Editing Pierre Boulez (section)

===Middle-period works===
Jonathan Goldman identifies a major aesthetic shift in Boulez's work from the mid-1970s onwards, characterised variously by the presence of thematic writing, a return to vertical harmony and to clarity and legibility of form.<ref>Goldman, xv–xvi.</ref> Boulez himself said: "the ''envelope'' is simpler. The contents are not&nbsp;... I think in my recent work it is true that the first approach is more direct, and the gesture is more obvious, let's say."<ref>Ford, 23.</ref>

For Goldman, ''[[Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna]]'' (1974–75) marks the beginning of this development. Boulez wrote this twenty-five minute work as an epitaph for his friend and colleague, the Italian composer and conductor, who died in 1973 aged 53. The piece is divided into fifteen sections, the orchestra into eight groups. The odd-numbered sections are conducted; in the even-numbered sections the conductor merely sets each group in motion and its progress is regulated by a percussionist beating time. In his dedication Boulez described the work as "a ritual of disappearance and survival";<ref name=SamuelBooklet /> Griffiths refers to the work's "awesome grandeur".<ref>Griffiths (1978), 58–59.</ref>

''Notations I–IV'' (1980) are the first four transformations of piano miniatures from 1945 into pieces for very large orchestra. In his review of the New York premiere, [[Andrew Porter (music critic)|Andrew Porter]] wrote that the single idea of each original piece "has, as it were, been passed through a many-faceted bright prism and broken into a thousand linked, lapped, sparkling fragments", the finale "a terse modern ''Rite''&nbsp;... which sets the pulses racing".<ref>Porter, 88.</ref>

''[[Dérive 1]]''{{refn|Explaining the title in a letter to Glock, Boulez referred to the fact that the music "derived" from material in ''Répons'' but also that one meaning of "dérive" is the drifting of a boat in the wind or current.<ref>Glock, 174.</ref>|group=n}} (1984), dedicated to William Glock on his retirement from the Bath Festival,<ref name="Glock, 139"/> is a short quintet in which the piano takes the lead. The material is derived from six chords and, according to Ivan Hewett, the piece "shuffles and decorates these chords, bursting outwards in spirals and eddies, before returning to its starting point". At the end the music "shivers into silence".<ref>{{cite news|last=Hewett|first=Ivan|date=26 September 2013|title=Ivan Hewett's Classic 50 No 39: Pierre Boulez—Dérive 1|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classical-music-guide/10314695/Ivan-Hewetts-Classic-50-No-39-Pierre-Boulez-Derive-1.html|newspaper=The Telegraph|access-date=1 January 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170102082508/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classical-music-guide/10314695/Ivan-Hewetts-Classic-50-No-39-Pierre-Boulez-Derive-1.html|archive-date=2 January 2017}}</ref>