1

Paul Klee
Monument in the fertile land
Monument en pays fertile/Monument im Fruchtland
1929
Water colour and pencil on paper
45.7 × 30.8 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern 2 3
Paul Klee
Polyphonic setting for White
Polyphon gefasstes Weiss
1931
Water colour and brush on paper
33.3 × 24.5 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern 4 5
Paul Klee
Individualized Measurement of Layers
Individualisierte Höhenmessung der Lagen
1930
Water colour and brush on paper
46.8 × 34.8 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern 6 7
Paul Klee
Collection of Southern signs
Zeichen Sammlung Südlich
1924
Water colour and ink on paper
12.2 × 18.1 cm
Kunstmuseum Bergen, Norway 8 9
Paul Klee
Physiognomical lightning
Physiognomischer Blitz
1927
Water colour on paper
25.5 × 25.5 cm
Collection Saidenberg, New York
Photo Hans Hinz artothek 10 11
Paul Klee
Drummer Boy
Paukenspieler
1940
Kleisterfarbe on paper
34.6 × 21.2 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern 12 13
 The Fertile Land

Pierre Boulez Paul Klee

Identifications

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Texts, translations and mutations
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, Etty Mulder
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something diferent from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

From T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

English translation
Eva Pelgrom

Stichting Pierre Boulez

Boulez Papers

6
 Contents

Published under the auspices of The publisher has made every effort to Introduction Thinking on music in the age of Boulez 19
Stichting Pierre Boulez, Maarn, trace all copyright holders. If there are any
founded 6 December, 1999, inadvertent omissions, copyright holders
and Uitgeverij Roelants Nijmegen are requested to contact the publisher. 1 Broken images 23

Book distribution © 2015

Catastrophes
www.roelants.com Author, Stichting Pierre Boulez, Maarn,
the Netherlands. All rights reserved.
Author No part of this publication may be
2 Flowering straw 29
Etty Mulder, Maarn reproduced, stored in a digital database or When I think of René Char
published in any manner, electronically, My formidable ally
Book design mechanically, by print, photoprint,
Reynoud Homan, Muiderberg recording or by any other means, without
Layout and typesetting the prior written consent of the publisher. 3 Unchaining 34
Koen van der Weide, Breda
isbn / ean 978-90-74241-34-2 Limits
Lithography The road; harmony of spheres
Marc Gijzen, Leidschendam The Fertile Land was published in Dutch
Printing under the title Het vruchtbare land. Fruitless soil
Lecturis, Eindhoven Trajectories
This publication has been realised with the
Front cover financial support of Notations
Paul Klee, Monument at the limit of the fertile –
land, Monument à la limite du pays fertile/ The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Monument an der Grenze des Fruchtlandes, L’ Institut Français des Pays-Bas Maison
4 Paraphrases 1 47
1929, water colour and pencil on Descartes and bnp Paribas Unheard music At the limit of the fertile land
cardboard, 45.8 × 30.7 cm, Museum –
Sammlung Rosengart, Luzern Truus und Gerrit Van Riemsdijk Stiftung /
Back cover Swiss Partners , Zürich 5 Paraphrases 2 57
Pierre Boulez, photograph Louis Ingliardi
[Ingi], 1958 during Figures, Doubles,
Flash of light on a face The fertile land
Prismes Comments on paraphrases 1 and 2

6 Strophes 93
Paul Klee and music
Talking to Boulez

7 Structures 100

8 Literature and Sources 103

 Introduction Thinking on music in the age of Boulez1

Until several decades ago, all arts were described separately, literally
per subject. Each philosopher of art or art theorist who was looking
for connections between the arts or for an overall idea on the efect
and function of art, could count on fierce criticism. These trends were
seen as questionable especially in academic circles. Cultural historians
and theoreticians, musicologists, arts historians, theoreticians of
literature and poetry – any author who took the liberty of discussing
the existence of connections between the arts as a natural possibility,
arising from creativity itself, was criticised or even excluded from oicial
canonisation. Professionals adopted such a repressive stance not only in
interdisciplinary research on the coherence between diferent artistic
fields, but also regarding the contemplation on relationships between art
and the psyche as well as the connections between the arts and social
structures. At the time, the number of genres or schools within the
humanities that used connecting terms such as psychohistory or semiot-
ics exploded, also prompted by Anglo-Saxon vogues. The magic word
‘semiotics’ finally grew into a generalising denomination, a substitute for
the entirely analytic and philosophical approach to the arts and even
more: in the nineties, at the glooming of deconstruction, as it became
common use to speak of the semiotics of science, a tautology for ‘meaning’
in the most meaningless sense.
Although the creative process that led to works of art received some
attention, one would rather not touch upon its existential meanings,
for fear of being labelled ‘un-academic’.
For fear of keeping too little of that distance that accompanied real
scientific subjects, factual cumulative-quantitative models were nowhere
clung to as stubbornly as in the [former] academic disciplines of art.
In spite of all that – seemingly completing the chaotic situation – there
were academic circles that kept alive some of the leftovers from famous
tendencies: Burckhardt, Huizinga, Cassirer.
After the sixties, in the Western-European and Anglo-Saxon countries
musicology as well as the other art disciplines were sufering from gradual
severe devaluation. They were considered ever less significant as inde-
pendent academic disciplines, and at some universities those disciplines
were even lost in fragmentation.

I followed this situation and these developments in the art-sciences from

1
After the first book of Pierre Boulez,
the inside for many years. This caused that, in my own projects, I was
18 Penser la musique aujourd’hui, 1964. incidentally looking for ‘ways out’ by which I could escape the repressive 19
acting out of identity crises of former systems of traditional musicology
and art history. In order to be able to deal with the tremendous changes
that took place in the significance and functions of the twentieth-century
arts, and to create possibilities in approaching subjective as well as inter-
subjective processes. Therefore I decided to focus on the personal and
most essential experience in my own introduction to the arts of the new
era – among others through the compositions Pli selon pli and Le visage
nuptial by Pierre Boulez, which are the starting point for this document.
In doing so I did not pretend to conceptualise a method or a system.
My text however tends to reflect a professional as well as a creative and
personal engagement.
In the first chapter broken images I describe my acquaintance in the year
1964 with these compositions by Pierre Boulez, as part of the whole of
my creative experiences with cross-disciplinary and synergetic develop-
ments in modern arts.
The title is taken from T.S. Eliot’s monumental poem The Waste Land
[1922]. In a way, it directly evoked the subject of ‘fertility’ that fascinated
Paul Klee for some years later during his stay in Egypt, while he witnessed
‘the rite of spring’ in the desert around the river Nile.
This was the theme celebrated by Stravinsky on his ways before the wars,
in Le sacre du printemps from 1913, which is associated to archaic themes
from Central-Asian paganism.
It is well known that T.S. Eliot wrote his famous poem with a strong
fascination for Stravinsky’s Le sacre. Those themes – the visionary, the
sacrifice, the ritual, creative procreation – clearly influenced Pierre Boulez
during his career as a composer, conductor and essayist.
Through the years, my mind remained intensely focused on ‘the lesson of
Boulez’ – as he in his so far last publication himself wrote of the ‘lesson of
Klee’, La leçon de Paul Klee in 2008. What struck me in those materials was
the coherence brought about by music and, as one could say, brought about
within the music itself, of sounds, images and words.
Without the poet René Char, without Stéphane Mallarmé, and – maybe
he was the most poetical of them all – without the painter-musician Paul
Klee, Boulez would have become a diferent composer. I tried to convey
the moment I truly realised what this meant to me in an autobiographical
sense, I tried to hear, to see and to undergo the cross-overs between
sound, word and image in the work of Boulez.
Being aware of the meaning of focalisation and iconicity as major meth-
ods within the theory of modernist literature, I decided to take in mind
those analytical tools in combination with the structuralistic principles
of Pierre Boulez by integrating these procedures and by communicating
them through my personal narrative experience.
In a process that took some years, I came to the understanding that the
creative impulses which for Pierre Boulez resulted in music had their
roots in multidisciplinary grounds that were, I would say, like the fertile
land that Paul Klee was communicating by his paintings when he returned
from the Valley of the Kings in 1929. Klee painted his aquarelles after
having felt the drought and after also having experienced the exuberant
flowering following the flooding of the river Nile. He gave them almost
similar titles: Monument im Fruchtland / Monument en pays fertile and Monu-
ment an der Grenze des Fruchtlandes/ Monument à la limite du pays fertile
respectively.
In the two texts that composer and conductor Pierre Boulez wrote in his
capacity as a music essayist to discuss these aquarelles, an essential con-
nection manifested itself to me, taking me towards the theme of creation
itself as well as the psychic and emotional mechanisms in the process of
creation. A connection between the inner desert and the exuberant inner
bloom that Klee conveyed through his canvases from Egypt, and Boulez’s
own contemplations on the creative process. For these complicated texts
dealt with decisive moments, archetypical phases in which each artist is
doomed to paralysis and futility: moments when the limits of productive-
ness are in sight and when the ever feared impasse truly strikes hard. The
moment when the final boundary with a still fertile land has been reached,
the point of no return.
Next to the other Boulez translations in the first chapter, my descriptive
translations of his two important fertility texts especially intend to clarify
the cyclic recurrence and topicality of the central theme of creation and
looming downfall. Themes that – this is the implicit central idea in Boulez
and in Klee – lead back to mythological depths, originating from Ancient
Egypt.
These subjects are really very remote from the so-called arithmetician and
calculator Pierre Boulez as his colleagues, audiences and musicologists
saw him for a long time during his career, in a negative sense.
There, in the Valley of the Kings, and in the constant alternation of desert
and bloom, lie the roots of the myths that raise the synchronicity of
creation and downfall, reproduction and death, personified in the deities
Isis and Osiris. They are in power here, these kings and spouses, kinsmen
in its deepest sense. Nevertheless, it must be noted that neither Boulez
nor Klee, in working on their subsequent fertile lands, ever stood too
far from the severe arithmetical principles of the annual agricultural
Egyptian ritual of measuring the soil:
Covering a futile road through barren lands in the scorching sun,
over and over. Waiting for new signs of hope time after time, and
anxiously observing the germinating powers. Experiencing the
delight and feeling the panic, the overwhelming vitality, every
time the narrow banks of the Nile are flooded. Measuring the
land each year, strip by strip, to remember how it was, bearing it
in mind for the next year: knowing, being aware. Then comes the
flowering. But for how long?
Pierre Boulez recognised that anxious and inspiring realm of thought in
Paul Klee and continues to share it, up until La leçon de Paul Klee from
2008. In doing so, Boulez besides his sometimes complex dissertations on
creation and impasse kindled the interest of the reader in the fascinating
connection between perspectival distance and acoustic depth, thereby
referring to the vertical and heterophonical structures of music.
In doing so, Boulez disclosed forms of similarity in the main construc-
tional procedures of the visual arts and music of modern times, on the
part of both the audience and the visitor, simultaneously presenting the
contexts of most shattering poetry. Those phenomena, all together,
surpassed all thinkable limitations within the traditional conceptualisa-
tion and analysis of art.
20 21
Acknowledgements
In realizing my publication I would like to express my special gratitude to
Pierre Boulez for making available the handwritten opening page of the
manuscript from his book Paul Klee: Le Pays Fertile, 1989. The page, in blue
ink on squared paper, is part of the collection of the Paul Sacher Stiftung
Basel, Inventaire de Textmanuskripte, Paul Klee 1988.
I express my sincere thanks to curators Robert Piencikowski and Michèle
Noirjean-Lindner who received me at the Boulez Collection. I also want
to thank the publisher of Boulez’s texts Christian Bourgois Editeur, who
is the copyright holder of the aforementioned handwritten page by Pierre
Boulez. Since 2004 five publications have already appeared in the Nether-
lands as part of the project Boulez in Translation, Boulez Papers, under
the auspices of Stichting Pierre Boulez, with translations of and com-
ments to the editions by Christian Bourgois Editeur.
I am very grateful to Michael Baumgartner and Zentrum Paul Klee in
Bern for making available text fragments from the catalogue published as
Le Théâtre de la Vie/Overal Theater from 2008. The permission to use the
Flemish-Dutch edition of this work was granted by Ann Mestdag of the
Mercator Fonds Brussel, Bozar, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, in copro-
duction with Zentrum Paul Klee.
Finally, I express my special thanks to Museum Sammlung Rosengart
Luzern and Zentrum Paul Klee Bern, as well as to the other collections
mentioned in the book, for making available images of important art
works and sketches of Paul Klee.
em
22
1 Broken images
I was confronted with it two years after the completion of its
second version: Pli selon pli, fold by fold. Pierre Boulez had
worked on it, with interruptions, between 1957 and 1962.
He did so again between 1982 and 1989. The confrontation took
place at the Institute for Musicology in Utrecht, where the piece
was analysed and explained to students by the composer and
theoretician Rudolf Escher.
The experience of what is new is inescapable. In all life has to ofer, also
if it is miserable or hard to endure, it is irrevocable: the shock that makes
you put your hands over your eyes, the moment you are irreversibly hit,
or marked.
You are walking on a street which descends towards the sea, hear voices
of people you do not know and who come walking towards you, a cloud
blots out the sun and suddenly --. It leaves you powerless. It takes away
all your strength. At the same time, your opportunities seem to have
increased in a way you could never have imagined.
This is what it is like when together with the other students I am drawn
into the sonnet of Mallarmé and introduced to the sounds of Boulez.
It indeed happened as the title of the work suggests: fold by fold, carried
by the grave, almost concerned expression of the amiable and very earnest
composer Rudolf Escher in 1964, who has been invited to the Utrecht
Institute of Musicology to teach us on Pierre Boulez. He says: ‘Last week,
while I was writing something on the board, behind my back I heard one
of you use the word icy after we had listened to the sonnet. Someone
whispered: how icy. I heard it. And yes, it is true. It is even much more true,
and also in a diferent way than you meant it, because this is exactly what
it is about, this icy circumstance, as I already explained: the swan is trapped
in the ice.’
That obsessive image comes from Mallarmé and this is the poem Boulez
has used, in which the vowel i appears thirty-seven times. That is why it
was nicknamed ‘sonnet en i-majeur’. The redundancy on the vowel i,
thirty-seven times, can be seen as a metaphor for the ice, for rigidity and
paralysis. The risk of being forlorn, lost, for ending up in the scorch of the
desert. Fear for the heat, the endless plains that might suddenly loom in
front of you, creative artist, and that in fact always lie just around the
corner. It is inconceivable how much uncertainty and insecurity there
is in the creative process.
The title of the poem Rudolf Escher explained in 1964, set to music by
Pierre Boulez, is Le Cygne, the swan. Another word automatically echoes
in that title: signe, sign; the poem is a sign. This connection between the
auditory and the visual is referred to as iconicity. There is a ‘pictogram’
which is perceived in the same way by the ear and the eye. The poem is 23
 iconic. Your feathers trapped in the ice. Never fly again.
After hearing those metallic icy sounds of Boulez in 1964, I left the lecture
room, as if I was banned from there. I was convinced that I was the only
one who felt so isolated: this disruption was intended for me personally.
You have been struck now with the insight that you will have to find out
how you got in this situation, and why. The only thing you can do, is cling
to an unexpected association with a completely diferent verse, it hits you
like the dramatic cry for help to find a way out to be able to forget, a way
to the river of Lethe as refered to by the Dutch poet P.C. Boutens (1943)
o how to find that place of oblivion on this burning blind basalt before night is
falling […] [hoe over’ t brandend blind basalt vind ik de weg naar Lethe, o
alles te vergeten eer de avond valt].
But to me it was too late to forget. At that moment, on that early develop-
mental age it was – in fact – quite a diferent poem that took possession of
me, the poem of Rilke I did not know yet at that time, ending in the
famous existential commandment: Du musst dein Leben ändern.1
After that incident, I did not return to the lecture room and its stave
board at the Utrecht Institute for Musicology for months. I looked up
Pierre Boulez’s music theory, which had just appeared in 1964, which
displayed on its cover the very last image made by Paul Klee in 1940, the
year of his death: Paukenspieler [Drummer boy] [see p. 13]. It shows a black
silhouette with waving arms, hands like keys, the one Egyptian all-seeing
Eye in the middle of the head, in sharp contrast with two red marks
seemingly painted in a hurry that produce sound in your ears. I tried to
translate Penser la Musique Aujourd’hui, tried to understand, took notes
with a green ballpoint in a ring binder. And I hid myself away.
It will then take many years before I can truly grasp that final image by
Klee from 1940, truly see it and attach more meaning to it than it being
just the ‘cover’ of this first book by Pierre Boulez. I will see an associative
connection between Paukenspieler, the paralysed silhouette of a musician,
and the topic introduced by Boulez at that time, not only in Le Cygne, but
also in the theme of his essays entitled at the limit of the fertile land.
Paukenspieler as Klee’s final creative act is the closure, surprisingly colour-
ful, of a series of figures drawn in light contrasts in which physical organ-
isms are merged with instruments. These figures, named Eidola [Gr. eido-
lon: image, apparition, illusion], can be interpreted as phantoms, ultimate
images of musicians, death images. The association with sclerodermia, the
illness Klee had sufered from 1935, and to which he eventually suc-
cumbed, is almost inevitable. It has progressive atrophy and the gradual
hardening of the body as its main symptoms.
It is possible that the works of Paul Klee to Boulez embody among other
things creative hesitations; all that Boulez himself experiences in the
musical creations referred to in texts written in 1955/1966 and 1989,
and for which he borrows titles from ‘the fertile land’, the aquarelles
Klee painted in the late 1920’s after his return from the Valley of the
Kings.
‘Catastrophe’. That word, which brought back to memory my decisive
confrontation with the work of Boulez in 1964, is used by Pierre Boulez
in 1983 to describe his first experience with the surrealist poetry of René
Char. A coup de foudre which to him was even more intense and decisive
1
than his encounter with the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé. He also has
R.M. Rilke, Archaischer Torso Apollos. an intense and pivotal experience with the images of Klee. ‘It is through
Klee,’ he says, ‘that my own creative process gained the highest possible
proof of authenticity’.
These existential experiences with other art forms: poetry, the plastic arts,
had a big impact on his career as a composer. Without the encounters
with related souls in poetry and the plastic arts, Pierre Boulez – as he
claimed himself – would not have been the composer as we know him, or
at least not the composer he became. Without those experiences he might
have been destined to become frozen, withered, or to have ended up in
lands described by T.S. Eliot: where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no
shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water.
Boulez is one of the most important ‘reflecting’ artists of
modern times: composer, conductor, writer. That is, in
him we recognize some of the power evoked by Leonardo
da Vinci’s use of the term Paragone in his Trattato della
pittura. The word refers both to an inspiring method for
comparing the arts, and to the influence one art form
could have on others. The manuscript was first published
in France in 1651, in both French and Italian. I suppose
that Boulez would not raise any objections to defining the
eye as ‘the window to the soul’, as Leonardo did, although
to him this did not signify that painting was superior to
music. The fact that Leonardo ranked poetry with music
and declared that poetry must be heard, to me seems
something Boulez would also very much appreciate. One
of the things music and the plastic arts have in common
are the proportions: their quantitative construction princi-
ples. The musician measures intervals; the plastic artist
measures distances. And this is how there is a connection
between the musical proportions and the laws of perspec-
tive. The fact that we see the paragone of Leonardo
reflected in Boulez five centuries later, that he strongly
reminds us of it in the study on the works of Paul Klee
from 1989, is highly remarkable. He had already made
several references to the works and ideas of Klee in 1955
and 1966, in the context of his own musical development.
In that myopic world of art theory, which does not look
back beyond yesterday, who would dare to place them side
by side in a programme or a newspaper headline: Pierre
Boulez and Leonardo da Vinci?
Catastrophes
It will be almost forty years later when I get to know the voice and words
of the by then friendly composer up more close. No one fears him any
longer for the extreme vehemence of his words, the rebellious sounds
from the younger years in which I heard that snow-white music of his for
the very first time. Those are the years in which I too stand in front of
a stave board and like Rudolf Escher must be a guide to Boulez for stu-
dents, pointing to passages across the borders, across the limits of the land
that is rendered into sounds and conducted by the composer. In the
meantime the composition Pli selon pli has by then expanded considerably,
in accordance with the characteristic composing process which he refers
24 to as ‘work in progress’: it will never be finished, and is ever expanding 25
also in the hands of others, prophesying singers and musicians who will
read his music text.
The swan, that icy bird, has stayed in its white place, has mastered the
successive compositional changes that are inevitable in a ‘work in
progress’, tight in its thirty-seven i-sounds, as the second part in the
concentric symmetric five-part composition: Improvisation sur Mallarmé 1;
Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui.
My description and translation for concertgoers is produced without any
expectation that the words of this composition, separated from the
sounds, can add to the clarity of the image. Except as sound only. Sound
that is expressed as a hieroglyph, or: sounding rune. Paul Klee called it
a monument on the limit of the fertile land, on the border of the desert,
on the edge of the ice. Where the ‘lovely day’ reveals itself ‘with a drunken
wingbeat’.
Stéphane Mallarmé Improvisation sur Mallarmé 1
Le Cygne Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’ hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d’aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n’ont pas fui!
Un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n’avoir pas chanté la région où vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l’ennui.
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l’espace infligée à l ‘oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l’horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.
Fantôme qu’à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,
Il s’immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l’exil inutile le Cygne.
The Swan Virginal, lively and lovely today
Will we feel it break with a drunken wingbeat
This hard lost lake where lurks below the rime
The clear glacier of flights yet unmade!
A swan of former times remembers it is he
Superb but hopeless loosens himself
For not having sung of the region to live
When sterile winter shone its despondency.
His whole neck will shudder of this white agony
By the space inflicted on the bird who disclaims it,
But not horror of the soil where his plumage is held.
Phantom assigned here by his own pure radiance,
He is stilled by the cold dream of disdain
That clothes in absurd exile the Swan.
Translation: Paul Griiths
I will see again my programme notes for the Amsterdam performance in
June 2007, and September 2011, in a presentation by the Ensemble
Intercontemporain conducted by Pierre Boulez. In the televised version I
see my translations of Mallarmé appear as subtitles on the television
screen, under the shots of the singer. It makes me feel as if I am part of the
performance. One could say that the opening question of my accompany-
ing text for Pli selon pli dates to that moment.
Is this unprecedented creation admissible? Is this novelty acceptable?
You have been confronted with that same question before, by works of
Stravinsky and Schönberg – and now it happens again through the large
vocal works of Boulez.
Pli selon pli is a portrait of Mallarmé that unfolds. The title refers to a poem
that was not included in the composition, in which the city of Bruges
looms up from the rising mist, brick by brick, or fold by fold (pli selon pli).
It is about disclosure, revelation, fought for in a life and death battle, an
inner struggle for fertility. For continuity and birth.
Xylophones, vibraphones, chimes and instruments with unclear pitches
26 merge with ‘classical’ sounds. The last sound corresponds with the initial 27
sound. Between these two moments, you are pushed along a depressing
road to desolation, intense cold, menace.
The Improvisations sur Mallarmé are directly connected to the third
piano sonata, which also resounds in Pli selon pli because of its five-part
structure. His choice of poems remains unexplained.
…and then you see the inner ring of the five-part concentric structure…
For many years, Pli selon pli has remained a construction without any
direction. Rather than the serial principle for which Boulez has often
been denounced, it consists of fluctuating powers that expand –
musical forces and compositional techniques. This eclectic power of free
use of collected materials is the essence of the work in progress.
It is rare for Boulez to quote other composers, but he does so in the
second improvisation. The motive bach [bes a c b] can be heard there in
the entry of the voice, and also in the last, central word: naître, being born.
The Improvisations sur Mallarmé are key works, symbolic for the creative
act itself. The first, Le Cygne, signifying the birth and death of the musical
work containing it, as Griiths claims, is exemplary in its horrifying
appearance. The swan, trapped in the ice, in ‘useless captivity’, evokes
absolute paralysis through images of whiteness and silence; a terror that
may immobilise the creative urge. As has been noted before, the sonnet is
nicknamed ‘sonnet en i-majeur’. The music that sounds, that icy vowel
and the icy image of motionlessness make a phantom emerge. It is possi-
ble to see this iconic process of references of meaning as a cross over
between text and music.
28
1 expands beyond all expectation, and then that uncontrol-
Pierre Boulez composed Le visage nuptial,
Le soleil des eaux and Le marteau sans maître
on texts by René Char (1907 – 1988).
2 Flowering straw
Many years later, I relive the shock of my encounter with Pli
selon pli in 1964, or at least part of it, when two texts come to
my attention in which Boulez describes his own encounter with
the poems of René Char. And again I have studied the essential
connection between music and text for a Dutch presentation
of this work of Pierre Boulez. In my Dutch comments to and
translations for the performance of Le Visage Nuptial, I used
the title Het Bruidsgezicht. Here is my translated version of
the two texts in which Pierre Boulez describes what the connec-
tion with Char means to him. They precede some translated
fragments of the poetry used in that work.
When I Think of René Char1
Text by Pierre Boulez from 1983
It happens quite often that discoveries that play a deci-
sive role in who and what you eventually become, take
you by surprise, take your breath away. They bring about
something that cannot be turned back; it happens exactly
at the moment you are struck by them. You cannot
imagine that this catastrophe would not have taken place,
except at that one instance when you did not expect it.
You somewhat casually focus your eyes on a page in a
collection of poems, and suddenly, there, you recognize
yourself: the phrase that suddenly flashes before your
eyes leaves you powerless, takes away all your strength,
but through it, at the same time, your opportunities seem
to have increased in a way that surpasses your wildest
dreams so far.
These words there, they are meant for you, they appeal to
you and your most hidden self in an undeniable way, and
still they do not pose any question you were not yet
aware of: this text reveals you, leads you to an absolute
confirmation of yourself.
Without knowing it, I was already responsible for it, and
now that I do know, it makes me responsible also for that
part of me that is still in a dawning phase of something
I had not yet become. We may image that we decide for
ourselves where our ainities lie, calmly and consciously,
but such explosion, followed by such internal silence that
lable, brute force which pushes you across borders that
suddenly you deem acceptable, – rarely, rarely, do you 29

