Pierre Boulez Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna ( 1975 )

• published: 12 Nov 2014
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pour orchestre en huit groupes BBC Symphony Orchestra : Pierre Boulez P 1982 ‘A ceremony of memory,’ said Pierre Boulez about Rituel, which would be inescapable even when hearing the work for the first time. The score, originally entitled Mémoriale, indeed constitutes troubling funeral music that, beyond its very precisely chosen material and skilfully organized unfolding, is held out towards the evocation of a fellow traveller from the beginning. That exceptional conductor and composer died prematurely in Darmstadt, where he lived, on 13 November 1973, after a brief illness. 187 Pierre Boulez-Bruno Maderna: the expected/unexpected conjunction. Back in the 1950s, two personalities had found themselves in the front ranks of contemporary creation, driven by the same aesthetic choices, the same desire to compose (and conduct) the music of their time, two personalities who were totally different in terms of lifestyle and daily action but who lived out a fruitful complicity, unconditionally and without ulterior motives. Boulez’s words on the death of his friend, printed in Le Nouvel Observateur , bear witness to this: Our careers were parallel. We began in Germany, then followed each other to Great Britain and, finally, we found ourselves in the United States. In 1958, we conducted the first performance of Stockhausen’s Gruppen together. Later, we alternated on the podium of the Orchestra of the Residence in The Hague… In the pioneering days, when Wolfgang Steinecke had founded the Darmstadt ensemble, it was we who shared out the innumerable premieres that were to be given throughout the summer. The rehearsal schedule was a nightmare. Bruno didn’t worry about it too much, even taking the liberty to arrive late sometimes. He looked at the good side of life and always pulled through […] Maderna was a pragmatic, as close to music conducting it as in composing it. Rigour, he had it in him, but it was not the rigour of figures, only the certainty that his personality could only express itself well beyond a pernickety observance… The score of Rituel is based on eight instrumental structures, with increasing forces, divided up over the stage space: successively an oboe, two clarinets, three flutes, four violins, a wind quintet, a string sextet, a wind septet and 14 brass. A percussionist is associated with each group, and this continuous presence of percussion, as much as the spatial fragmentation of the orchestra refer to one of Bruno Maderna’s most accomplished works: Quadrivium of 1969. Noted on the score of Rituel : ‘Each group, strictly synchronous individually, is led by an instrumentalist (generally the first of the group), designated as leader , the tempo being maintained by the percussionist associated with the group.’ The score unfolds 15 sequences of unequal length. The odd-numbered sequences play the 188 role of responses forming refrains; unlike the even-numbered sequences, they are directed, verses in the form of episodes. The conductor gives the start of the first group, the following choices follow a variable order. ‘[There is a] symbolic gesture,’ adds Célestin Deliège. ‘Once the eighth sequence of tutti has been reached, a sort of farewell symphony is sketched, the groups disappearing and their sonority dying out…’ The work was first performed in London on 2 April 1975, with the composer at the head of the BBC Symphony. It bears this dedication........: