{"id":5205,"date":"2011-09-28T23:23:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T22:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/?p=5205"},"modified":"2011-09-28T23:23:16","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T22:23:16","slug":"boulez-and-believing-your-own-bullshit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2011\/09\/boulez-and-believing-your-own-bullshit.html","title":{"rendered":"Boulez and Believing Your Own Bullshit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do I feel the need to rationalise wanting to go see the Pierre Boulez gigs<\/a> this weekend? I think it’s partly the fact that, after all these years, he’s still<\/em> described as an avant-garde figurehead yada yada yada, so help me he even gets billed as a technological pioneer, by people who should know better<\/a>. People who must have twigged that the composer has spent the past 30-odd years trying to turn into Debussy, yet still peddle the lies that (a) he’s still some kind of firebrand and – perversely peculiar to modern music – (b) his music’s not particularly pleasant to listen to. <\/p>\n

All this nonsense would be easier to ignore if Boulez himself didn’t appear to be so complacent. John Cage’s portrayal of the Frenchman puttering around his plush hotel room in a tailored smoking jacket waving his cigarette holder dismissively as he pronounces Charles Ives an amateur lurks behind all his later career. Well, that and his George Lucas-like obsession with tinkering with his legacy, smothering the vital core of his earlier music with revision after revision in the name of technical finesse and an insulated sense of “good taste”. <\/p>\n

I’m going to see him conduct Pli selon pli<\/em> partly out of morbid curiosity to hear what changes he’s wreaked on it over the past quarter-century, having heard no version more recent than the Phyllis Bryn-Julson<\/a> recording from the mid-80s. I’ve also got a ticket for the evening with Domaines<\/em> and Rituel<\/em>, two pieces I think he’s left well alone and won’t be conducting. I’m wary of committing to anything further than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do I feel the need to rationalise wanting to go see the Pierre Boulez gigs this weekend? I think it’s partly the fact that, after all these years, he’s still described as an avant-garde figurehead yada yada yada, so help me he even gets billed as a technological pioneer, by people who should know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5206,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205\/revisions\/5206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}