2 kling in its state of completion? The poet should not so
Mais il reste le signal puissant de cet
émetteur au loin [representation of the
value Char will always have to Boulez].
face circumstances in which all this is set into motion in
this manner.
Such a precious gift, this involuntary commotion. It
teaches you a fundamental lesson about your existence,
instils in you sharply the sense of exactness and rightness,
rocks your foundations and knocks everything down.
You are not forced to obey, but an untameable energy is
released in you, cheerful and drunk with its new exist-
ence. Certainly, this is youthfulness, and this is how it
should be! The time when a mirror is held up to you will
come soon enough. Since this commotion, originally
provoked by someone else – you can eventually only
expect that from yourself.
What remains is the powerful signal of that transmitter
in the distance, a signal that you perceive in pulses2, – con-
fidence and connection are reconfirmed by the silent and
sovereign pact that is being worked out and that is
expanding in your oeuvre. The relation is no longer and
can no longer be the primary connection, but it is becom-
ing sharper, more refined and it evolves into a state of
deep coherence, independent of any exact moment. It is
unnecessary to verify it; its presence can be felt anywhere
and everywhere. The relation has transformed unnotice-
ably: this drive is now part of your own productivity. No,
these were not two narrations that have been superim-
posed on one another just once; no, this was not a cross-
pollination or osmosis; no, it was not an impulse. This is
about the permanent crossing of border and substance.
René Char; my formidable ally
Text of Pierre Boulez from 1990
Quite a lot of music is based on the relationship with
poetry, which should rather be seen as an amalgamation
than a connection, since the amalgamation of the two
elements results in a new precious metal: the vocal work.
From the perspective of the musician, this practice is
gratuitous and noncommittal, because the poem pos-
sesses and retains its autonomy: it exists in combination
with the music, but remains independent of the sounds
to which the composer has linked it. When given a choice
between respect for or prevalence of the text, the com-
poser chooses another option: assimilation, which broad-
ens the meaning by placing it outside the boundaries of
direct comprehension. Apparently, this is how the uneasy
relationship between the poet and the musician works:
involuntary collaboration by the former, on whom the
latter imposes his imagination. But must we see only
unbalanced relations between opposite forces in the
vocal work? Is it not much more about the use of the
imagination in music on the basis of a poetic fact, spar-
much see in it a proof for the superiority of the work; he
should see in it a sign of weakness on the part of the
musician, who needs this work to be able to reveal
himself.
Why does the musician search for that external source,
why does he choose something that is infinitely more
than just a stepping stone for his imagination, something
that will become part of him? Why this poem, this poet,
at that exact moment in his development?
The answer, both simple and mysterious, could be
summarized by the biblical formula ‘you would not seek
Me if you had not found Me…’. The encounter, the
coincidence, results from such a deep-set necessity,
so urgent that it appears to be in vain to ask questions on
the whys and wherefores. It is important, however, not to
avoid them with the excuse that you do not have to
provide an adequate answer, so as not to unveil the secret.
Even if we try to find an answer, we know very well that
the essence lies not in text analysis or in a list of formal
connections, but that the true answer can only be pro-
vided by the completed work itself.
The work of René Char has up till today challenged me
three times, and three times have I answered that threat-
ening impulse, in three very diferent ways, because the
poem I chose instinctively suited the necessity and the
moment of confrontation. Le visage nuptial 3 lays bare the
narrative structure of the poem, conforms completely to
its form, and is articulated accordingly. The music runs
parallel to the text, follows its meandering, from the
moment of the encounter to the moment of parting. Le
soleil des eaux 4 is much more a connecting text that brings
already existing, but scattered musical ideas together and
renders them an indispensable coherence.
Le marteau sans maître 5 depends on a more complex
coherence, in which the presence of the poem is not the
only binding factor. It saturates the musical creation
completely, even once it has ceased to exist.
I have not myself chosen to create these three poetical-
musical interactions; I would rather say that they chose
me, as important steps in finding my destiny. Apart from
a conceited ‘thank you’ it is impossible for me to express
in any other way that I cherish great gratitude for René
Char, who has revealed to me whom I must be.6
3
Boulez worked on Le Visage Nuptial in
1946 – 1947, 1951 – 1952, 1985 – 1989 and
1994.
4, 5
The text by René Char was written in 1938
and 1948.
6
Former edition of those texts in Dutch
translation: Etty Mulder, Boulez Papers 1,
30 2005, p. 73-78. 31
From three verses of Le visage nuptial 2 Gravité

S’il respire il pense à l’encoche

1 Conduite Dans la tendre chaux confidente
Où ses mains du soir étendent ton corps.
Passe.
La bêche sidérale Le laurier l’épuise,
autrefois là s’est engoufrée. La privation le consolide.
Ce soir un village d’oiseaux
très haut exulte et passe. Ô toi, la monotone absente,
La fileuse de salpêtre,
Ecoute aux temps rocheuses Derrière des épaisseurs fixes
des présences dispersées Une échelle sans âge déploie ton voile!
le mot qui fera ton sommeil
chaud comme un arbre de septembre. […]

Vois bouger l’entrelacement

des certitudes arrivées
près de nous à leur quintessence,
ô ma Fourche, ma Soif anxieuse!
La rigueur de vivre se rode
sans cesse à convoiter l’exil.
Par une fine pluie d’amande,
mêlée de liberté docile,
ta gardienne alchimie s’est produite,
ô Bien-aimée!
2 Gravité [L’emmuré]
The man immured,
if he is breathing he thinks of the notch
In the tender, confident lime
Where his evening hands stretch out your
body
The laurel exhausts him
Deprivation strengthens him,

O you, monotonous absent woman

Spinner of saltpetre,
Behind fixed depths
1 Behaviour An ageless ladder unfurls your veil!

Pass […]
The sidereal spade
sunk there in the past. Translation: John Tyler Tuttle
This evening, very high up,
a village of birds exults and passes.

Listen, at the rocky temples

of dispersed presences,
to the word that will make you asleep
warm like a September tree

See the interlacing

of certainties move
near us that have arrived at their quintessence,
O my pitchfork, my anxious thirst!

