his Concerto for as a claim to From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a ‘idealized uncorrupted authenticity’, she leaves Memoir. By Ba¤ lint Andra¤ s Varga. the composer little room for a nuanced view- pp. xi þ 397. Eastman Studies in Music. point on matters of representation (p. 209). (University of Rochester Press, Rochester, Henry Cowell’s appropriation of musical styles NY, and Woodbridge, 2013. »25. ISBN 978- from around the world is characterized as 1-58046-439-0.) ‘almost imperialist’, whereas Barto¤ k’s appropri- ation of styles not associated with his own Ba¤ lint Andra¤ s Varga’s archives are a gift that nationality pass without comment of this kind keeps on giving. As if his lengthy interviews (p. 149). At times, Fauser describes the linkage with Lutoslawski (1976), Berio (1989), Xenakis between music and national identity with (1996), Kurta¤ g (2009), and Ligeti (2009) were pointed terms such as ‘chauvinism’, at others not enough, the well-received Three Questions for more neutrally (p. 136). The astonishing Sixty-Five Composers (2011) sealed his reputation variety of the works Fauser has brought as an interviewer who was able to draw out his together should provide excellent stimulus for subjects without alienating them. Now, we have Downloaded from further consideration of how music is used and a set of thirty-two more interviews and a the ways in which we evaluate those uses. At memoir. Although much material in this new the outset, she makes a distinction between volume can be found in Varga’s earlier pub- ‘blatant propaganda’ and music as a means of lished collections from the 1970s, they appear ‘entertainment, recuperation, and uplift’ (p. here in English for the first time. The picture 3)çbut the evidence presented throughout the Varga paints of himself, as well as the sheer http://ml.oxfordjournals.org/ book offers us many opportunities to reflect on quantity and diversity of material, conjure up the more ambiguous nature of music’s apparent visions of a determined young man with an influence on its audiences. outsized tape recorder and hand-held micro- The final chapter presents many American phone, scurrying around hotels, apartments, works composed for public commemorations of and backstage dressing rooms, ready to snatch war, as well as compositions that attempt to up any spare moment an artist might have. represent directly aspects of wartime experi- Even if the interviews in this new volume are ence. Although some familiar pieces are dis- somewhat inconsistent in quality, it is hard to cussed, this chapter also grants us access to a begrudge Varga’s ethnographic accomplish- at Cornell University Library on November 2, 2014 little-heard repertory of American music. ment. His efforts to preserve these documents Providing a valuable overview of musical pro- (and the commitment that the University of duction during the period as well as insight Rochester Press made to publish this new into the range of styles available to composers book) were well worth the energy. writing for the public, Fauser describes The volume is arranged with the most sizable wartime music composed byçamong othersç interviews first. The opening section is Walter Piston, William Grant Still, George subdivided into material on composers, con- Antheil, Paul Creston, Harl McDonald, Wil- ductors, instrumentalists, singers, a teacher, liam Schuman, Jarom|¤r Weinberger, Morton and music administrators. A series of ‘snippets’ Gould, and Randall Thompson. The music is follows, which transcribes brief encounters with described engagingly. So is the composers’ con- a wide range of artists from Rubinstein to nection to their chosen topics. Fauser leaves us Szigeti to Copland. Although it is sometimes with a synoptic vision of broad and lively par- questionable whether this fragmentary mate- ticipation in America’s musical life, and with a rial should have been included (for example, sense of the excitement that drew so many to the snippet on pianist Ge¤ za Frid contains participate in wartime music-making. When only a brief anecdote told by Varga himself), Andre¤ Kostelanetz toured with Lily Pons for the author’s comments and observations that the USO, he remarked that ‘to see your public precede each piece often prove valuable in in full battle regalia is an amazing sight’ (p. themselves. 49). Indeed, it is also amazing to see the ener- While Varga’s memoir comes as a postlude, getic and widespread efforts of America’s com- it may well be the best place to start, since posers to mediate wartime experience for their it provides a welcome background. He tells of publics. growing up in post-war Hungary and his DANIELLE FOSLER-LUSSIER steady climb upwards on the ladder of the Ohio State University music business, starting with his first job at the doi:10.1093/ml/gcu045 radio, continuing at Editio Musica Budapest, a ß The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University brief stint as a cultural ambassador in a newly Press. All rights reserved. reunified Germany, and finally a lengthy 484 tenure as a publicist at Universal Edition in was allowed to interview her, Varga