]
For the text of his next major work, ''[[Pli selon pli]]''{{refn|group=n|name=pli}} (1957–1989), Boulez turned to the symbolist poetry of [[Stéphane Mallarmé]], attracted by its extreme density and radical syntax.<ref>Boulez (1976), 93.</ref> At seventy minutes, it is his longest composition. Three ''Improvisations'' on individual sonnets are framed by two orchestral movements, into which fragments of other poems are embedded.<ref>Peyser (1976), 141–143.</ref> Boulez's word-setting, which in the first ''Improvisation'' is straightforwardly syllabic, becomes ever more [[melisma]]tic, to the point where the words cannot be distinguished. Boulez's stated aim was to make the sonnets ''become'' the music at a deeper, structural level.<ref>Bradshaw, 186.</ref> The piece is scored for soprano and large orchestra, often deployed in chamber groups. Boulez described its sound-world, rich in percussion, as "not so much frozen as extraordinarily 'vitrified{{'"}}.<ref>Boulez (1976), 94.</ref> The work had a complex genesis, reaching its definitive form in 1989.<ref>Samuel (2002), 424–25.</ref>