When I listen to music, I like to listen to it, not analyze it. Some composers, however, beg you to do both. I've always felt that music should be an end in itself, that structure, instrumentation, style, performance devices, and the like should only be looked at after the fact to demonstrate why a piece is successful or not. But
Boulez is one of those who prompt a different listening approach, a different response, and I'm not sure whether that's a strength of his or a weakness. He is also involved in making technology an integral part of music. Arguably all composers have done that in one way or another, but
Boulez in particular has devoted years to seeking a more harmonious and natural relationship between electronics and instrumental performance. Rather than force instrumentalists to react to the fixed, mechanical role of a prerecorded tape in performance,
Boulez, in the first version (1981) of Répons, devised a way for the computer's processing to be performed in real time, thereby fitting its role into a more natural performance scheme -- the instrumentalists could, as it were, interact freely with the computer and with the variable elements it introduces to the score.
Boulez expanded Répons in 1984, producing more or less the version we have here. (He also treats most of his other works as "works in progress.") Répons is a worthwhile composition. For those who haven't heard it or are unfamiliar with
Boulez's style, it might be described as a kind of extension of what
Stravinsky might have composed had his time come later, and had he been genuinely attracted to atonal music, not just dutifully attracted as he was in the 1950s when he wasted his time on serial music. Then, too, there is a typically understated French quality to
Boulez's music -- almost a sort of Impressionism. The title, Répons, by the way, refers to the responsorial form of Gregorian chant. The notes mention the relationship between the "...one and the many." And the work centers on that concept, on exchanges between a soloist and an ensemble. The performance by the Ensemble InterContemporain is excellent.
In the other work, Dialogue de l'ombre double (1985), I find
Boulez perhaps even more compelling. The music is less complex and the invention just as fresh. The work was inspired by Paul Claudel's play Le Soulier de satin, and
Boulez's title refers to "the double shadow." Well, with a solo clarinet and a second one on prerecorded tape, you can imagine what this musical scheme is. By the way, the clarinet playing of
Alain Damiens is splendid in every respect.
The notes by Andrew Gerzso are excellent and the sound by DG is superb. Highly recommended!