was Vienna (Varga turned down an offer of artistic obliged to sit through a group lesson where director, feeling he was not qualified). The students sang Bach together. However, Bou- most beautifully written part of the memoir langer interrupted them after almost every includes his reminiscences of the distant past note to criticize someone or to share an and his early work for Hungarian radio. aphorism. Yet, Varga is drawn to her over- Towards the end, Varga occasionally sounds powering energy and her unflinching devotion like he never gave up his job at Universal. He to the class. Later reflecting on her seventy- takes great pride in the firm’s current roster of year-long teaching career, Boulanger muses on composers, and recounts with evident pleasure the mutual attraction she shares with her the remarkable foresight Universal’s directors students. ‘Young people come to me ...why showed in the early twentieth century when then do they interest me so passionately? I taking on risky propositions such as Gustav suffer and do not know why ...if they did not Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill. interest me so much, teaching would be Returningtothebeginningofthebook,Arnold torture’ (p. 190). Abruptly breaking off the Downloaded from Whittall writes in its foreword, ‘to meet this interview, Boulanger nevertheless answered diverse, demanding, and sometimes disturbing Varga’s final questionçabout Barto¤ kçin a castof musical characters, is a rare andenlighten- barely legible handwritten letter. After praising ing pleasure’ (p. x).To my taste, the most disturb- the composer in glowing terms, she writes, ‘I ing personalities include Hans Swarowsky and cannot create order in the past, even though Wolfgang Stresemann. A highly influential for me it never ceases to be the present as well’ http://ml.oxfordjournals.org/ conductor, Swarowsky studied with Richard (p. 196). Strauss, Felix Weingartner, Schoenberg, and Varga’s chat with Stockhausen reveals Webern. His students at the Vienna Music another subject who had an unusual perception Academy included Claudio Abbado and Zubin of himself. Stockhausen is uncharacteristically Mehta. During the war, Swarowsky was the prin- forthcoming in this discussion, which was previ- cipal conductor of the Kraco¤ w Philharmonic ously published in volume 6 of the composer’s Orchestra during the Nazi occupation. Swa- Texte zur Musik (Cologne, 1989) in German. rowsky speaks little of those dark times, but His spatially fragmented self-image resembles at Cornell University Library on November 2, 2014 his remark that it was ‘much simpler to fight something curiously like a modern internet-age against the Nazis from the outside’ (p. 101) may avatar: raise some eyebrows. On the other hand, Stresemann, who was the son of a former Chan- Stockhausen: I possess the rather unusual faculty of cellor of the Weimar Republic, rode out the looking at myself from behind. Can you see yourself war on American soil and only returned to from behind? Germany in 1956ça move that alienated him Varga: No, no. in the eyes of some who stayed. In 1959 he be- Stockhausen: Well, I can. I often see myself also from came the Intendant of the Berlin Philharmonic above. ...I can look at myself from all sides; I can Orchestra, a post he held (with one six-year gap) also walk right behind myself (p. 59). until 1986. Stresemann, whose relationship with After a diatribe on the lack of adequate the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal conductor, rehearsal time, the inability of orchestral Herbert von Karajan, has been characterized as musicians to improvise freely, and their incap- being ‘fed more by respect and natural courtesy acity or unwillingness really to listen to each than by anything resembling real human other, Vargaçin a rare momentçtries to pro- warmth’ (Richard Osborne, Herbert von Karajan: voke Stockhausen: ALifeinMusic(Boston, 1998), 479) tells Varga that Karajan is an undisputed ‘conductor of Varga: I wonder whether as a musician, you feel genius’andcharacterizesthe ensemble as a‘demo- rather lonely once in a while. A Christ figure cratic orchestra-republic that submits itself to the betrayed by his disciples. conductor of its own free will’ (p. 217).While the Stockhausen: That sounds far too dramatic. I admit, haughty tone of political metaphor might have though, that during my life I have lost some friends, been purposely calculated to provoke the humble some beloved friends ...at some point [they] seemed to believe ...that the only way they could get rid of interviewer from the eastern bloc, Varga wisely me was to kick me in the backside. ...Divorce is legit- shrugs it off, changing the subject to questions of imate, it is feasible, and it can be the right thing to repertory. do, but it must be executed with empathy, charm If Swarowsky and Stresemann come across as and humor ...some manage it, others do not. It is somewhat unsettling, the impression we get of a mystery and one should make no judgment about Nadia Boulanger is more nuanced. Before he it (p. 62). 