The rigour of living roams

constantly, coveting exile.
Through a fine almond rain,
mixed with docile freedom,
your guardian alchemy has come about,
O Beloved! 32 33
3 Unchaining
I even saw the corn, I also saw the king,
who is reigning ever since over
the waste land and the wilderness.
I offered him some thistles and I signed
my young men’s graves
Ik heb het koren nog gezien, en ook de koning die
sindsdien de barre woestenij regeert,
ik heb hem distels aangeboden en de graven van mijn dode
jongelingen gesigneerd
Gertrude Starink, The Way to Egypt, Twenty Passages,1977, translation Etty Mulder
Following Paul Klee, Pierre Boulez sees the creation of a work of art as
a vegetative process. During its creation, the limit of a fertile land is always
kept in mind.
A century ago, Kandinsky published his essay Über das Geistige in der Kunst
[1912], in which he describes the search for that margin from which
a work originates as mysterious and mystic. To him, the genesis of art
is similar to birth. The work springs from the artist as if it were a living
being, a breathing organism; the work of art is a being that breathes…
To engage in this process, the artist must in his view be unconditionally
free to use any means he chooses. An inevitable and deep uncertainty is
at the basis of this all, which is expressed in the question: will my creative
attempt be fertile; and where will it lead to?
As said before, the irrevocable ‘unchaining’ of the work of art is marked
by the performance taking place a century ago, with great authority, and
almost simultaneously with the publication of Kandinsky’s essay, of
Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps [1913], The Rite of Spring. Most impor-
tant in this context is its concluding dance, the danse sacrale, which
revolves around complete submission to the germinating power of the
earth, the begging for fertility in the bursting Spring. ‘Old wise men
sitting in a circle witness how a young girl is dancing herself to death.
They sacrifice her to conciliate the God of Spring.’ So the vision goes,
the archaic notion that obsessed the composer. The piece, Le sacre, seals
the fate of twentieth-century music; it means radical change. Its
theme – also on a music theoretical and choreographic level – is the need
for renewal, and the fear of the overwhelming powers this involves.
It proves that an ancient vegetation ritual cannot be conveyed in sounds
and choreography, and to show this – paradoxically – it deals with this
issue on stage.
Its message is: this work of art, this ballet eradicates our traditional and
centuries-old ideas on the performing arts. Not beauty, but necessity and
truth are essential. Its musical means of expression and rhythm will mark
the start of a new era. Its concepts will be crucial in the arts of the coming
decennia. The independent being that the work of art is, in Kandinsky’s
definition, evokes death: the inescapability of [self]destruction, a sacrifice
on the level of the germinating and steamy earth.
The unequalled choreography by Pina Bausch fills the stage with peat
dust and sweat. That bloody and blooming choreography from 1975
drags us into a terrifying dream that makes clear that this concerns us too.
We too, the audience seated in our red velvet chairs, cannot escape the
fear of being lost, of being left behind as the powerless remains of this
overwhelming force, all for the sake of fertility.
There is nothing left for us but fear of ossification, the fear of death that
is shown right before our eyes. This almost literal presentation of the
fertility rite on stage is a perfect monument for the living connection
between art and vegetation.
To mention Boulez and Klee in one breath – where do the stars collide
[to make this possible]? The answer is: at the border – the limit, the
edge – of the fertile land.
They have not known each other as contemporaries. There is an existen-
tial relationship between them through the interconnection of poetry,
images and music, which is applicable to both. The works of both spring
from precisely this interconnection. The visual works of Klee are imbued
with Bach, Mozart, with poetry. And it is unconceivable that the oeuvre
of Boulez were created without poetry or visual images.
En passant, Boulez thematises this relationship by borrowing from Klee
the titles of two Egyptian aquarelles of Klee, Monument im Fruchtland and
Monument an der Grenze des Fruchtlandes, for essays on his compositional
techniques. Paraphrasal translations of these essays have been included in
this text.
It is no coincidence that for the Zentrum Paul Klee, which was opened in
2005 and designed by Renzo Piano, and located in Bern on the edge of
the mountains, in the meadows, precisely this name was selected from
thousands of works. For the centre’s name is: Monument im Fruchtland.
It is an address in its most profound meaning; it tells us where we must
go. Although we, as bystanders, cannot have the same great pretensions
in reaching the exact location at the border of that fertile land up to where
Boulez wanted to follow Klee.
Limits
Egypt is a mythological cradle, crucial to Western cultural history. Its
geographical location and the climatic extremities plaguing the area must
be viewed against a dynamic and continuously changing background of
mythological and religious symbols. We find them in various spiritual
denominations, from antiquity to Christianity. Egypt represents passage;
it is a metaphor for [individual] growth: for individuation, the path of life.
The flourishing and development of Western culture, of an alphabetic
instead of pictographic script, of the ability to abstraction and sublima-
tion, have all followed that path and have left their marks.
The changing of the seasons forces man to reach an ultimate compromise
34 with the overwhelming power of the earth. It must be begged, but also 35
forced, to relinquish its tender fruits, which begging can only be success-
ful if man’s strongest powers in agriculture are called forth: the knowl-
edge and skills crucial to cultivate this type of land. There are numerous
examples of those great physical and creative eforts in cultural forms of
expression, in both images and texts.
The relentless extremity of the circumstances and ordeals form part of the
passage, also in the sense of the Old Testament exodus: passages and rites
of passage that can also be found in texts of Boulez’s favourite poets
Stéphane Mallarmé and René Char, whom I have touched upon earlier.
What Boulez experiences during his first encounter with the complex
and flamboyant poetry of Char is defined by him, where he reports about
it, in very strong words [see p. 30].
Once having surrendered to the experience of beauty and
terror, tearing us apart, the cycle Le Visage Nuptial will
confront us with ourselves. The music is as vehement as
the text. Whoever wants to undergo the terrifying expres-
sion of the sound must make every possible efort. How
could one experience this without being devastated? You
will have to cross boundaries and travel distances you have
never seen or imagined. Solitude. Again and again.
You will be an exile, naked as a worm.
Europe today shows examples of this in literal confronta-
tions with exiles and in forced conventions. Earlier, in the
nineteenth century, and in a more exalted form, we find
a variation on that condition humaine: the individual who
is unsettled and unattached to anyone, used as a literary
metaphor. Central-European culture uses Der Wanderer
in many texts – his walking pace is in time with the music.
Intelligentsia would eventually connect that high form
of wandering, roaming, to an adage: werde der du bist: the
process of individuation. The Wanderer travels paths that
lead inwardly, where the battle for survival is fought in
terms of consciousness, dream, fantasy, art. It is a romantic
forerunner of what will later become a poignant reality
in expressionism: whoever ends up as a wanderer on this
path is no longer part of the community – he will be
excluded, banned.
Not only this poetry has been pivotal for the musical development of
Pierre Boulez, for it is also Klee who captivates him and who decisively
arouses his synaesthetical urge to create poems, sounds and images. The
fact that he feels so closely connected to Klee is not for his achievements
as a plastic artist only; vital are also the didactic lessons by Klee, laid down
in his lecture notes Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre – the handwritten
observations from the early 1920s that he used as a teacher at Bauhaus in
Weimar. Texts that inspired Boulez’s musical thoughts, together with
technical aspects of the aquarelles discussed in his essays on ‘the fertile
land’.
… It is because of the annual floods, the passages of the
Nile, with great rains and rising waters from Southern
areas, that Egypt is brought back to life, from withering
and wilderness to a fertile strip of land. A strip of land
bordering the scorching heat of the desert that continues
to shift. Egypt is constantly in a nascent state, an uninter-
rupted transition from desert to fertile land. There is no
mythology that is more obsessed by this perpetuum
mobile, by that connection between Death and the Sun, in
a never-ending circle. There is no mythology that is more
strongly dominated by death, with its pyramids as
necropolises.
… Since the Egyptians gave irrigation all their attention,
they soon succeeded in cultivating a small strip of green
fertile land on both sides of the river Nile. Behind that
strip, Egypt was a desert. The Nile region with its culti-
vated land full of luxuriant vegetation contrasts sharply
with the withering, dry desert that lies behind it. Accord-
ing to the Egyptians, this fertile land of Upper-Egypt is
typical of the nature on the mythical Island of Creation.
Both then and now, all the land, except for a small strip on
the river banks, was practically deprived of rain. Its high
fertility was entirely thanks to the annual floods, during
which water was diverted into the fields through an
ingenious system of dams and canals. Also, the soil was
covered each year by a fresh layer of silt from the large
equatorial lakes and the Abyssinia Mountains.
… Early June, the width of the Nile is reduced by half of
its normal size. And Egypt, scorched by the sun and lashed
by the Sahara wind that blows for days in a row, seems
nothing but a continuation of the desert. Trees are sufo-
cated by a thick layer of grey dust. The plain seems to be
gasping for breath under the merciless sun – withered,
dusty and covered by a pattern of cracks as far as the eye
can see. From the middle of April to the middle of June,
Egypt is only half alive, waiting for the Nile.
The Road; harmony of Spheres
After his trip to Egypt in 1929, Paul Klee paints several aquarelles to
express his fascination with the theme of fertile land versus desert. One of
these is an impressive work which will later become a famous key work,
occupying a central and solitary place in his oeuvre of 9,000 pieces: a large
oil painting titled Hauptweg und Nebenwege [1929] [see p. 1].
It shows a straight road in the middle. One would automatically say that
this must be the river Nile. In various ways and from various perspectives,
it is gradually split up into ever thinner branches. There are side-roads left
and right of these branches, becoming smaller, irregular and diferenti-
ated, sometimes disappearing into nothingness, painted in blue, orange,
red, green. There is a strictly regular rhythm in which ‘irregularity’ slowly
manifests itself – a dynamic image, its shape and depth depending on the
focus one chooses.
Precisely this form, in which various commentators thought they could
see parallels with a music score, led to reflections on the interdisciplinary
36 artistic skills of Klee, who after all had also worked as violinist and violist 37
all his life. In the Bauhaus lessons, he regularly refers to music. What is
remarkable about these is that he does not seem to bother about the music
of his own time. Composers like Schönberg and Webern are far to be
found. More than anything else, he is trying to find the balance and
classical beauty of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He displays
an exclusive preference for Bach and Mozart, who to him are the very
greatest.
That combination of sympathies results in musical abstractions, like the
ones that can be seen in this oil painting, Hauptweg und Nebenwege: it
shows an exact division of space in which colours, or ‘pitches’, fill in a
more or less straight staf. This invites us to draw parallels with rhythmic
symbols, with signs for duration in the graphical system used for musical
notation: black, white, one-lined, etc.
This central oil painting can be ‘read’ [of maybe even ‘heard’] from two
perspectives: from the top, so to speak from the sky, or from the front, as
if we are looking at a carpet-like soil structure, divided into coloured
surfaces.
The point is that our orientation can be the same in looking as in listen-
ing. We can focus on the perception of the whole, or be led through time
from one moment to the next.
This is exactly where the painter feeds Pierre Boulez with fascinating
ideas: he sees possibilities that encourage him to study not only the
paintings, but also the texts produced by Klee, in search of more parallels
with the musical world and with composing. The division into surfaces,
strips and stripes on the painting shows a main path that continues, while
at the same time it spreads out to both sides in a richly cultivated field.
This model can also function as a creative principle in music and can thus
be transformed into musical structures.
Both aquarelles to which Boulez refers in his essays from 1955 / 1966 and
1989 date from the same year as Hauptweg und Nebenwege, 1929, and they
were born from the same source of inspiration. As mentioned before,
Boulez’s first essay is published in German as An der Grenze des Fruchtlandes
in the first edition of the music journal Die Reihe, and subsequently in
French as À la limite du pays fertile (Paul Klee).
The second essay is published in 1989 under the title Paul Klee: Le pays
fertile. The aquarelles are part of a series of paintings by Klee which in
German are referred to as the ‘Streifen- oder Lagenbildern’: this part of his
oeuvre is characterised by a layeredness, in a both literal and metaphorical
sense. Layers that are constructed from strips, widths and stripes: borders,
and signs of unexpected depths and perspective spaces, changing as the
focalization changes.
The metaphorical meaning of Egypt as an artistic source of inspiration
to Paul Klee leads, along a ‘side-path’, to that famous study of cultural
philosopher Oswald Spengler on the decline of the West (Untergang des
Abendlandes) [1923], which especially focuses on the theme of the path
as an ancient Egyptian symbol.
In his discussions on the construction of the pyramids and the sun tem-
ple, Spengler notes that the innermost spaces of these structures have no
internal ritual order or division, contrary to mosques and temples. It is
striking, and inspiring, that Spengler in his argument as a cultural phi-
losopher uses musical terminology without any hesitation. In his view,
the cultural image of the pyramid is that it has a logical, ‘rhythmical’
pattern in the sequence of spaces of which it is made up. It is a path in one
direction, which becomes tighter and tighter, through a system of tunnels
and halls, eventually leading to the burial chamber. Spengler says: this
architecture uses only surfaces and their relative proportions. The Egyp-
tian path ‘outlines’ the fate of man. In that outline, a central aspect of
perspectival observation is taken into consideration that is specifically
relevant in an Egyptian context: the third dimension. A realm in which all
paths are joined and where all paths lead to. The pyramid is the embodi-
ment of that third dimension.
The pyramid is a fugal composition of recurring corners and triangles,
of merging shapes; an enormous aggregate of shapes that dominates the
landscape. You look at it from a distance and – in a perspectival sense – you
will see the whole. That whole that also allows you to see the end of the
path. Step by step, the construction leads the person who enters closer
to the end. The route that leads to the Underworld lends its significant
meaning to the essential ‘one-way road’ that plays a central role in this
culture. There are indications that Klee, fascinated as he was by these
mythological images and metaphors, was in his shape constructions of the
fertile land influenced by precisely these probing thoughts on ‘the path’
from Oswald Spengler.
A text of art historian Hans Zöllner in 1997 [web-publication] focuses
on the geometry and colour combinations of both aquarelles. It was
delivered as an inaugural speech at Leipzig University. Zöllner associated
these central ideas directly with the music-theoretical ideas of Bauhaus,
the school of Weimar and Dessau, where Klee taught but where he was
initially a student, also with Johannes Itten. The dominant view at Bau-
haus was that cosmic elements were at stake that laid bare a connection
with the music theory of the great classic civilisations, and a harmony of
proportionalities that applied to all arts.
Musica in this context refers to music in the sense of Harmonia; the harmo-
nia mundi that was a common phenomenon in antiquity, also referred to
as musica celestis or ‘harmony of the spheres’. It was considered the most
fundamental law on the coherence of the universe. There is no doubt that
this metaphysical, universal musical law, crucial against the spiritual
background of Bauhaus, was of great importance to Klee. The belief in
harmony in numbers, in an arrhythmic order as the basis for all arts alike,
had been linked by Klee’s teachers to Egyptian art long before his trip to
Egypt in 1928–1929. The sculpture of the burial chambers was seen as a
cryptic way of expressing precisely that universally rational and mysteri-
ous numerical order.
The aquarelles from 1929 that outline the fertile land
through a complex of lines and shapes, refer, through
classical doctrines on the cosmos, to geometric laws which
on the basis of Pythagorean ideas have brought a specific
order, founded in musical tones. The connection with the
Universe is expressed in tones.
The origin of geometric thinking in Egypt lies in the ritual
of land surveying: the annual measuring of the fertile land.
It is measured strip by strip, after each new flooding of
the Nile, time and again – and the outcome is diferent
every year. The way in which the size of the fertile area is
38 established is subject to a dynamic system of complex 39

1
Boulez expresses the ambiguity of the
word that has been used here, ‘unheard’,
by using diferent words in two diferent
phrases: on est ébranlé par quelque chose au
sens littéral du terme d’aussi inouï. D’une façon
générale, la technique électro-acoustique offre
la possibilité de générer le jamais entendu de
manière assez simple. [p.316]
principles. The need for continuous change and innova-
tion is at the basis of each creative process.
A title from the year 1930 is a direct reference to this process of measur-
ing: Individualisierte Höhenmessung der Lagen [see p. 7]. This must be seen as
the measurement of diferent heights, one by one. The process is about
the layers and surfaces in the fertile land, measured and subjected to an
ever changing and new numerical order at ritually recurrent times during
the season, through fixed habits in the literal ‘cultivation of the soil’,
agriculture.
The focus on the numerical aspect and the metaphysical meaning of
numbers or numerical proportions is by definition related to music:
the flexibility of proportions is essentially linked to a musical mindset.
This numerical framework for reflection and construction is not always
equally prominent in music history, but it is always present. The musical
focus on the numerical aspect, in whatever sense one would wish to
explain it, holds a prominent place in large parts of Boulez’s oeuvre.
I already mentioned the salient fact that critical opponents used to call
the young composer a ‘first-class arithmetician’.
Fruitless soil
Boulez used the titles of both aquarelles, with an interval of thirty years,
for essays on his musical and music-theoretical works and thoughts:
Monument à la limite du pays fertile and Monument en pays fertile.
The subject of his first essay is typical of modernism in music. In it,
he describes how the freedom of a composer in the 1960s, originally
a creator of vital sounds, is threatened by the novelties of electronic music.
Electronic music meaning: a mechanically and technically produced
sound form that, contrary to instrumental sound forms, has in principle
no fixed position in space. The production of sound is bound by an
electronic sound source only: magnetic tape and loud speakers.
The sounds that are created in this way, through drastic musical organisa-
tion principles, may introduce a wholly new and dynamic musical era.
To quote Boulez: ‘the unheard will sound’1, a phrase which in fact
expresses the deepest wish of any composer who, like him, is exploring
new paths.
However, the radical organisation of musical material can also lead to
rigidity: a new method may, due to a focus on the abundance of new tools
in musical thought, inadvertently cause the ‘method’ itself to function
completely independently. It may, in other words, become chill or frozen.
In the way Mallarmé’s Swan is trapped in the ice, symbolising an absolute
borderland. In the creative process, the metaphor of the ice is analogous
to the metaphor of the desert, referring to an absolute standstill: across
the border of any fertile land. Pierre Boulez uses the intriguing phrase
terre à terre for this zone, which may best be defined here as fruitless soil.
It is remarkable, to say the least, how this creator of often ethereal sound
worlds projects his thoughts towards the ‘earth’ here.
The composer who continues to find new paths to explore the phenom-
enon of sound and who delivers himself to the wealth of structures that
spring from his brains, addresses the risk of becoming trapped in the ice,
but also: of getting stuck in the scorching heat of the desert. He is trying
to find – and this is the theme of this first essay, À la limite du pays fertile
[Paul Klee] – the assurance that the new sound material, in Klee’s imagery,
will keep him inside the borders of the ‘fertilisable’ land. He wants the
certainty that he can return in time: he must avoid a threatening impasse.
The boundaries of creative fertility and of what is no longer fertile, or what
is not yet fertile, resound at random points in this ‘serious’ text by Boulez
by the use of the word limite: border.
Trajectories
1
Neither Boulez, nor Klee refers to it: to the way Egyptian mythology
influences them. The connections are not laid bare. That is to say: how
creative processes of abstraction in the art they create can, through the
driving forces behind technical and stylistic procedures, be retraced to
psychological impulses that have been symbolized ‘in mythology’.
And how their paths towards abstraction relate to the typical character-
istics of the Egyptian story. All this is taking place at a point in time, early in
the twentieth century, when – and this cannot be ignored – Egypt is
current in art, as an exoticism.
The deity who appears before us ‘at the border of the fertile land’ is Osiris,
ruler of the Underworld and the embodiment of corn. Like the Greek
supreme God Zeus, Osiris was born from the marriage between Heaven
and Earth. It is he who teaches man how to sow and grow corn. According
to the myth, Osiris is killed by his brother. His mutilated body parts are
scattered over the land and buried in diferent locations.
2
The mythologist Frazer says that mutilation and scattering must be seen
as metaphors of sowing or winnowing of corn. This interpretation could
find support in the mythical fact that the Goddess Isis, sister and spouse
of Osiris, collects his body parts, places them in a winnow and then sows
them to fertilize the land.
There is a strong link here with other mythological concepts of [human]
sacrifice and body parts being scattered to fertilize the soil. In the Greek
world of the gods, for example, this is the fate of Pentheus, Dionysus and
the Thracian Orpheus, who was torn up by Bacchants after his journey
into the Underworld.
3
The collection of divine remains as a necessary act for reintegration after
dreadful destruction is referred to by Anton Ehrenzweig by the term
poemagogic, indicating that the artwork addresses its own existence.There
is a simultaneity in destruction and creative power.
In The Hidden order of art, A study in the psychology of artistic imagination
he argues: poemagogic images, in their enormous variety, reflect the
various phases and aspects of creativity in a very direct manner, though
the central theme of death and rebirth, of restriction and liberation
seems to overshadow the others. This double rhythm can be seen as an
interaction between basic life and death instincts active within the
creative ego.
4
Stories teach us what the essence is of this all: human and animal
sacrifices are made every year to stimulate the growth of crops. Against
40 this background, Osiris presents himself as the ruler of life and death. 41
He is the God of the creative powers and embodies these together with
his Divine sister Isis. In inscriptions, she is referred to as ‘she who has
given her life to the fruits of the earth’, she is the mother of the ears of
corn.
5 appealing mythical themes of death and resurrection, restriction and
In a hymn she is praised as the Goddess of the wheatfield, and she can
often be seen portrayed with ears of corn on her head or in her hands.
The flood has withdrawn from the fields
The divine King is torn
May God return to us the wheat from the dead
The seed is commended to the earth, we scratch that earth
open with our hands,
and close it, we cut the dams
Let us sing to the God of maize,
Let us cut him into pieces and bury him, so that the seed
can germinate
Let us scatter his mutilated remains on the fields,
and all crops will grow abundantly
The earth that no longer carried any fruits, became fertile
again
O God who died there and who rises again in new crops
You are the King and the Judge of the dead who feeds this
life with his flesh
The Father and Mother of humanity, they live of your
breath
O, Queen of the wheatfield
Come to my house!
6 form – however acknowledging that an entire history
This first essay by Pierre Boulez reveals an aspect of the creative process
that arouses fear.Uncertainty of the fact that once a method has been
chosen to create wholly new, unheard sounds, it will appear to be purely
‘systemic’ and will inevitably force him across the border of the fertile
land. Hesitations that this attempt will turn out to be fruitless. In fact,
this process, described metaphorically by him, is about the general
phenomenon in the creative process that is connected with the risk of
sterility.
In the second essay, he describes his personal creative relationship with
Paul Klee, the importance of his oeuvre to his own works and also the
parallels he has discovered between the visual and auditive territories.
In both cases, the technical layout may easily invite deeper, possibly
subconscious connections to be read into the piece.
7 What does the term Movement in a work of art actually
The creative process is under threat, is put at stake by a craving for frag-
mentation and [self]destruction. This urge for destruction, this risk
is intrinsic to any creative process. This is explained by Ehrenzweig, who
in this context refers to the mythological and familiar theme of the God
who must die, who must be killed. The God must give way to a younger and
more powerful figure [often a younger version of himself], who will
assure fertility in every sense – also the fertility of the earth – for years to
come.
42
8
The torn body of Osiris that is scattered over the fields is an analogy for
the sacred image of the seed that is ofered to the earth for the sake of new
growth in the coming Spring. Poemagogic works of art, in all their
variations, reflect various stages of creativity. They are about universally
liberation as part of the ritual necessity of the sacrifice.
Against this background, Ehrenzweig mentions the example of Pentheus
who is torn into pieces by his mother in a fit of madness. Once she has
recovered from her frenzy, she wants to bury him, just like Isis wants
to bury Osiris. She collects his body parts. This is also what the priestess
of the Maenads does: she tears apart Dionysus who appeared as a Taurus,
before she liberates the archetypical Dionysus. Much more famous, and
a tragic image that is close to us all, is Orpheus, whose singing head, torn
from the body, remains attached to his lyre, while the name of Eurydice
is still on his murmuring lips. A song that echoes through the ages, maybe
even into the vocals of Boulez.
Notations
by Paul Klee: Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre, 1921
There is a special method of art analysis which examines
all stages of a work, back to its origin. I use the word
genesis to refer to this method. The first Bible book of
Moses, which tells the story of the creation of the earth, is
also called Genesis. The world surrounding us is charac-
terized by historical elements. We, practically oriented
people, focusing on images, will by nature be drawn to
precedes the origin of form, or to put it easier: the first
brush stroke. That is to say: a history unrelated to the urge
of man to articulate himself and unrelated also to his need
for expression. It is not only about an external need for
expression, but also about a more general raison d’être, an
attitude to life that is connected to an inner need to
manifest oneself in a certain way.
I want to emphasize this to avoid that a work is mistakenly
thought to consist of ‘form’ only.
If we want to construct a certain coherence, more specifi-
cally by using the aspect of movement [movement that has
been generated, passed on or forced], and if we want to
abstract it into ‘nature’– i.e. the singular nature of the
work – more is needed than just a clear frame of mind.
mean? Our works do not move, or do they? No, the work
itself simply remains where it is. In spite of that, it is all
movement. All that is in the process of formation, is
characterized by movement. The work is created in
phases: ‘stone by stone’, ‘bit by bit’. That is the initial
movement in the creative process. This initial act alone
already involves time, by its nature.
In the creative process, the creator of the work will
soon after this initial movement be driven to make a 43
countermovement. That leads to the initial reception of
the work, or to put it simply: the creator assesses what he
has created so far. The person receiving the work of
art – who may in the first instance be also the creator of
that work – so to say takes the reverse route.
And he too is set in motion, entirely subject to the factor
time.

44 45
 4 Paraphrases 1
Unheard music

Original text by Pierre Boulez, 1955, 1966 At the limit of the fertile land
(Paul Klee)

Once a composer switches to using electronic means,

choosing to leave behind the standard instruments, he
will encounter numerous obstacles and barricades. In
part, these are of a technical nature: he must learn how to
work in a studio and how to operate electronic equip-
ment. But that is merely a matter of adjustment. The true
leap in the dark is about the inner hearing, which is
seriously challenged in this transitional phase toward
electronic music. An entire frame of reference with its
laws and limitations is disrupted. Many boundaries are
abolished, while at the same time several matters must be
measured very meticulously, so that new boundaries are
again formed.
It is a fact that the instrumental and electronic domains
of music require totally diferent approaches. Imagine
how familiar sound colours, intervals, dynamics, rules for
the duration of tones and all their variations have become
to us.
Take slowing down, for instance, which is always an issue.
Musicians first and for all must bear in mind their own
physical abilities and limitations. We must always take
into consideration the options in sound production
within the exact boundaries determined by each sound
corpus. The crux is that, from now on, the possibilities to
produce diferent timbres, tones, volumes and durations
are infinite: we can now create an entire sound universe
by ourselves.
Such a radical change, meaning that the composer can
now create all sounds himself, is unprecedented in the
history of music. For this does not simply involve one
aspect, but the structure of music itself, a structure in
which the performance is incorporated. In that context,
the composer is at the same time the interpreter of his
own work. In a way, he works much like a painter: he has a
direct influence on the quality of the work as a whole,
46 including its eventual presentation. 47
 There are various ways in which electronic devices can be
used. It is important to realize that the listener will feel
somewhat uneasy when listening to the radical newness
of this type of sound production. And the composer will
be put of his balance by the possibilities literally unheard
of.
In general, one could say that electronic music gives us
the opportunity to use these unheard possibilities in a
relatively easy way. Simple mechanisms, accelerations,
slowdowns – the editing techniques themselves – will
soon transport us to futuristic spheres. For a unison
canon, just place a tape on two or three magnetophon
heads. For a fugue, simply play that tape on diferent
speeds, and an ostinato can be created through a tape
running nonstop. With these technical means, all of that
is a piece of cake. But of course, that is not what this is
about. Because who would want to write a unison canon
these days, or a fugue with transpositions and tempo
changes? And who is still keen on composing a continu-
ous ostinato? The answer is: only beginners or other
simple minds with no musical development.
Compared to all that has been created in the past, these
are just simple examples. Unfortunately, the new sorcer-
er’s apprentices cannot stand up to their illustrious and
technically much more competent predecessors. It must
however be noted that the techniques mentioned here
may prove to be useful exercises in eforts to stimulate
truly modern thinking about music. Also, the contrast
between ‘electronic’ and ‘normal’ music must not be
pushed too far or caricaturized – as if there were a ‘before
and after the Fall of man’.
The course of the development of music is not only
determined by phenomena that are each other’s logical
result. These phenomena are also often necessitated,
in a radical way, by the creative process.
New possibilities lead to new techniques and, as a matter
of fact, it is in the end all about a whole new perspective
cast in a unique form.
This may lead to musical problems that have not been
seen before, since the technique after all requires that
new questions are answered.
A composer must cross all kinds of boundaries, he will be
confronted with the problem of continuity, of the inner
coherence of a work, or its continuation. These problems
are related to pitch, duration, intensity – i.e. the vol-
ume – and finally to the most complex phenomenon of all:
timbre. We have never been so much aware of the strong
relationship between these elements as we are now. This
is true for both sound structure and sound production.
In order to make electronic music sound in reality, several
1 obstacles must be overcome.
inouï
2
jamais entendu There is a risk that electronic works will soon loose their
charm. After all, the music will sound from loudspeakers
and no physical musical gesticulations are involved. This
will lead to inevitable reactions, first of all on the efect of
alienation. The point here is that a stereophonic playback
in space is diferent from a mise en scène with or without
theatrical efects [which we had become accustomed to].
This is a structural necessity. The question here is
whether we will need concert halls at all if there are no
performing musicians on stage. Are concert halls not
inextricably linked to instruments and instrumentalists?
Should we maybe change our attitudes when listening to
electronic music, or should we try and find a visual
alternative to match this modern type of music?
When playing music, the performing artist – and this
applies in general – has an efect on the audience. Equip-
ment has many qualities, but only very little when com-
pared to a performing musician, especially when it
concerns aspects that cannot be precisely measured.
Take, for example, the tempo in the interpretation of
a musician. How do we experience that when we compare
it to the tempo generated by a machine? The ‘measurabil-
ity’ and the precision that exist in electronic music are
very relative. On the other hand, in traditional music, to
which after all we have become most accustomed, we
must deal with margins of non-correctable errors, and the
fact that the amount of inspiration and imagination may
fluctuate per day.
There would be no reason to worry about the fact that
performing musicians disappear from view in elec-
tronic music if ‘the miracle of music’ were not in a way
jeopardized. The freedom the composer takes in dealing
with sound materials; will he eventually regret it?
Will he truly succeed in connecting these two sound
worlds and creating a true synthesis, an addition to
already existing structural possibilities? Or should we just
spare ourselves that nostalgia for another kind of
Gesamtkunst?
Composers of electronic music must be able to use
all intervals, with no exception. In the transition period
from free atonality to the note-row technique, the former
equal temperament with its twelve equal steps seemed to
have become meaningless. Looking back it can be said
that there had long been a demand for intervals smaller
than semitones, from a quarter tone to a third or even a
sixteenth. But the compositions in which these micro-
intervals were applied, were hardly significant. Some kind
of hyperchromatism emerged. The basic system with its
interval structure did not really change because of these
new opportunities. In the most recently composed
electronic pieces this idea has become much more mean-
ingful. That music does no longer revolve around hyper-
chromatism, tempered or not, but it introduces a specific
sound universe, unique for each individual piece. The
48 interval as a basic unit technically plays no role here and 49
the choice of a unit other than the customary semitone
must be seen as the ‘selection of a temperament’ for each
individual composition. All intervals are functionally
subordinate to that basic temperament and this frames
musical expectations.
The fact that our ears are conditioned to hear semitones
cannot be ignored. They have the irrepressible tendency
to interpret certain intervals as ‘false’ – false within the
framework of that familiar equal temperament and it is
universally known that the octave plays a fundamental
role in that framework. However, we are now free to
choose another interval as our basis. The diference
created between the two systems may in a spatial sense
be compared to the diference between a flat and a bent
surface.
As has been explained before, the observations of the ear
also depend on the register and the context in which
intervals are perceived. A micro-interval can only be
discerned within a limited tessitura. A similar mechanism
is at work in relation to the duration of tones: if there is
only a small diference between two durations, it is
almost impossible to indicate which of the two is longest.
In case of a relatively large interval like a duodecime,
which is an octave plus a fifth, it would not necessarily
be noticeable if this interval were extended by a sixteenth
tone. But the extension of a major second by a sixteenth
will be evident immediately. Like the eye, the ear demon-
strates a capacity for adaptation. The sensitivity of the ear
is not the same for the entire range of tones; its powers of
observation are less in case of extremely high or
extremely low tones. It is even more sensitive to harmo-
nies; sound as a simultaneity rather than a succession or
continuation of phenomena. In that connection, it is
interesting to note that research on music from the Far or
Near East always stresses its non-harmonic nature to
distinguish it from Western polyphony, which is then
said to explain the latter’s greater richness and
complexity.
So there is more to it: electronic music is not just ‘a
continuum that frees the composer from all chains’. We
must take into consideration that the use of that famous
term, continuum, requires further explanation or even
requires us to make concessions. Electronic music will
have to create a space that matches the ear’s capacity to
adapt: true multi-dimensionality in a stereophonic space.
But more to that later.
Let us first go into the synthesis of the electronic and
instrumental universes, seen from the perspective of
pitch. The question is whether such a synthesis is possible
without the concept of ‘multidimensional space’; multi-
dimensionality in a horizontal or vertical sense, from one
or several positions. It creates structures that correspond
to either larger intervals, based on the semitone as a unit,
or micro-intervals, based on smaller units. In this way,
transitional forms become feasible between tempered
and non-tempered, microcosm and macrocosm. Only
electronic music can cross the boundaries between these
areas, and here familiar sounds of traditional instruments
must be seen as the preliminary stage of the electronic
domain. At least, this could be a working assumption, a
concept that may also be abandoned if other ideas come
up, a utopia we only want to touch upon.
In what precedes, we have reflected on the possibilities to
construct durations as desired, including durations that
cannot be produced by the performing musician: ‘You
simply cut a section from the magnetic tape that corre-
sponds to the desired duration.’ There are however three
complicating factors here: the perception of duration, the
definition of tempo and the continuity of ‘formless time’.
The first problem is less fundamental than the second,
because of the fact that the composer no longer acts as an
intermediary between performer and audience. After all,
everything is pre-determined in electronic compositions.
Formlessness is the main characteristic of time. But now
we can, for the very first time, concentrate on arithmetic
and logarithmic rows that reach the boundary of an actual
continuum. However, the question is: where is that
boundary? We already saw the problems that occur if we
‘cut out’ irrational time values that cannot be perceived;
values that may resemble a written out rubato, but that
must be traced back to another, overarching system.
When an attempt is made here to define musical problems
at a microscopic level, this is done so as to enable further
experiments in the electronic domain. Are edits, tapes,
only meant to serve as solutions to technical problems
encountered in the transmission of sounds? Man cannot
perceive what he cannot create if for that he depends on
a mechanical circuit operating outside his control. At
least, that is what we tend to believe, but this is a fallacy,
an oversimplification thought to be based on a law of
nature. For there is no proof that the ear cannot perceive
subtleties produced in another domain than that of
instrumental music. At the same time, electronic music
does not have a robot function only.
The magnectic tape is not only meant for transmitting
values that cannot be produced on musical instruments,
although the question that is relevant here is why we
would do things the hard way.
Let us now concentrate on tempo and the way it is regis-
tered. How? We will depart from duration, combined in
a row of values in a proportion of 1:2.
To indicate tempi, and the diferent kinds of tempi,
we will apply a general rule that so far has only been used
50 for duration: we adapt the row so many times as to use all 51
possible ways to measure time. The most important
diference with instrumental practice will then lie in the
fact that a row of value-units is selected instead of just
one. Eventually, changeable values will be registered.
But what do we actually mean by ‘tempo’? Undoubtedly,
this is one of the most vague aspects in music, no matter
how many theories have been written about it.
In any case, tempo is not related to some kind of ‘fall’
of the notes, in the way we speak of the fall or drop of
a stream.
Within the development of tempo, certain fast move-
ments are weak, while other slow movements are strong,
although they are perceived as typically slow or fast.
The incidence of harmonic changes, melodic orna-
mentations and emphases in the course of the music
obviously play a role here. As far as instrumental music
is concerned, questions about tempo are not so hard
to answer. Moreover, the performing musician has a
complete set of signs for time indication at his disposal,
but no attention has ever been paid to the absolute
duration of sound.
In the above we have dealt with the way in which dura-
tions can be used when creating a row. The row within
the category ‘tempo’ as an overall classification system in
electronic music is subject to a principle of discontinuity,
while instrumental music mainly relies on principles of
continuity, with changing tempi. Transitions, such as
accelerando and ritardando, play an important structural
role.
It may be futile to compare and contrast instrumental and
electronic music. But again: it is also completely futile to
think that one of these two sound worlds will oust the
other, and it is also nonsense to claim that there will be
a simple transition from one sound world to the other.
Before ending this paragraph about duration, I would like
to mention the principle of the formlessness of time – the
fact that time has no form. We will simply have to deal
with that when editing tape. It is a principle that may
trick us in various ways. Structuring tempo can lead to a
system of durations, and this system can be developed
further in many diferent ways.
We do not need to linger very long over the subject of
dynamics. It does play a role in the creation of sound
structures, but electronic music does not confront us
with new problems specifically in this field. Sound
intensity in instrumental music has been indicated in the
same way for a very long time, by terms like crescendo
and decrescendo. The only aspect that may be new is the
possibility to create totally unrelated sound intensities,
placed on a discontinuous intensity scale.
In the process of adopting a modern way of thinking
about music, nothing is as complex for the performing
musician as to let go of the natural connection between
sound intensity and emotion – a typically nineteenth-
century heritage. And for example, to see dynamics and
nuance as two separate things in order to define grada-
tions in intensity.
To an instrumentalist, it is almost impossible to establish
or fix the exact dynamics used. One and the same forte-
sign is after all interpreted diferently each time, depen-
dent on the context, the attack, or the touch of the tone.
Psychological aspects and particular characteristics of the
instrument can play a role too. Furthermore, we must not
underestimate the deformations created by intensity
scales in instrumental music, depending on the attack or
the touch. We must also take into consideration that
there can be question of ‘imaginary’ or ‘real’ influences on
the work during the composition process. The level of
control ofered by electronic equipment allows maximum
precision.
Of all elements used in the composition process to create
sound structures, we have saved timbre till last. While the
other three dimensions – pitch, duration and inten-
sity – merge in the phenomenon of sound, timbre or
tone-colour reveals the greatest diference and the most
fundamental contrast between customary instruments
and electronic techniques. With regards timbre as a
continuum, the composer must adopt a totally diferent
approach. It is the most confusing element that he will
have to deal with, now, for the first time in the history of
music. The purpose of instrumental pieces was to com-
bine sound characteristics, starting from the sound
bodies, the instruments that produce them, the way in
which they vibrate and the manner in which the sound,
once it is produced, can be sustained. From that perspec-
tive, very little has changed in thousands of years of music
repertoire. It is all about bowing, plucking, striking of
strings; about wind instruments that create sound
through a wind tunnel, a mouthpiece, a reed or through
lip tension. Of old, wood, metal and animal skin have
been used as the basic materials for percussion instru-
ments, with or without a fixed pitch. These three large
families of musical instruments, each subdivided into
three groups, produce the largest part of all ‘natural
tones’.
Gradually, a greater emphasis has been placed on the
acoustic aspect of sound combinations than on the actual
orchestration, also after the introduction of the term
Klangfarbenmelodik in the orchestral world. Like intensity,
orchestration is no longer an ornamental aspect in the
way it used to be during the nineteenth century. Orches-
tration has now become more of a structural tool. A tool
that determines the phenomenon of sound in its entirety.
It is not about imitating ‘natural sounds’, partly because
52 these are so extremely complex that imitation would be 53
practically impossible, and partly because the mere idea electronic music is one of progress, must thus be rejected.
that electronic means are used to substitute natural Rather, the question is which of the two is most
sounds is repulsive. attractive.
This is what hinders almost all specialists in the ‘elec- Once more, and to conclude: all this is about the confron-
tronic instruments store’: because of their hybrid nature tation of two sound worlds, and around multidimen-
and their mechanical character, electronic instruments sional constructs. It is about a quest that will undoubt-
cannot truly deal with timbre. There are various ways in edly lead us, or even force us – in accordance with that
which this can be solved: depart from sine tones, or the title Paul Klee gave one of his paintings – At the limit of the
sum of several frequencies, and then subject the noise to a fertile land.1
process of refinement until it automatically transforms
into sound.

