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. . . When the serial principle
was first applied to
all the components of sound, we were thrown bodily, or rather headlong,
into a cauldron of figures, recklessly mixing mathematics and elementary
arithmetic; the theory of permutations used in serial music is not a very
complex scientific concept; one need only reread Pascal to be convinced
of this, and to realise that our systems and calculations are summed up
in quite modest theories, whose scope is limited to a definite object.
Moreover, by dint of ‘preorganisation’ and ‘precontrol’
of the material,
total absurdity was let loose; numerous distribution-tables necessitated
almost as many correction-tables, and hence a ballistics of notes;
to produce valid results, everything had to be rectified! In fact the basic
‘magic squares’ were related to an ideal material (‘My
overcoat also became
an ideal’—Rimbaud: Ma Bohème), without any thought
of contingencies—donkey work—of any kind: rhythmic organisation
disregarded realisable
metric relationships, structures of timbres scorned the registers and dynamics
of instruments, dynamic principles paid no heed to balance, groups of pitches
were unrelated to harmonic considerations or to the limits of tessitura.
Each system, carefully worked out in its own terms, could only cohabit
with the others through a miraculous coincidence. The works of this period
also show an extreme inflexibility in all their aspects; elements in the
‘magic squares’ which the composer, with his magic wand, forgot
at the
birth of the work, react violently against the foreign and hostile order
forced upon them; they get their own revenge: the work does not achieve
any conclusively coherent organisation; it sounds bad and its aggressiveness
is not always intentional.
Enslaved in such a yoke it was difficult not to feel oneself at the mercy of the law of large numbers: in the last resort, any choice had only a relative importance, simply amounting to cutting a slice of chance. This procedure might be seen as a take-over by numbers; the composer fled from his own responsibility, relying on a numerical organisation which was quite incapable of choice and decision; at the same time he felt bullied by such an organisation in that it forced him to depend on a crippling absurdity. What could be the reaction to this extreme situation? There were exactly two possibilities: either to break out of the system by expecting no more of numbers than what they could give—that is to say, very little—or to avoid the difficulties by debauchery, seeking justification in what were, after all, pretty banal psychological and parapsychological considerations. The second way was obviously the more tempting, for it demanded only a minimum of effort and imagination.
Pierre Boulez
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