485 It might be said that the demands Stock- coincidentally bumped into Brendel at a hotel hausen placed on his collaborators resulted in London: upon catching sight of the Hungar- simultaneously in performances of impressive ian, the pianist turned away. ‘The intense precision and an unusually high rate of humiliation I felt then is still very much with ‘burn-out’. The composer’s tactic of writing me’ (p. 119). Yet, Varga should not have been opera segments for reduced forces, and then so hard on himself. Admittedly the interview building up a fully staged production from itself is not particularly dynamic, but Brendel these component parts can be understood extended the agreed-to ten minutes to over as a pragmatic reaction to the limits on thirty, and much of the pianist’s personality rehearsal time and space, and perhaps more comes through. Other writings and interviews than just a ‘cunning mercantilist strategy’ clarify the pianist’s curious remark to Varga (Claus-Steffan Mahnkopf, ‘Theory of Polyph- that the ‘possibilities inherent’ in Bach’s music ony’, in Polyphony and Complexity (Hofheim, are ‘unfolded far better on today’s in- 20 02 ), 41 n. 29 ). struments. ...The same is true of the Beethoven Varga’s ability to set his subjects at ease is sonatas and even more so of the Schubert Downloaded from one of his best traits as an interviewer. Towards sonatas, which were written for the instruments the end of his seventy-fifth-birthday interview, of the future’ (p. 128). Elsewhere we learn that Ligeti comes across as a deeply frustrated indi- it was Ralph Kirkpatrick’s interpretation of vidual. Varga draws this out in a remarkable Scarlatti that, for Brendel, brought out passage: ‘burning dissonances which cannot, with the http://ml.oxfordjournals.org/ Varga: Whenever I try to pay you a compliment, I best will in the world, be achieved on the come up against polite refusal. ...You have every ’ (Martin Meyer, The Veil of Order reason to look back on the past half-century with (London, 2002), 84). Even so, Brendel believed some satisfaction. ...I hope you do agree. it was a ‘fundamental error’ for ‘historically Ligeti: Ba¤ lint, I am deeply unhappy with myself and minded interpreters to find a precisely contem- this is no false modesty. ...I am ceaselessly looking porary instrument’ (ibid. 40). Incidentally, in for my idiom without ever finding it. ...I am still Varga’s ‘snippet’ with Kirkpatrick, the harpsi- looking for means of expression: after all, there is no chordist hardly comes across as dogmatic; accepted norm today, there is no unified style in instead, he admits to being an ‘impurist’, one what is called serious music. (pp. 56^7) who ‘provide[s] a translation of rules that were at Cornell University Library on November 2, 2014 Ligeti’s musing on a possible epitaph sums up valid at [an earlier] time’ (pp. 248^9). For a his essential feelings. ‘My wish is that nothing musician with as fine an ear and as sensitive a should be named after me. If it is, then it touch as Brendel, one wonders what he would should be called Ligeti Gyo« rgy te¤ vu¤ t’(p.57).Ina have been able to draw out of a fine Broadwood footnote, Varga explains that the Hungarian or E¤ rard, had he only been willing to experi- word te¤ vu¤ tçsimilar in meaning to the German ment with historical instruments. ‘Irrweg’çcan be translated as ‘wrong road’ or Varga’s chat with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and ‘false road’, conveying the sense of a path that Walter Legge is utterly dominated by the goes ‘in error in a particular direction’. The latter. Legge’s narration of the difficulties and impression of Ligeti as a composer searching successes of the Philharmonia Orchestra, ceaselessly for a new way of expression offers which he founded and financed (with the deep parallels with Stockhausen’s view of his backing of the Indian Maharajah of Mysore) compositional obligation; but in Stockhausen’s may serve to remind us that managing a major understanding, this allowed a continual spiral symphony orchestra was never an easy job ascent to a new level of self-realization. Ligeti’s even if some of the financial arrangements in view seems much darker in comparison. those days seem upside-down. ‘In the last year, The transcriptions of interviews with I was forced to accept a subsidy from the practising musicians should make this volume state. ...I did not want the money, I wish to appealing to a wide range of readers. Among put on concerts my way. Whereupon it was the most interesting is a discussion with Alfred brought home to me that if I did not take the Brendel from 1978, which reveals as much money, I could not rent the hall. There was about the interviewer as the interviewee. Varga nothing for it but to give in’ (p. 183). Legge’s admits to having difficulty interviewing an eventual departure from the Philharmonia in artist for whom his ‘boundless admiration’ led 1964 and the founding of the New Phil- to a ‘temporary paralyzed brain’ and con- harmonia under Klemperer were the source sequently ‘one silly question after another’ of lingering bitterness. Not only did Legge (p. 119). Varga’s anxiety about the interview reject the New Philharmonia as the succes- was