We will now leave all experiments behind and choose

a more general perspective. The first question is: are we
able to abandon our inner preoccupation with natural
overtones? Must we surrender to an arbitrary cohesion
that is exclusively determined by the composer? If we
simply choose either the one or the other method, there
is a risk that some kind of pseudo-natural sound is cre-
ated, meaning that overtones will sound that are unre-
lated to the specific tones they belong to. To achieve
something that is worth listening to, it could be most
wise to adopt a pragmatic attitude. Pragmatic in the sense
that we could alternate between a system of acoustic
connections and a merger of overtones. On that basis we
could continue to work on the ‘sound object’ we have
arrived at. By this of course I do not mean to refer to the
degeneration of promising opportunities in this field into
the kitschy toys that we see today. We could work with
separate blocks of sound, in parallel creative processes,
one transformation constantly leading to another. In that
way we will free ourselves from the obsession that there is
only one classification system that we must obey. I think
that the term sound object as I mean it here prevents that
composers are confronted with a totally undiferentiated
sound universe, and I think that this term eiciently
explains what the word composing in this new context
contains. To be able to compose while using sound
objects as a theoretical basis, the meaning of the row as a
notion must be extended by all possible interactions.

Finally, I will add several remarks on electronic music as

an esthetic project. In the early days of electronic music,
there were great, but naive expectations: freedom,
precision, boundlessness – these were thought to be the
gifts of a truly modern civilization, simply falling into the
composer’s lap. The fresh wind of the twentieth century
blew through music! However, the freedom the com-
poser had so longed for soon became unlimited and had
to be confined in order to avoid experimental caprice. The
stronger the search for more precision, the more that
precision is lost. It even becomes unattainable. Limitless-
ness and the search for limitation are constantly seeking 1
The original text has been published in an
to be balanced. We must therefore be aware of contradic- earlier Dutch translation in Boulez Papers 4,
tions. The idea that the route from instrumental to 54 p. 97-118, Stichting Pierre Boulez, 2012 55

Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar.
Denn ich wohne grad so gut bei den Toten,
wie bei den Ungeborenen.
Etwas näher dem Herzen der Schöpfung als üblich.
Und noch lange nicht nahe genug.
I cannot be grasped in this world at all.
For I live just as comfortably with the dead
as with the unborn.
Somewhat closer to the heart of creation.
And yet not nearly close enough.
From Paul Klee, Gedichte, 1920
56
5 Paraphrases 2
Original text by Pierre Boulez, 1989
Flash of Light on a Face
Paul Klee: The fertile land
I am painting a landscape which is like the
view of the fertile land from the high
mountains in the Valley of the Kings.
The polyphony of the depths and the
atmosphere have remained as transparent
as possible.
Paul Klee to his wife Lily, 17 April 1929
How often have we not seen yet that brilliant artists of
our times were hailed because of constant innovation,
while others were condemned because they preferred to
leave things as they were. Innovation and, correspond-
ingly, familiarity; perseverance and, correspondingly,
monomania are often mixed up. It is indeed not easy to
avoid the obstacles here. The issues of the day do not lead
you anywhere, but neither does clinging to old habits.
Innovation? Of course, but preferably through an organic
process and in such a way that changes of perspective are
possible.
Neither in music, nor in painting are there many exam-
ples of progress that benefits both dynamics and diver-
sity. Klee is one of very few innovators whose thinking
and creativity develop through continuous transforma-
tions of views and actions, in such a way that it would be
implausible and dangerous to predict the course of all
that in retrospect. It is a fact that he has not explored all
areas with the same consistency or efectiveness. But an
overall view of his work in hindsight reveals great cer-
tainty, absolute self-confidence, while at the same time
the essential questions remain unanswered. We can rely
on the fact that, once a problem is touched upon, it will be
approached in a consistent manner and that the outcome
is crystal clear. And moreover: that several real and
interesting problems are discussed. No useful step will be
missed unless it leads to a certain obligation, and if it does 57
not provoke all conceivable reactions then at least there
are interim conclusions that can be perfected in a later
stage. In case an obstruction comes up, an underlying
structure is revealed that lends it inevitability, while it
does not come across as anecdotal or improbable. Is it not
so that an artist who follows his deepest instincts in this
way achieves the most and also the best results?
The first time I saw paintings by Paul Klee was in an
exhibition organized by Christian Zervos in the Palais
des Papes during the first Avignon Festival, July – August
1947. At that time, Klee was nothing but a name to me.
To my recollection, his paintings hung in a corner of the
gallery together with other large-format works that
immediately monopolized the attention. Nevertheless,
I was struck by Klee’s paintings. They made a lasting
impression and arose in me a desire for more.
It is said more often that a first encounter with Klee’s
work does not fascinate the viewer immediately. One
may even feel that this type of art is a little too refined,
too precious. But behind that initial emotion, that first
impression, a power is unfolding that encourages deeper
reflection. Nowhere are there any violent or aggressive
signs; this work is convincing the viewer with a perma-
nent persuasiveness. Some of Klee’s paintings can be
experienced on at least two levels. The view will move
from front to back, from one level to the other, and will
focus on corresponding or divergent elements.
You seem to have landed in the most perfect state
of – motionless – contemplation. There are only very
few works that are so closely related to polyphony in
music.
About thirty years later, Stockhausen gave me Das bildner-
ische Denken, the book that contains Klee’s Bauhaus
lessons. While presenting it, he expressly remarked,
and drummed into me: ‘You will see that Klee is the best
composition teacher of all.’ I thought his enthusiasm
went a little too far; in my view I had already received
some good composition lessons, and I had already com-
posed works like Le marteau sans maître.
Since I could not yet read German, I studied the examples
in the text in order to reconstruct its logic by myself,
which was not always easy to do. The more I explored
these lessons, the more I became aware that Stockhausen
was completely right. Hardly any of the examples I was
unravelling were related to music. Most of the time they
had nothing to do with it, but in all instances I could
nevertheless make connections with my own work.
From then on, I became more and more attached to Klee.
Texts on the creative process by a creative genius of such
stature, and in such acute wordings, are very rare. I am
not only referring to painters here. Amongst them,
Cezanne is the typical example of an artist who has
remained a mystery to us. There are only a few letters in
which he writes about his paintings. In these, he uses his
own individual vocabulary, which is not always very
clarifying.
The uniqueness of Klee lies in the fact that he does not
intend to explain his methods to us. He tells us how he
works and why. He does not provide any clarifications or
comments on his creations. What he ofers is little more
than a simple notification, or a series of notifications,
about his own life. He remains reticent about himself, but
instead shares his views and helps us to understand these.
He is the most intelligent, inspiring and creative teacher
one could wish for. And that is how I discovered the
educational works of Klee during a phase in which I was
already well under way in my own creative development.
It was a discovery that confirmed my own ideas and that
symbolized these in a visual, direct way.
What struck me so in Das bildnerische Denken; what was it
that could influence me as a musician so strongly and
would later cause me to look upon the subject of compos-
ing in a radically diferent way? It had to do with lan-
guage. When we are personally involved in a certain
technical process with a particular idiom, we tend to
adopt the attitude of a specialist. And wherever we fear
that we might convey our message in rather too general
terms, we will eliminate that risk by using specialist
vocabulary. A musician trying to clarify something will
use music terminology, and his explanation will not be
understood by those unfamiliar with that idiom. Any
technical vocabulary may cause misunderstandings; that
is what everyday practice shows.
Nothing of the sort with Paul Klee. His work is devoid of
specialist vocabulary: his idiom is so common, the exam-
ples he uses are so universal and so fundamentally obvious
that the lessons we draw from them can be applied to any
technical procedure. In other words: he reduces the
characteristics of imagination to simplicity and by doing
so confronts us with two facts:
1
We must follow the elements that are available to us in
any idiom back to their essence, meaning – and that is so
important here – that, regardless of the complexity of that
idiom, we must first understand its core so that we can
subsequently transform its components into univocal
principles.
2
At the same time, he confronts us with the power of
deduction, the ability to start from one central idea and
to let it grow into a great number of branches.
One solution is absolutely insuicient. There has to be
a range of solutions, a network of branches, like a tree.
And he succeeds in ofering very convincing examples of
that.
Klee did not manifest himself immediately as a painter.
58 We know that he could not decide between music, 59
literature and painting. In times of despondency, he even
engaged in sculpture. ‘At times I thought that I could
draw; then again I was not able to do anything. In the
course of the third winter [that I was working], I even
became convinced that, without any doubt, I would never
be able to paint. I thought about sculpture and started
engraving. The one thing I probably never had any doubts
about was music.’
Klee is not unique in his struggle to decide on his artistic
career path. After all, every man has doubts at times. Many
a person who at first wants to become a musician, later
adheres to literature. And regardless whether painters,
writers or musicians are concerned, some artists simply
seem to have a late coming out. The artist who knows
from a very young age which path he wants to follow may
be burnt out soon; another produces his first work when
he is already mature and continues to work to old age.
However, the length of a career does not depend on the
age at which it was started. Some talents are displayed
straight away, as some personalities flourish very quickly;
others follow a completely diferent path. Debussy, for
example, found out that he wanted to be a musician quite
late and he wrote his first characteristic works when he
was already twenty-eight or thirty. The works Ravel
composed when he was twenty-one are already unmistak-
ably Ravel. He immediately developed his own personal
style.
And Klee? He was born in 1879 in Bern, a city without
international appeal, certainly at that time. The musical
atmosphere that surrounded him was that of a provincial
town. Born of a family of musicians, he receives violin
lessons from the age of seven, and he becomes a substitute
at the Bern city orchestra at eleven. He is almost twenty
when he leaves for Munich, a city ofering a rich and
varied music life, where he starts his education to become
a painter. In 1901 ‘he has definitively said goodbye to
literature and music’.
After having returned to Bern in 1902, he also resumes his
former position as a first violinist at the city orchestra and
adjusts himself to the repertoire of that ensemble, which
in my view could never have coped with a piece of Wag-
ner in its original strength. It is common then in the
smaller German and Swiss cities that orchestras have to
make do with smaller sizes than actually prescribed. The
music scene is limited and new repertoire is not available.
Opera productions that Klee can take part in during those
years certainly are of some quality, but that is all there is
to be said about them. No matter how talented he is, he
has no chance of discovering those works that simply are
not programmed there. He can only construct a personal
musical universe from what is ofered to him. Had his
musical horizon remained limited to Bern, his knowledge
of symphonic music would also have stopped there.
However, he tries to discover more contemporary works
whenever he can. A guest performance of the orchestra
opens new opportunities: it brings him to Zürich, where
he sees Richard Strauss conduct one of his own pieces.
He had already discovered Strauss while he was studying
in Munich where – according to biographer and friend
Will Grohmann – the number of concerts Klee attends,
and the number of vocalists and conductors he sees, is
inconceivable. It is clear from Klee’s diary what and who
his favourites are. During a tour through Italy he spends
as much time going to concerts and operas as visiting
museums.
In 1906, Klee marries a pianist he has met during his first
stay in the Bavarian capital and takes up residence in
Munich. Together with her and their children he starts to
play music, which he continues to do for the rest of his
life. Later, in Weimar, as a teacher at Bauhaus, he plays in a
string quartet every week. He even learns to read the alto
clef, so that he can alternate the violin and viola parts.
So-called Hausmusik [music performed at home] usually
involves amateurs playing simple repertoire, meaning
that Brahms would not be their first choice. Playing
Brahms requires an advanced instrumental level, so that
they would rather play Haydn or Mozart. For although
Mozart requires very delicate interpretations, his music is
technically relatively easy. This preference also seems to
be culturally defined: Einstein and Heisenberg had a
preference for Mozart and chamber music too.
We must not forget that modern registration techniques
did not exist at the time. The only way in which one could
become familiar with a piece of music was by playing it
live at home. And in the end, it is better to play the piano
scores of Brahms’ symphonies than not to hear them at
all. Where the average amateur at some stage could no
longer stay current with the trends in music and, for
example, would find the works of Richard Strauss
unbearable, Klee, intelligent and imaginative as he was,
immediately saw what was so ground-breaking and
important about them. It would be incorrect to think that
he loved only Mozart and Bach. In 1909 he declared
Pelléas et Mélisande to be the ‘most beautiful opera since
Wagner’s death’.
In 1913, after having heard Pierrot Lunaire, he writes in his
diary: ‘You are a dead man, you ordinary little man, your
time has come.’ He could not have described the situation
more accurately. Nevertheless, he himself preferred to
play classical music, and heard contemporary music only
during concerts. Will Grohmann and he have discussed
this matter many times. Grohmann claimed that, in his
own violin playing, Klee stuck to composers from earlier
times because their sense of structure coincided with his.
This correlation ofered him some guidance in the laby-
rinth where his own research had brought him. And did
60 he himself not maintain that the quintet in Don Giovanni 61

