Polyphonie X
Polyphonie X (1950–51) is a three-movement composition by Pierre Boulez for eighteen instruments divided into seven groups, with a duration of roughly fifteen minutes. Following the work's premiere, Boulez withdrew the score, stating that it suffered from "theoretical exaggeration". (In a 1974 interview, he referred to it as a "document" rather than a "work".) Despite Boulez's dissatisfaction with the piece, it played a key role in his development: one writer called it "the linchpin connecting Boulez's early mastery of gesture and contour... with his later interest in large ensembles and grand forms", his "brave 'first attempt' to produce a work that exhausted a particular musical technique with large orchestral forces by developing an expansive, additive structure at the earliest stages of composition", and "one of the purest representations of Boulez's first turn toward integral serialism". Background In 1948 and 1949, Boulez worked on Livre pour Quatuor for string quartet, in which he began to explore the notion of expanding serial technique to encompass rhythms and dynamics as well as pitches. This was followed by further efforts in the direction of integral serialism in the form of the first book of Structures for two pianos, Polyphonie X, and Deux Études for tape, as well as an article titled "Eventuellement" containing detailed comments and reflections on the experience of composing the pieces. Polyphonie X had its origins in a work that Boulez, in a letter to John Cage dated 30 December 1950, described as a piece of chamber music for 49 instruments, "a collection of 14 or 21 polyphonies (maybe more), I don't know yet, very long in duration. But one will be able to select what one likes". (Paul Griffiths noted that this concept represented an early example of what would later become known as an "open" work, in that it would have allowed the conductor to freely select a subset of pieces.) In the remainder of the letter, Boulez laid out his thoughts with regard to the serial treatment of pitch (including quarter tones), rhythmic cells, and instrumental combinations (and thus timbre). (This text, along with material from another letter to Cage, later appeared as an article titled "The System Exposed".) Composition In the winter of 1950–1951, Heinrich Strobel visited Boulez and found him wrapped in a blanket, surrounded by charts and score pages covered with tiny notes. Strobel decided to commission a work from Boulez for the Donaueschingen Festival, to be held the coming fall, to which Boulez responded by reworking the "polyphonies" material described in the letter to Cage into what would become Polyphonie X, reducing the number of instruments to eighteen (with the ensemble divided into seven groups) and transforming the quarter-tone material into standard tuning. According to Boulez, the piece, which comprises three sections, was completed in the summer of 1951, after he wrote Structures Ia but before he wrote Structures Ib and Ic. The breakdown of the seven groups is as follows: Regarding the title, Boulez explained: X is simply X, neither a letter of