confirmed some time later when he sor to his orchestra, but also he felt that the 486 musicians of the new group ‘play like swineç work Pli selon pli, Tombeau earned a reputation they will get the [state] money anyway’ as one of the key elements of the composer’s (p. 184). oeuvre. Other important aspects of Tombeau’s In a way, this volume provides the key to all compositional history were affected by these of Varga’s other publications. His nuanced initial constraints, as we learn in the notes ac- memoir provides the necessary context in companying this lavish new edition. which to understand the reflexivity of his By releasing this trove of material to coincide decades-long ethnographical project. But upon with Boulez’s 85th birthday, the Paul Sacher reaching the last page of the ‘snippets’ section, Foundation and Universal Edition have one may get the impression that Varga’s provided a worthy sequel to their earlier publi- material could be nearly mined out by now. cation of sketches to Le Marteau sans Ma|“ tre The unevenness of this section sometimes (: Le Marteau sans Ma|“tre. Facsimile yields nothing more than mere fragments. Still, of the Draft Score and the First Fair Copy of the Full like a cherished old photograph, a fragment Score, ed. Pascal Decroupet (Mainz, 2005)). may have enough aura to make it a worthwhile The justification for choosing Tombeau as the Downloaded from object of attention. Ba¤ lint Andra¤ s Varga’s latest Marteau’s successor in this series was twofold. book will prove an entertaining and useful First, the pencil sketches and polychrome ink, work for a great variety of musicians, and may both in Boulez’s notoriously precise and minus- serve as a fitting crown for his many fine cule hand, have deteriorated due to their heavy volumes. use and inherently ephemeral quality. Second, http://ml.oxfordjournals.org/ PAUL MILLER there is something of a spectacular element to Cornell University the Tombeau manuscripts, an attribute that one doi:10.1093/ml/gcu046 can observe not only in the obvious evidence of ß The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University extreme dedication required to produce the Press. All rights reserved. score, but also in the edition’s Brobdingnagian dimensions (47 37.5 cm), several centimetres larger than the already oversized printed score Tombeau: Facsimiles of the Draft Score and the First (Pierre Boulez, Pli selon pli / V. tombeau (Vienna: Fair Copy of the Full Score. By Pierre Boulez, Universal Edition 13616, 1971)). ed. Robert Piencikowski. (Paul Sacher Foun- Piencikowski’s dense commentary is a greatly at Cornell University Library on November 2, 2014 dation/Universal Edition, 2010. pp. 154. E15 4. expanded version of an earlier, shorter essay ISBN 978-3-7024-6861-3) (Boulez: Pli selon pli, ed. Phillipe Albera' (Geneva, 2003), 45^8). Unlike Decroupet’s ‘[L]es murs doivent vibrer.’ These words detailed analysis of the Marteau sketches, appear in Pierre Boulez’s earliest plans for Piencikowski modestly aims only to supply the Tombeau. In the essay that accompanies this reader ‘with the primary constitutive elements edition of Tombeau sketches, Robert of the organization, while inviting him, should Piencikowski explains that the work might his curiosity so take him, to imagine for have provoked less critical interest than was himself the sometimes extremely refined pro- expected at its Donaueschingen premiere pre- longations by means of which the composer has cisely because the walls did not vibrate in the made his deductions’ (p. 23). This is partly due way Boulez had originally envisaged. to the fact that available documents ‘do not at Commissioned as a memorial to Prince Max present permit us to reconstruct every detail of Egon zu Fu« rstenberg, the Donaueschingen festi- the process of ‘‘manufacture’’ of the practical val’s patron who died suddenly in April 1959, elements of the realization, notably that of the Boulez did not prioritize Tombeau until late orchestral material’ (p. 26). Even so, these that summer. Therefore, the initial version was sketches shed much light on the genesis as well written so rapidly for the October premiere as the construction of the work’s edifice. that it was impractical to place the intended in- Apart from the practical reasons for releasing strumental groups around the hall in an effort these sketches on the heels of Marteau,atleast to magnify the reverberations and really make two aspects of Tombeau link it structurally to the the walls vibrate. Instead, all the performers earlier work. Although other technical means were massed on stage, flattening out the glisten- were available to him at the time, Boulez ing textures Boulez had hoped to achieve by employed the same schemata of multiplied reflecting and reinforcing instrumental reson- pitch-classes in both works, and therefore their ances around the space. Not long after its first pitch content derives from the same basic series. hearing, subsequent enlargement, and ultimate Piencikowski suggests several intriguing hypo- assimilation as the last movement of the larger theses for the reuse of previous materials (p. 29). 487