3
Boulez does not refer to the dramatic
ending of this correspondence by
Kandinsky’s anti-Semitic afront to
Schönberg.
is closer to us than the epic stirrings of Tristan und Isolde?
‘Mozart and Bach are more modern than the nineteenth
century,’ he said, by which he wanted to make clear that
he could not bear Romanticism.
At Bauhaus, established after the First World War, Klee
witnessed many musical experiments. Oskar Schlemmer
wrote ballets for which he made the choreography and
the stage design. There were regular high quality con-
certs. Hindemith was a frequent guest and also Stravinsky
played at Bauhaus. Klee met him there. Much more than
Ravel, whom he found rather crude, or Kodaly, whom he
found too fashionable, he appreciated Hindemith and
Stravinsky. Both of them embodied disapproval with
Romanticism: the former in Germany, the latter in
France.
Speaking of the relations between Bauhaus and the
Second Vienna School: it is a fact that Gropius, the
founder of Bauhaus, had intended to appoint Schönberg
as a teacher. This shows that he had plans for the school to
deal with music in its most adventurous form. This
tendency was not new, given the fact that the first issue of
Der blaue Reiter discussed compositions by Schönberg,
Webern and Berg, all three representatives of the Vienna
School. Next to that, there was a close relation between
Schönberg and Kandinsky, who had met before the war
and maintained a correspondence ever since.3
Drawing parallels between the various creative forms of
expression may come across as artificial. This has however
not led to fewer attempts to make a comparison, espe-
cially between painting and music; two worlds without
any similarities or identical laws. The possibility to refer
to Debussy as an impressionist had existed for twenty or
thirty years before the term was used in painting too. It
has become a cliché to say that painting is always a little
‘behind’. Take Watteau and Mozart, a cliché that, accord-
ing to Will Grohmann, Klee did not by any means take
too lightly. Reciprocity or the mutual influencing of two
worlds does not often lead to art of the same level; on the
contrary. The work of Wagner has, in spite of him, been a
source of inspiration to the worst painting ever. I am not
referring here to the scenic representations of the early
Bayreuth years. After all, we cannot see these as standard
as they reflect the staging and theatre techniques that are
typical of those days. Apparently, Wagner himself was so
dissatisfied with the decors against which his characters
would develop that he reproached himself – he who had
created the invisible orchestra [by constructing a special
orchestra pit, in Bayreuth, em] – for not having designed
an invisible stage too. But all these renderings, inspired
by the Ring, Nordic mythology, the death of Siegfried,
the Rhine daughters, are mediocre and meaningless
paintings, reminiscent of an outdated dramaturgy.
Even before the emergence of impressionism, Corbet
held a diferent view, which is more modern and more
convincing than the views of other painters who wanted
to ‘visualize’ Wagner. It allows us to see the similarities
between literature and music. Wagner and Balzac can
be seen as closely related individuals.
In my view, the most interesting Wagner is not the
‘Gothic’, whose tenor falls behind the literature of his
days. When he composes the Ring, Baudelaire is writing
Les fleurs du mal; when he works on Parzival, Rimbaud
ends his career as a poet. He is still working on Das
Liebesverbot when Büchner completes Woyzeck in 1837. In
spite of his dramaturgic power, the sources he uses for his
theatrical pieces do not conform to the literature of his
times. That literature evolves along very diferent lines,
while his work is still inspired by another era. However,
his musical thought eventually strongly influences the
course of history, because it is deeply rooted in the future.
When Wagner dies in 1883, all the arts have forever left
behind them the safe haven of Romanticism.
The themes and motives used by Berg and Mahler tend
toward the narrative, toward the rendering of a story,
the verbal reproduction of a drama – something that in
symphonic music was largely unknown because of its
more limited and fixed representational frame. Just like
Berg, Mahler broke down this formal framework to allow
for a freer narrative style, reminiscent of Proust and
Joyce.
Wozzeck for example consists of fifteen scenes, con-
structed in accordance with a characteristic form: sonata,
rondo, or: an invention based on one note, one chord. In
a similar way, each chapter from Ulysses centres around
one idea and focuses on one linguistic element, or is
entirely constructed on the basis of one single technique.
It is remarkable how closely related these two innovators,
these creative minds are, without being familiar with each
other’s work.
In music, Joyce liked Celtic song and belcanto. Relying
on his correspondence, we think that Berg had not heard
of Ulysses at all. They have both followed their paths,
during the same years, without ever having met.
One would almost think that the history of creative art
forms has inevitable outcomes, predestined by history.
It is the blending of elements, conscious or not, that
lends a certain era a profile, on a deeper level, as its basis.
The coherence has no necessity, and may even be inex-
plicable – sometimes scattered, sometimes stunningly
exact.
In the twentieth century, comparisons between painters
and musicians are very common. The parallels between
Stravinsky and Picasso are typical. Although the two have
never worked closely together, Pulcinella is remembered
as the perfect example of a collaboration with the theatre,
in the same way that the cover of Ragtime passes for a
62 perfect symbiosis. Both names, those of Stravinsky and 63
Picasso, are as it were cast in the probing images reminis-
cent of the Ballets Russes. Still, many famous ballets by
Stravinsky [Renard, Le sacre du printemps, Chant du rossignol
and Les noces] were created in collaboration with other
painters: Larionov, Rörich, Ballà, Golovine, Benois,
Matisse, Gontcharova. Important is the striking similar-
ity between Stravinsky and Picasso in their development
during the same period. That similarity, and that shared
perspective, can also be seen in Le sacre du printemps and
the Demoiselles d’Avignon. Later, a similar neo-classicist
tendency is manifest in the works of both of them, for the
first time in Pulcinella. Long before that their works
already expose the same playing with sources of inspira-
tion or models from the histories of music and painting.
Picasso explicitly following Delacroix can be compared to
Stravinsky who had Don Giovanni in mind when he wrote
The Rake’s Progress.
While it seems relatively simple to understand the like-
ness between Stravinsky and Picasso, or to recognize the
common path followed by Kandinsky and Schön-
berg – they did after all inform each other of their devel-
opments – the ainity shown between the works of
Webern and Mondriaan is much more remarkable. They
live in two totally diferent worlds and it is almost certain
that they have never met. It is said that Webern’s knowl-
edge of painting was extremely limited. He was inter-
ested in most traditional and provincial creations. It is
very unlikely that he has ever seen one of Mondriaan’s
paintings. He might have come across his name in a
magazine, but we do not know. As far as we know, music
has played a minor role in Mondriaan’s life. He was
interested mainly in the jazz played at the nightclubs
where he sometimes came to dance. Both artists under-
went a similar development from representation to
abstraction. They lost themselves in an ever increasing
rigidity and a far-reaching limitation of means – a geom-
etry that has reduced the inventive elements to an abso-
lute minimum. Without ever having met, without having
had any direct influence on each other, their works have
reached some kind of mutual harmony. And after having
followed similar paths, they showed at the end of their
careers that, if you subject yourself to rules voluntarily,
you will be able to use more fantasy and radiate more life.
What about Klee? He never had a special preference for
the composers of his time. We know that he follows
premieres with great interest, without maintaining any
personal contacts [with the composer at issue em] after-
wards. Indeed he always returns to Bach and Mozart: as
a student he chose fixed templates to which he remains
loyal. Music to him is attached to the emotions and
reflections of his youth. After having chosen to paint, he
develops in painting and not in music. But the way in
which he deals with music is very fruitful, which is not
something many others can say. Bach and Mozart did not
instil in him an obedient or submissive attitude. He
analyses the methods, ideas and notations of these com-
posers, and subsequently uses the elements he finds there
in his own work. They were crucial for the creativity in
his work and gave it its exceptional importance. Even
Kandinsky, although he was very familiar with the sound
world of Schönberg, did not succeed in giving musical
thought so much depth and inevitability.
There is little point in trying to imagine what the out-
come would have been had Klee listened to Le sacre du
printemps with the same interest he showed in Mozart’s
string quartets. Why would we blame him for remaining
under the influence of the musical education he had
received during his younger years? No matter how alert
or watchful we are, and no matter how closely we follow
the developments of our times, we will never truly forget
those early years and the circumstances that shaped us.
This all the more applies to Klee because his is a common
reaction, typical for the twenties, both in Germany and in
France. People have said farewell to Romanticism.
Forgotten operas like Cosi fan tutte are rediscovered. The
works of Stravinsky, Hindemith, Schönberg display a
neo-classicist style. Klee simply moves with the times. He
is a child of his times, no matter how creative he may be as
an artist. He is a decisive factor in the conception of his
era. People had had enough of the large orchestral works,
those waves of individualism pushed too far, of psycho-
logical and even psychiatric oscillograms. The focus was
now much more on the workings of form, unafected by
sentimental weaknesses. Audiences were longing for
transparent and objective forms of expression.
Klee does not avoid this general tendency. Nevertheless,
he succeeds in retaining full inner independence, and he
has been spared excesses thanks to his undeniable
humour. Although it seems impossible to draw parallels
between the path he followed and that of a contemporary
musician, we may say that some of his drawings, because
of their burlesque nature, call into mind the works of
Stravinsky. L’Ordine del contro-Do may be linked to the
second piece for string quartet by Stravinsky, composed
in 1913–1914.
To me, the humorous, mannerist side of Klee seems very
close to works by Stravinsky from earlier years, from the
Russian period, with similar characteristics: Pribaoutki,
Berceuses du chat, et cetera. There is a similarity between
these two types of works in their inspiration, their
realization. However, Klee’s Bauhaus period of geomet-
ric shapes, divided surfaces, canvases with shapes con-
fined by dots, shows resemblances with works like
Webern’s opus 15, 16, 17, composed a bit earlier. This is
the Webern who had not quite made the shift to the
twelve-note series yet, expressing himself in a free,
already ‘well-organized’ style. When Klee contours his
surfaces with textures of small dots, of various densities
64 and shapes, Webern is using a comparable technique in 65
music. To indicate the duration of a note, he does not
sustain it but instead uses small staccato notes that do or
do not stand close to each other. That is to say: that do or
do not move faster or slower. In totally diferent worlds,
for Klee that of time, for Webern that of space, they have
found their own solutions: small pulses, coloured in
painting, rhythmic in music.
We could draw more parallels, given the diversity of
Klee’s oeuvre. No similarity can be found between his
work and that of a contemporary musician that is as
evident as the resemblances between Mondriaan and
Webern, Leger and Milhaud, Picasso and Stravinsky,
of whom we can say that their working methods show
strong similarities. No references can be found in the
Bauhaus lessons to contemporary pieces of music that
were heard by Klee. In fact, all we see is how he tries to
sketch a plastic form on the basis of a specific piece of
music, using a musical construction on a theme that
consists of one or several parts. For this he uses two bars
from a three-voiced piece by J.S. Bach. We already saw
that this choice does not prove that he has no interest in
the music of his time. It is very likely that he does not
allow himself to thematise a matter in which he deemed
himself incompetent. To him, Bach is much more familiar
territory. He knows the syntax of that music, understands
its forms, the mechanisms of development, and therefore
he ventures to make a graphic transcription of Bach,
using all his imaginative powers.
It must be noted here that in his theoretical writings Klee
takes clearly less examples from music than from his
observations of nature or from speculations on math-
ematics and geometry. Examples of that second type,
especially those dealing with arithmetic relations in
rhythm and the division of space, are however very
closely linked to rhythm and metre as arrangement
systems in music. When Klee teaches his students about
rhythm, he never leaves this term vague, but refers to
clear structures.
Like in the titles of his paintings, Klee often uses music
vocabulary in his lessons. The terms he most frequently
uses are rhythm, sound, intensity, dynamics,variation.
Klee always uses these terms correctly and where he avails
himself of terms like counterpoint, fugue or syncopation,
he knows what they mean. He has developed in-depth
knowledge of Bach’s oeuvre thanks to his active interest
in his works.
There are other painters who have tried to make some
kind of ‘graphic translation’ of music. I remember, for
example, having seen paintings by Matisse that are set to
the Scherzo from Beethoven’s fifth Symphony. But is
Klee simply interested in ‘translation’? Certainly not. His
is much more an attempt to make us aware of the richness
of music in other creative forms of expression, to study
and transpose musical structures. He explains this very
clearly in his writings about polyphony [a term used in
several titles of his]: Polyphon gefasstes Weiss, Polyphonie à
trois sujets, Groupe dynamiquement polyphonique, Polyphonie,
etc.
There is no doubt about the importance of polyphony in
music. Attempts to copy this phenomenon to the area of
design are not necessarily unusual. It would be of great
value if musical discoveries that have led to a unique style
in many polyphonic masterpieces – penetrating deeply
into the cosmic world – could be applied to create a new
view on art, in such a way that these developments and
new accomplishments were used in the plastic arts too.
For the simultaneous occurrence of diferent, unrelated
themes creates a new reality that does not only manifest
itself in music; in the same way that aspects typical of a
certain reality do not only occur in one special occasion,
but are omnipresent, as a basis and a foundation of all that
is happening.
We see that Klee’s intention is absolutely not to create
a rigid parallel of any kind; obviously, that would radi-
cally limit the possibilities to compare sound and image.
What we can learn from him, is that the two worlds have
unique characteristics and that parallels between them
can only be drawn on a structural level.
It is unconceivable that a ‘transcription’ for the other
world could ever be literal. Klee is unique for the way
in which he acquires technical skills and for the fact that
he constantly succeeds in using these skills to create
original and meaningful new perspectives. He exercises
this structural approach, which could just as well be very
dry and heavy, with much poetry and great inventiveness,
full of humour and strength of mind. Some of Klee’s
paintings and drawings are directly related to music
practice, depicting instrumentalists, instruments, con-
ductors, singers; these canvases demonstrate a realistic
type of humour. But Klee does not simply depict; he
‘invents instruments’, such as the Instrument for Modern
Music, or the famous Machine à gazouiller/Zwitscher-
Maschine [twittering machine], which could just as well
have come from Kafka’s mind.
It is interesting to see that this machine inspired several
composers to fantasize on the music that could be com-
posed for it and on how that music would sound. I think,
however, that this machine works best when it is silent.
That silence allows us to imagine all kinds of sounds and
unusual combinations for it that would ‘in real life’ not
come out well.
It would be the same if someone were to write the Sonate
de Vinteuil as described by Proust: a piece with an abun-
dance of details, something that could only exist in the
imagination. Dreams are shattered by reality. That is also
true for Klee: his instruments and musicians are not
66 meant to be heard. But a musician can of course feel 67
prompted, or is prompted to put these fantasies into
practice.
I think that, in these examples from Kafka and Proust, it
is irrelevant to consider to which extent they are realistic.
Their works have been produced from reality, but at the
same time they are so remote from it that each attempt to
turn them into reality would be meaningless. For the
exact same reason, it is impossible to see the paintings of
Elstir in another way than as the little patch of yellow
wall of Vermeer that Bergoth remembers when he dies.
And no technician would be able to reconstruct or put
into motion the machine from La Colonie pénitentiaire.
However frustrating this may be, if by any means we want
to step from fantasy into reality, we will have to abandon
that ambition.
By ‘seeing’, something diferent is communicated than
in case of ‘hearing’. It is too simple to assume that acous-
tic principles are equal to the principles applicable to
colour. In brief: all comparisons will turn out to be
defective, far-fetched, unfounded.
The fact that there are audible and visual frequencies does
not infer that identical laws apply. It is already implicit in
the creation process that sound or timbre difer from
colour. It is however true that there may be parallels
between both creative processes. Take, for example,
ornamentation in music – a fundamental aspect. If we
use the variation principle, it is important to start from
a simple melodic line, derive a limited number of fixed
elements from it which we then twist around that melody
and subsequently enrich it, give it more meaning, and
stretch it out in time and space. Similarities can exist
between the original melodic line and its elaborate
version, the ornamentation, both in melody and in
harmony. If, for example, an originally melodic line is
emphasized through a sequence of chords whereas these
same chords are supporting the ornamented melodic line,
it becomes much easier to recognize the relation between
that complex line and the basic pattern.
To take this concept further, Klee draws a line and subse-
quently adds decorations. He winds spiral forms around
it, at some distance or not, spirals that become more and
more tight. His drawing is a true-to-life transcription
of a melodic line, and that is also the parallel he wants to
draw. It is indeed possible to see the melodic line in a
score as a drawn line.
Now that we are coming to this point, I would like to
reflect on a diferent figure: a line connecting the notes
on a staf, where notes must be seen as geometric points.
Their exact meaning is irrelevant. There is nothing
against using the graphic equivalent of the main theme
from the slow movement of Mozart’s clarinet quin-
tet – the composer who comes closest to the emotions of
Klee – although a visual reduction can only have a very
limited efect compared to the sound of the music itself.
What is interesting, is that Klee tries to create such a
graphic transcription of one of Bach’s violin sona-
tas – a literal graphic transcription. Of course, the melodic
line was not composed to eventually produce a beautiful
transcription. Turning it around, it is also true that a
wonderful curve could, when transferred into notes,
result in an utterly corny melodic line.
The human eye is not capable of assessing the exact values
of the intervals in a certain curve, and that is also true for
the repetition of intervals or the relation between inter-
vals and their harmonic context. This applies to all
elements that determine the melodic line. Other criteria
are needed; dimensions that cannot be shown visually and
that no drawing can do justice to.
On the basis of Klee’s examples, our starting point must
be that there is a main line with side lines and that we
must try to understand how these side lines are geometri-
cally related to the main line. Klee, for that matter, always
takes a very pragmatic approach. His observations are
very keen and he describes them in most direct terms. For
example, after having explained the meaning of an
ornamentation in relation to the simple melodic line on
which it is based, he writes: ‘Think of a man who is
walking his dog, and imagine how that dog walks right
and left of him. Like that!’ But how many people can link
‘walking the dog’ to the abstract idea of musical orna-
mentation? Everything, however banal, will take on a life
of its own.
Amongst Klee’s didactic writings we can find an impor-
tant chapter on perspective in the context of visual
development. This text denotes a radical renewal of the
definition Italian Renaissance painters had assigned to
the term perspective; a definition that would survive for
so long.
Using a very simple example, namely rails, Klee asks his
students to imagine a multi-layered perspective that
shifts depending on the place on the canvas where the
imaginary viewer stands. The perspective of the viewer
who is standing on the right side will be diferent from
the perspective of a viewer positioned on the left side or
in the middle. This is the so-called lateral visual angle. But
there is also a vertical visual angle.
Klee combines diferent perspectives on horizontal and
vertical levels, positioned from right to left. In this way,
a three-dimensional movable space is easily constructed.
He explains to his students how they can create a space
with a shifting centrepoint, and also shows the efects
these shifts may subsequently have on the intensity of the
colours. He stresses how important the level and height
of the view is, and makes them aware of the consequences
of the relation between the height of the view and the
horizon. Klee painted several canvases on the basis of
68 these principles, using a multi-layered perspective, with 69
spaces that are connected and that overlap. To show them
the transformations experienced by the eye through
perspective, he asks his students to do the following
exercise: ‘place, at eye level, a glass plate in front of the
object you wish to convey on paper. On that plate, rough
out the object you wish to show. If you turn the plate, you
will see various optical transformations.’ This efect has in
the past also been used by several mannerist painters.
Klee, to whom a drawing in precise perspective is in itself
meaningless – anyone can do it – takes these possibilities
further, studies the tension that is created between the
two surfaces and invents a mode of representation in
which space and movement are combined.
The main task of the artist is to create movement, using
several laws as a basis, to soon thereafter abandon these
laws again. Traditional techniques do not allow for such
methods. Principles to which Klee lent such weight have
equivalents in music, especially in orchestral music. Take
for example Schönberg’s Orchesterstücke opus 16, or
Debussy’s La mer, the second movement to be exact: Jeux
de vagues. These works display a musical intensity that
finds its basis in notation, themes, the development of
themes, harmonies, etc. But this musical authenticity, this
musical object is perceived from diferent sound perspec-
tives that are created by diferent instrumental sections.
One section emphasizes the relief of the melodic line; the
function of another is to penetrate through the harmonic
web.
Shifts in perspective are created in such a way that the
lapse of time starts to play a role within that perspective.
Debussy, for instance, created harmonic patterns that are
repeated at a fixed pace, patterns with double sharps,
others with triplets, meaning that they are somewhat
slower. These two patterns, that we could refer to as
‘spacio-temporal’ – they are related to time and at the
same time they are audible or acoustic objects in
space – are superimposed. The development is taking
place without the deliberate intention of the composer to
evoke a musical perspective. We can elaborate on this
endlessly. For example, we can isolate a musical fragment
from it that can be heard from diferent perspectives at
the same time, or a fragment that progresses in time while
the acoustic perspective on that fragment is shifting,
depending on its development.
Klee’s lessons have enabled me to understand and clarify
this problem, as I found it in the scores of Schönberg and
Stravinsky, at an exclusively musical level.
Before Klee crossed my path, my mind functioned like
that of a musician – which is not the best way to see things
sharply. Since Klee as a painter succeeded in laying bare in
an excellent manner several aspects that are identical in
music, my views have changed, and so has my perspective.
I think, for example, that it is possible to use his ideas
about perspective by calling into play the term
heterophony. The original definition of heterophony is the
superimposing of two of more diferent forms of one
melodic line. This mechanism is based on the idea that
rhythmic representations of an ornamentation can be
varied, while leaving the basic form unchanged. We can
find this technique for example in music from Central
Africa and Bali. If we adopt this principle to a system of
lines, i.e. to a polyphonic setting, we can superimpose
diferent representations based on the same material
because we have various instrument groups. For that is
when a changing acoustic approach to one and the same
phenomenon takes form, comparable to what Klee
describes as a shift in perspective. More than once, the
views of Klee have given me the opportunity to – as I do
here – shed clear light on topics that I could never have
grasped in the same way if I had followed the musical path.
At a certain point in his career, Klee works a lot with the
chessboard. One could think that he was obsessed with
chess, but such was absolutely not the case. He associates
the chessboard with an important theme in music: the
proportions of time and space. What I am referring to
here is the horizontal arrangement of time and the
vertical arrangement of space. How does that work if
someone reads a score? Time is arranged horizontally and
always progresses from left to right. Space is: the chords,
melodic lines, and intervals that can be reduced to a
vertical arrangement. The vertical axe on the chessboard
correlates with intervals; the horizontal one represents
time. Where Klee adopts this principle, it is interesting to
see how he varies it. On the canvas titled En rythme for
example, he uses the regular chessboard: black and white.
But what he shows us is that this alternation of black and
white is not obligatory. The rhythm of the chessboard
may also be created by more than two elements. For
instance, it can be tripartite: black-white-blue. This
results in a diferent division of space: not only by module
2, but also module 3, or module 4, or whatever modules
we wish to make use of. Nothing keeps us from inventing
new variations. Why would we stop at that mechanical
repetition of black-white-blue, black-white, et cetera?
That would become a bore.
More variations are possible through permutation of
colours: blue-white-black, then white-black-blue, based
on the idea that every new colour creates a separation, and
on condition that we connect the modules by one colour
only. This theme can be approached from an infinite
number of angles.
One of these could be that we modulate the module itself,
meaning that we start from a two-coloured chessboard,
then extend this module from two to four colours and
reduce it again. Once this is done, an important formal
experiment will have occurred on that chessboard: the
division of space according to this scheme will prove that
70 a module can expand and subsequently contract again. 71
All this on the understanding that not only a ‘striped’
space has been created, split up into separate units, but
that this space was modulated in a directive man-
ner – directive meaning that the size and the way in which
that size develops are measured simultaneously.
If I have elaborated somewhat extensively on the theme
of the chessboard here, it is because of its great impor-
tance to music. In music, the concept of time is also based
on a module. Time has no absolute value. Chronometric
measurement is absolutely meaningless, except of course
if we have to compose a concert programme or record a
concert, and if all this is bound to a certain amount of
time. No one will become excited from just the chrono-
metric duration of a symphony or any other piece. It is
the experience of time that matters; we are subjected to
time through the pulse, that is: through what is generally
referred to as rhythm. A pulse, regular or irregular, is
a device that enables time measurement, in the same way
that a module defines space and enables us to measure
distances. However, the space module is also the time
module, since it allows us to move time forward. Let me
give an example. It may be too literal, but the point is that
if there is a pulse on every second beat, then on the third,
and then on the fourth, the perception of the pulse as
such will become stronger. We can mute that efect by
introducing a completely irregular pulse, and in that way
confuse the perception. The factor time will then be
organised in the same way as space. However, the actions
taken here are not identical and we must understand why
they are so diferent if we venture to draw any parallels.
The distinctive feature of space on a canvas, even if it is
large, is that we can see it at a single glance; we can imme-
diately see its borders, and across these borders observe
the construction as a whole. Its presence can be absorbed
and understood in its totality. In music, the perception of
time and modules is completely diferent: it is much more
focused on the moment that – I am adding this for the
sake of completeness – is not repeated as such. The canvas
on the other hand, also if it is arranged like a chessboard,
can be examined in its totality from the start. Subsequent
observations, from various angles, will add to our under-
standing of the global image. The opposite is true about
music: a moment or at least the connection between
moments will create the musical experience. If there is
a regular pulse, we can measure what is going to come,
and also what we experience if the pulse leads us from
one moment to the next.
To put it briefly, we will eventually have a comprehen-
sive, but virtual view of space. The comprehensive view
of the painting however is real and where it becomes
divergent – where that comprehensive view is split up
– it becomes almost virtual because it isolates diferent
viewing angles.
In music, the factor time has a direct efect on the senses;
music is perceived immediately. The reconstruction of
an entire work is fiction. One cannot have a real view of
a piece of music; it can only be perceived fragmentarily.
A synthesis is created in retrospect and is by definition
virtual.
Klee places great emphasis on the composition as a
phenomenon and on the internal relations between its
constituent parts. In my view, his lessons must be seen in
the German tradition, which attaches great importance to
continuity and thematic development. This preoccupa-
tion can also be found in the works of the lesser gods
among composers, but primarily in role models Bach and
Mozart, for whom Klee had a special liking. We see that
various works of his bear titles that have been inspired
directly by music – and once we are confronted with
Fugue en rouge the association with Bach is almost inevita-
ble, although we must avoid too close comparisons. Have
we not seen the word fugue on a canvas before? What is
more, Joyce once claimed that one of the chapters from
Ulysses was constructed in the form of a fugue. Musicians
will be sceptical about such claims, and rightly so.
The fugue is an exceptionally strict form with clearly
defined principles. If we are saying: a fugue has a subject
and a countersubject, its tonal scheme begins with the
exposition of a theme, followed by an answer that moves
from tonic to dominant, then by a divertimento leading
to a related key – an academically trained musician will
understand us straight away, but it does not mean any-
thing to someone who did not study music. It is useless
to drop these kind of formulations at random. My point is
that we are dealing here with a meticulously defined form
that is subject to strict rules, not only on the organisation
of themes and figures, but also on the composition itself.
I would also like to emphasize that there is a systematic
arrangement of combinations, from simple to complex;
a process subject to the rules of counterpoint, rules that
disqualify all other solutions. To musicians, the fugue is
a delicate subject.
Imagine a carafe. Someone tells me: this is a carafe. And
indeed, it is a carafe, for various reasons. Now, a fugue is
a specific type of carafe that can contain one kind of
liquid, and one kind only. Where Klee chose the fugue as a
model, it was not to present the fugue in a musical sense,
but to find types of repetitions and variations on the
canvas that can be related to the idiom of the fugue. We
cannot go any further than that. It is absolutely necessary
to distinguish the musical vocabulary both technically
and professionally from the idiom of the painter, even if
that painter is very well versed in music.
In my view, the word fugue has never had such a strong
meaning as in Klee’s interpretation of it: a primary and
secondary figure are merged and are joined in various very
dense configurations. There is no sense in returning to
the fugue within its original meaning. That is why the
72 painting must be seen as – what I would like to refer to 73
as – the realisation of a fugue. We can draw conclusions on
the basis of its analysis and realisation that are very
remote from the academic definition of the fugue.
Klee studies music through scores, from a very young age
until old age – although this is not so much what encour-
aged him to focus on the graphic qualities of music too.
Certain canvases show fantasy musical notations, but do
not depend on a musical subject. This proves that Klee is
able to use music notation in totally diferent situations.
Examples are Jardins dans la plaine, à Pirla, Image de
l’écriture des planes aquatiques and also Rafraîchissement
dans un jardin de la zone chaude, with simple noteheads,
black heads with tails, or ligatures, looking much like
plants. There is also a series of engravings, like Villes, with
a striking symmetry of lines above and below a staf and
with notes above and below it; a symmetry that is much
like a landscape with reflections in water.
Fugue en rouge indeed shows a horizontal image, by
analogy with the horizontal dimension of layered voices.
But the analogy is complete. The counterpoint is domi-
nated by harmony, which is vertical. By nature, this
dominance makes itself felt predominantly through
horizontal meanings, a structure of horizontal lines that
multiply, intersect, arise from one another and connect.
Subject and countersubject, for instance, can be created
by segments that overlap, in a coherence that may be
inverted. Invertible counterpoint can create a fully
symmetrical system. If, reasoning from high to low, lines
a, b and c are superimposed, they will be followed by b, c,
a, etc. These vertical mutations of horizontal lines can be
visualized very easily.
To a musician, linking visual and audible aspects (the eye
and the ear respectively) involves several risks. The risks
are not so much in the eye that finds inspiration, but in
the eye that reads a score with the intention of making
it sound. A score is also written to be read – and if the
composer reads it he will hear it at the same time. Some-
times, however, he may be distracted by graphic elements.
He may, for example, be caught by fine visual transcrip-
tions and their aesthetical merit. Many composers are
sensitive to the visual merits of a score. Bach also ofers
note pictures that have both optical and acoustic quali-
ties. We could even say that certain canons have more to
ofer to the eye than to the ear. I am not saying that this
music is not beautiful, but its symmetries can be much
more easily grasped by the ear than by the eye. In a
counterpoint with retrograde, the eye will quickly see the
line moving from a to z, and then the one moving from z
to a. The eye can see all intervals at once. This is much
more diicult when we listen, simply because memory’s
observations depend on the dimensions of time. The eye
can read from right to left; the ear cannot listen
‘anti-clockwise’.
Let us take the canon in augmentatione as an example.
The bass voice is a segment of one minute. It will be
multiplied by two, so that, with the voice derived from it,
a fragment of two minutes will be created. Once we hear
the ending of this two minute fragment, we do not
exactly remember the ending of the one minute segment.
That can be explained by the simple fact that auditory
memory, in perceiving music, operates in a much less
global way than visual memory. It cannot in the same way
rely on clear reference points because it depends on the
moment. This is one of the problems composers see
themselves confronted with. As a result, they may some-
times tend to abandon the auditory qualities of music,
because the optical aspects engage them so much. Not so
long ago, it was fashionable to produce graphic scores
with basic patterns for all kinds of improvisations.
Composers felt liberated from conventions and tradi-
tions. But in these scores that had something positive to
ofer for the eye, auditory aspects had been totally
neglected. The outcomes prove that the connection
between what can be seen and what can be heard must be
founded on a more stable basis. This, by the way, does not
apply to modern music only.
The dominance of graphical aspects in music can be
found from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century.
Most of these ‘jokes’ have disappeared by the seventeenth
century, although the tradition was kept very much alive
and continued to exist during the Baroque until the first
half of the eighteenth century. Examples are the scores
with keys from the Ars Nova, based on numerical, almost
indecipherable criteria; scores which in part remain
unclear to us till this very day. In all works that have been
inspired by musical notation, Klee simply transforms
these notations into purely visual transcriptions.
He transforms them into signs and uses these more or less
in the same way as one could use Chinese signs because of
their aesthetical rather than their real meaning. A musi-
cian can admire the way in which a painter makes himself
familiar with the symbols used in musical notation. They
seem to become visually more attractive as they have less
meaning: the signs are depicted for their own sake.
However, it is precisely this separation of sign and mean-
ing that triggers the musician to ponder over the exact
value of his own notation system. This problem is not
new; it is the theme of the composer who writes his score
‘note-for-note’ and who is brought into temptation by
constructions or combinations that work out well on
paper.
In strictly regulated systems, like counterpoint, the eye
is also often caught by symmetries that are not obvious to
the ear. Composers of the past and present see themselves
confronted with the same problem because of the ‘coinci-
dence’ of space and time. Here we must mention the
famous phrase from Wagner’s Parzival: Der Raum wird hier
74 zur Zeit. Can the meanings evoked by space and time be 75
compared? Can we, by simply changing the parameter,
draw identical conclusions in painting and music?
In a painting, space is not the only parameter. Time also
plays a very important role. Almost at a glance, we can
absorb an entire painting or drawing. That is certainly
true for Klee’s works, since they are not enormous: most
of his works have limited sizes. Or at least, we think we
can. Not all details can be discerned, but the overall
structure becomes clear to us almost immediately. We
then start to analyse the painting, according to our
personal methods. The focus first moves from one point
to the next. Once we have seen all details, we restart to
choose a more general perspective. We repeat this routine
as often as we want until we think we have a thorough
understanding of the canvas. Standing in front of it, we
can quite quickly observe and verify all real or supposed
connections. Our physical distance from various points
on the surface is only small. It does not take time, for
example, to determine whether ‘returning the view to the
same corner’ corresponds with ‘looking at a splash of
ochre somewhere else’. Memory plays a minor role;
connections are made immediately. We must be aware of
the fact that the working method of a painter locks in the
factor time. If we see a gesture, like the gesture in Picas-
so’s works, we can in retrospect also see the speed of that
gesture. We may not be able to see the intention behind
that gesture – maybe it was slow and carefully pre-
pared – but the gesture itself evokes a real sensation of
speed. Next to that, the richness of depths created in
surfaces and distances in various works by Klee allows us
to see clearly that a slow process has led to this result. We
can see immediately that time has played an important
role in the conceptual creation, but also in the more
practical aspects of the work – consider only the fact that
a layer of paint must dry several days before a new layer
can be applied.
What can be said about music in this context? First of all,
we do not have an understanding of a piece of music
before we have heard it from beginning to end, for we
have no other choice but to follow its course. It is not
possible to simply position oneself somewhere or other in
the work [I am of course referring to a concert situation
here]; we are confronted with its details and overall
structure simultaneously. The only way in which we can
learn more about the form is through an activity in our
memory. A certain fragment may manifest itself very
intensely and very clearly. If that same or a diferent
fragment is repeated, it will be registered by memory,
allowing us to understand, for instance, that one part of
the piece has ended and that a new part begins. Through
these signals, the composer enables listeners to under-
stand the structure of the piece. But if we want to hear a
certain aspect better, we must listen to the piece again, in
the same way, from beginning to end.
In painting, the factor time or the time during which the
work is experienced, depends on the focus of the viewer.
Time is also essential in the perception of a painting. On
the other hand, music triggers us to listen, dependent on
where we are and on the time of the performance. Only
the repetition, and especially the repetition of fragments,
can eliminate the threatening efects of time; that is,
repetition of a fragment by reading a score, by reading
further or reading back. The diference between a profes-
sional musician and the average amateur is in their ability
to read music, to divide it into a sequence of moments or
experience it as a simultaneity as they please. Without
this practical skill, an amateur has no other option but to
listen to a piece again and again. Modern recording
techniques ofer every opportunity to do so. In present-
ing a new work to the audience, we are often not aware of
the fact that memory may ofer some support, for exam-
ple if several characteristic patterns are carefully high-
lighted. Mnemonic devices like these work very well.
They guide the listener on his way into the unknown with
the help of specific signals which, when interconnected,
are heard much more consciously than if they are per-
ceived individually. For it is hard for a listener to identify
these signals in the moment itself, especially in music
without any symmetries.
There is an important reason why contemporary music
is so much harder to understand for large audiences than
contemporary painting. Musical time follows one direc-
tion. Space in painting moves in several directions.
Musical space has a diferent meaning. I am not referring
to the actual space on stage here, which depends on the
shape of the concert hall, although that space can of
course be of importance in ofering a clear understanding
of the texture of a work and the directions contained in a
score. But once we enter the ‘heart’ of a score, we will find
in the register an equivalent of pictorial space: sharp,
moderate, heavy, dense, thin, with small intervals, with
larger, equal or unequal intervals, with a symmetric
register, with a clear centre or a totally asymmetric
register. From that perspective, certain drawings by Klee
can be defined as registers with an equivalent. A musician
can almost see the space the pitches are positioned in.
The meaning of space can be related to the meaning of
time, of rhythm, in the following way: a slow pace with
a thin pattern matches an almost empty space; a fast pace
with a dense pattern immediately evokes a tight space. It
is clear that time and space in music and painting do not
play the same roles. These roles can in a way be identical,
but it is also possible to identify great diferences. What-
ever the case may be, the model Klee presents to us –
indirectly through his works, but also more directly
through his lessons and those parts of them that we can
apply to music – relies on an absolutely crucial mental
76 process. 77
It is not strictly necessary to identify real musical ele-
ments in the creative process of Klee, but it is important
that the musician understands that the constructions
Klee creates in the visual world can be transferred into
the world of sounds, given the fact that there is a con-
structive idea of an interrelation. His drawings of cities
with reflections, symmetries and layers have for example
taught me a lot about sound architecture, which – on a
diferent level – also makes use of these same reflections,
symmetries and layers.
To me, music can indeed be a projection in space. That
does not mean that a rendition in space is crucial. It
depends on the content one wishes to convey. Music can
also be ‘complete’ if it has been conceived in an instru-
mentation which in itself shows little movement.
Berlioz’s best works do not depend on a spectacular
structure. The ‘gestures’ of music must be communicated
in an atmosphere of the imaginative, and not be expressed
through a sounding cover.
It is true: some architectures inspire us to create gestures.
The Venetians in the San Marco simply had to make use of
double choirs. If they do not, a contradiction with the
architectural design would have been the result. For the
double choir technique to be ‘eligible’, separate sound
sources are indispensable. The ‘apparatus’ used by Berlioz
in his Requiem is mainly symbolic: it is about gesticula-
tions. The score itself comes second. The ‘gesticulation of
architecture’ can never replace the idea or the score.
Gesture and notation must refer to each other
continuously.
I did not write Répons as a game that takes place in four
corners. Its title matches the musical structure applied: it
is ‘materialized’ by the positions of the instruments. The
distance between the soloists, situated around the hall
and behind the audience, and the position of the ensem-
ble in front, in the middle of the hall, are made concrete in
and through the score. The rhythmic coherence in the
core group depends on the proximity of the conductor,
whose beat, even the most complex one, can be followed
without any problems. The soloists who are at a greater
distance have nothing to hold on to but a slow, simple
beat, or they must react to instructions to ‘assemble or
scatter’. The notations for soloists and central ensemble
are therefore fundamentally diferent. The core of the
work – the response in its essential meaning – is the
continuous confrontation of two kinds of writing. The
design in space is inseparably linked to the contents. If we
limited ourselves to a ‘spectacle’ we would eventually be
left with a series of gratuitous gesticulations.
Thus we can see how, in painting and music, the meanings
of space and time obey diferent laws. Even in classical
music, which is so familiar, the listener will not be able
to absorb the piece as a whole at any time while listening
to it. The reference points used for guidance when
listening can be totally separated, since one time interval
cannot be merged with another. Retro-active memory is
invoked, which leads to some kind of virtual globaliza-
tion and suggests a provisional form which disappears
again, after which the focus may be on another reference
point. In this way, the listener is moved from one form to
the next and the gradually deepened understanding of the
work facilitates the progression of these formal proce-
dures. The main problem for listeners of contemporary
music is related to orientation. The listener simply has to
follow a pattern, but will become disoriented if he does so
once only. When he follows it for a second time, for
example two years later, then still will he be disoriented
because his ability to make connections within that music
in the intermediate period has disappeared.
Nothing of this applies when we look at a painting at the
beginning of an exhibition and look at it again at the end
of our visit. The visitor will have retained much more of
its meaning than is possible for a listener in a once-only
confrontation with a piece of music. It is for that reason
that forms in classical musical, such as the sonata, ofer
us some grip when we acquaint ourselves with a piece,
at least to those who are somewhat familiar with them.
Those classical forms still function as mnemonic devices.
Since they rely on repetition, they can be compared to
classical architecture. Without seeing a building as a
whole, we can sense what remains hidden from the eye.
The space itself and the proportions between various
parts of the building can be concluded from the rhythmic
arrangement of the pillars. We obviously do not count all
the pillars; the space is estimated at a single glance. Some
contemporary architectures may be harder to ‘read’ as
multiple angles give them their characteristic look. In the
way rhythm in music measures time, rhythmic arrange-
ments in architecture make it possible to measure space:
this possibility to estimate the space gives one a true
feeling of safety.
In numerous sky scrapers, especially in the United States,
the division into floors can hardly be discerned. From
a distance their surfaces seem very smooth, so that every
sense of actual height becomes virtual. The division of the
surface is sometimes also made explicit, but illusory, as in
the John Hancock Center in Chicago; its perspective is
real and imaginary.
This again leads us back to the special lessons of Klee on
perspective: the more distant the imaginary perspectival
lines are and the higher the dimensions they reach, the
stronger the result. Returning to the position of the
musician in relation to Klee’s work: for the best possible
analysis of his research methods, it is at all times most
fruitful for him to look at the problems of a specific work
and the solutions he sees for them. And in that way,
following his intuition, to look for the relationship
78 between his own work and that of the musician. 79
I am convinced that certain viewpoints may disturb our
habitual patterns and thoughts on the composition
process, and that they may give rise to something new.
Something new that could never have occurred if we
would have stayed inside the confines of our own work-
ing fields. For it is precisely the distance, the ‘otherness’,
that can force the imagination into a more productive
direction, and towards solutions we could not have
thought of. This also applies to literature, as in Hof-
mann/Le chat Murr, Joyce/Ulysses, Büchner/Woyzeck,
Proust/Le temps retrouvé, Kafka/Le terrier. Another idea
that occurs to me when I think of the Bauhaus lessons, is
the necessity to explore new territories: to work out
theoretical ideas with very little means.
The assumption that creativity can be stimulated by
theory is generally conceived as rather risky. It is con-
sidered safer to think that theory kills every form of
inspiration. But it would be just as controversial to claim
that only problems that are hard to solve can encourage
creativity. These ideas both rely on unsubstantiated
clichés. Not everything can be created spontaneously; the
question whether something is perceived as spontaneous
depends heavily on memory. As a composer progresses his
career, he will improve his skills, assuming that he focuses
on that one profession – and the more he will continue to
create an extensive index of procedures, an entirety of
skills, enabling him to do his work more easily and more
eiciently. What we see as an original solution, as a
spontaneous invention, can in reality turn out to be a
concrete element that is still fresh in the memory. How-
ever there are similar situations in which the memory
does not ofer any support, because some of our memo-
ries are processed subconsciously.
It may therefore be useful to move to the end of the
tunnel and play with several unrelated elements, for
example by making a few sketches without any precise
purpose, just to see what that leads to. As a result, we
reach a situation in which we are loosing the connection
with our own past and in which we are forced to find new
solutions. Therefore, the interaction between the imagi-
nation and tenacity is essential; an interaction that
produces powerful impulses for the creation of an oeuvre.
It is obvious that composing and the experiment cannot
be separated easily. It is simply impossible to disconnect
them. And if, in composing, it were possible to take some
distance at all, one [action] will always mirror the other.
During Klee’s Bauhaus period, his creativity is expressed
in two clear extremes.
He certainly is pushed into a more radical direction by the
theoretical atmosphere of Bauhaus. During those years,
he produces a much greater number of drawings and
paintings in which he pursues geometrical abstraction.
Klee uses simple elements – chessboard, circle, straight
line – from which he derives all possible variations,
combinations and connections, in a completely logical
manner. As a contrast, he introduces several strongly
figurative elements. It is attractive to him, so it seems, to
confront these two worlds.
But even geometry is not objective geometry. In the way
he uses it, he distinguishes himself from Kandinsky, to
whom a straight line is a perfectly straight line and a circle
a perfect circle. His geometric shapes are perfect, created
by using rational instruments, the ones also used by
technicians and engineers. And although we can admire
Kandinsky’s paintings for their strict order, they are in
a way anonymous. The spirit is powerful, the flesh is not
even weak – it is simply absent. These lifeless objects
could have been created by anyone. In Klee we see the
exact opposite. That strengthens my conviction that we
recognise ‘the hand of the maker’ in his works. His line is
not a perfect line, but an approximation of a line; the
hand does not need to compete with any law, it produces
a deviation or distortion itself. The circle drawn by the
hand is not a perfect circle; the circle for which he did not
want to use a compass, a circle between hundreds of other
circles, marvelously autonomous in its own ‘otherness’.
We see at the same time geometries and deviations from
geometry, the principle and the violation of the principle.
I consider this to be the most important element in the
lessons of Klee, even more so if we bear in mind the
mainly modest, strict and geometrical style of Bauhaus.
Klee succeeds in maintaining an unforced style. We
cannot be inventive without adhering to a certain amount
of logic and coherence in the arrangements we create. But
we must never subordinate ourselves to such logic,
whether it is academic or ‘invented’. What Klee clearly
shows is this: the more harmful or sterile an exact geo-
metrical observation is, the more imaginative and pro-
ductive its violation will be.
The same applies when we try to identify the laws on
which a sound world is based if at the same time we try
to see where these laws are broken. And if we must freely
exploit the opportunities to breach them to be able to
escape from the rigid system and reach that form of
imperfection, of ‘clumsiness’ – if that is necessary to
create something vital. Discipline and rigidity must be
our basis, but we must continuously harass discipline
with a form of anarchy. The poetic will only emerge from
such a confrontation, the poetic springs from dynamics
and transformation, the poetic introduces the irrational
in a world full of solid structures, it surpasses the conflict
between order and chaos. We know all too well that
excessive order is pointless: if we can predict a course too
easily, our attention will waver. The same applies to
chaos, for opposite reasons.
80 Then what is needed to create continuity and freedom at 81
the same time? Klee teaches us some curious lessons
about this matter. He possesses a special talent for deduc-
tion. A young and inexperienced composer is able to
submit himself to a great number of impulses. From
these, musical ideas may arise that express a strong and
clear sense of direction. But once these ideas have been
written down, it is no longer clear how they should be
connected, how transitions must be created, or how they
should develop. Ideas can be extravagant, they may
obstruct us or may be very hard to work out. How can we
split them up into smaller, more flexible units? How can
they be reduced to more neutral components that can
truly penetrate the text? How can we work out the
original idea, while it is at the same time restrained? Here
lies the biggest challenge. For we must be able to strike
out on new paths, choose from developments that occur,
a choice also that leaves suicient room for power of
imagination and an active impulse. That is exactly what
composition means to me, the craft of composing, and
that is how we see it explained and demonstrated in the
Bauhaus lessons. One of these lessons strikingly showed
me the exceptional talent of deduction Klee had. He
comments on the solutions his students ofer to a prob-
lem he had confronted them with: how to combine
elements with a fixed structure and elements with a fluent
structure, so that a wholeness is created – which in fact is
the problem of composing.
One of his students chose two very simple geometric
forms: a line and a circle. Klee takes these two elements
and shows how they coincide with the proposed struc-
tures. Then he comments on the solution proposed by the
student for combining them. This student thought it
would be suicient to place the circle on the line, which
to Klee is only a quick fix, because the two elements are
not confronted. The solution does not create a composi-
tion; it rather leads to a simple merger. The repeated
pattern that can be created in this way, and that can result
in a lamp on a foot, or a vase that is swollen in the middle,
or the pendulum of a clock, is not a solution. Klee
explains why this is the standard example of a non-com-
position, and to clarify it further, he makes the following
comparison, which is both simple and realistic. Imagine
the following: a shelf of a variable thickness with cans
placed on top. Neither the shelf nor the cans are subject
to any change. One element has simply been placed on top
of the other. The result serves no purpose, has no creative
significance. This example struck me, and with certain
compositions in mind I realise that we must beware of
precisely this danger: that we create shelves with cans
on them.
Klee continues with another example: take a stick and
look at it through the bottom of a bottle or a loupe.
You will see the stick slightly distorted, something
happens and becomes visible, manifest. The line has
penetrated the circle, which is hostile to it. It is distorted
and, in the end, leaves the circle intact. Klee explains that
this is a true principle, an organic principle. It is organic
because the two original forms come into contact and one
is transformed by the other. Subsequently he examines
the connections that can be created between these two
simple but heterogeneous elements, circle and straight
line: the confrontation that can occur between the fixed
and fluent element, their implicit powers, and how we
can imagine their antagonism and merger.
The circle is stronger than the straight line; the straight
line is distorted once it enters the circle and will take on
its original shape after it has left this dangerous zone.
The circle remains intact.
The straight line uses all its penetrating power; the circle
will be heavily distorted by the straight line, correspond-
ing the power of the straight line and the direction it
follows. The circle is the least powerful.
The two elements are engaged in a battle on change.
Mutual assimilation takes place. Each takes on a shape
that is influenced by the other. The circle is no longer a
circle, the straight line is no longer a straight line – and in
such way a valid result is obtained.
As a follow-up to this experiment, which may come across
as extremely theoretical and dry, Klee transforms that
school exercise into a remarkable aquarelle, with an
intense poetic overtone: Physiognomischer Blitz, Éclair
Physiognomique, which I would like to translate as Flash of
Light on a Face [see p. 11]. The problem has stirred the
imagination, has led to a transposition, both realistic and
irrational. The result is at the same time unexpected and
deeply logic. This flash to me remains the true symbol of
Klee’s imaginative power.
This organic principle as defined by Klee is extremely
important in composing: if we create musical figures,
we do so precisely because we want them to distort each
other. This principle is extensively used by the great
German composers. We see two examples of it in Wozzeck
that are easy to understand. In its third act, the death by
drowning is construed on one chord. That chord
resounds in all elements of the language that is used. First
in a chord that develops along a certain melodic line and
continues to run parallel to it, then in a static chord that is
split up, scattered into units of unconnected light signals
that flash in turns to make their presence felt. Here, one
principle dominates everything else, and continues to
function as a basis. This principle is strongly reminiscent
of Klee’s circle and line.
Here is another example, again taken from the third act in
Wozzeck. We can hear an extremely brutal basic rhythm,
brief, before the acts begins. From the bass drum sound
a certain number of beats. It is impossible not to hear this
rhythm, since this is all there is to be heard here. It is, like
I said, brutal and brief. The entire scene that follows is
82 dominated by this rhythm, which is stretched to all possi- 83
ble dimensions. It is like the scene in The Lady from Shang-
hai, where the two protagonists are reflected in a countless
number of mirrors; this rhythmic element is reflected
absolutely everywhere in that scene from Wozzeck, in all
mirrors of the creative communication process. Since this
rhythm, starting slowly and inertly and only a signal at
first, eventually gives the scene a phenomenal impulse as it
is enlarged and developed. It is much more spectacular to
evolve an entire scene around one single principle than to
merge elements in such a way that we loose ourselves in it.
In this case, the richness is in the fact that a rhythmical cell
is raised to its highest power. This is what I learned from
the teachings of Klee: it is about deduction, and also about
reducing the amount of data.
The genius of Klee is in the following: he starts from a
very simple problem which eventually leads to a remark-
ably powerful poetics in which that problem is fully
incorporated. In other words: his basic principle is
crucial, but his poetic imagination is nowhere obstructed
by technical issues, and is becoming more and more rich.
To me, that is the essential lesson: we should not hesitate
to reduce the imagination to a few elementary and maybe
geometric problems from time to time. The reflection on
a problem, on its function, results in a poetical richness
that is inconceivable if we gave our imagination free rein.
It might be something strictly personal, but I become
undeniably suspicious when I hear people claim that
everything is determined by the imagination only.
In fact, our marvellous power of imagination does noth-
ing but support our memory. Memory lays bare those
things that we have experienced, heard or seen, much in
the same way that ruminants eat grass. The grass may be
ground, but it has not been digested or transformed. All
memories that come up spontaneously, without any
efort, make us aware of our enormous powers of imagi-
nation. We might then say: I have such vivid, such fertile
imagination that anything can occur to me. I oppose
against this ingenious illusion, because that kind of
imagination simply follows fixed memory patterns. To
me, true imagination has nothing to do with the kind of
treasure-chest referred to here.
We can seek after a less superficial approach. For example:
here is the problem as it occurs to me, I must detach it
from the context that I am familiar with so that I can
understand and change the given situation more easily,
and in that way I can attach unusual deductions to it and
subsequently reflect in a fundamental way on my powers
of expression and familiarise myself further with the
creative process.
If this strategy is used, the imagination will come out
much better, since its own essence is considered here.
Klee as an educationist did not routinely take the same
paths every time. Rather, he made the imagination much
richer through his didactics.
The profundity of his approach rules out that it becomes
routine, because he is at all times focused on reality,
a reality that continues to change. His methods take
a searching, analytical approach towards reality. Klee’s
analyses change with the changing moments of his
imagination. And of that imagination they reveal the
powers.
What is so special about Klee’s approach when he
observes nature; the growth of a plant, the formation of a
leaf, etc.? He does not observe nature because he wants to
copy it, but because he wants to understand its underly-
ing structures and mechanisms. He does not create the
events that happen in front of his eyes, or the clouds; the
clouds are already there. Clouds are not only poetic
objects to him, in which he can loose himself or that are
the subjects of his dreams, but he sees them as flexible
structures. Structures in a state of constant renewal,
subject to ever changing definitions.
He shows a great talent to render organic developments
and thus to retrieve a nature that suits him. He does not
copy nature, but tries to find certain schemes it in. A typi-
cal example of that approach can be found in Das bildner-
ische Denken, in which he analyses the forces inside a water
mill. The principle is simple: the mill is put into motion
by one crucial element: water. Other elements are its two
wheels, a large and a small one, connected through
a transmission belt. The large wheel is equipped with
tanks. The water fills a tank which, once filled, moves the
wheel and is then emptied. Next, the pressure of the
water puts another tank into motion, etc. To make the
energy of the water felt, Klee adds symbolic arrows.
These make it very clear to us that water is the most
important element.
This marks the start of a new period in Klee’s career,
of paintings with arrows, a period in which dynamic
functions are displayed. By analysing reality in this way,
and by creating a universe that is dominated by certain
powers, the arrow itself suddenly becomes a reality.
A reality Klee takes as a starting principle to invent
a ‘poetics of the arrow’.
Webern is in a similar way preoccupied with creating
powers that are geometric and organic at the same time.
This combination may be rooted in Goethe’s ideas,
to whom Webern continuously refers, and whom Klee
approaches by subjecting plants found in nature to
research. Plants grow from a single cell and develop
organically, following meticulous geometrical principles.
They are both uniform and ambiguous. This dialectic
relation can also be found in what Klee refers to as dividuel
and individuel. A dividuel structure, on the one hand,
is characterised by regular, anonymous, objective parts;
an individuel structure, on the other, is purely linear,
84 subjective, irregular, with clear proportions for which 85
those of man must be considered exemplary.
In thinking about important relations and proportions,
it is hard for me to address such intense and lively subjects
in a purely distant manner. I can only describe them in
conformity with their nature. I can say that the human
proportions as we, flesh-and-blood people, know them
are in that sense dominant. We humans carry them inside
ourselves, by ourselves. They enable us to deliver artistic
achievements. To get a clearer idea of this, imagine two
opposite poles in a one to one proportion. On the basis
of these two opposites, Klee is trying to find a contrast
between the rational and the irrational, between struc-
ture and capriciousness. This is reflected in the contradic-
tion in several of his works between clearly defined
figures and the very complex background against which
they have been positioned.
Klee always considers the base layer of the canvas as a very
important element and he is almost spell-bound by it.
He always prepares canvases himself, and is always
experimenting. One could say that his studio is much like
a pharmaceutical laboratory. He is not afraid to break new
grounds and uses the most ingenious techniques, of
which he often keeps the written sketches. For example,
he writes in 1918 on the Zoological Garden: ‘polished with
pumice and water, an old colour with very dry oil [pas-
tose], then pressed.’ This background is suitable for
aquarelles or paintings in water colour. To finish it,
the layer of paint will have to be covered with varnish
of linseed oil. This also reminds me of the painting from
1930 titled Zuflucht [Refuge], on the reverse side of which
he meticulously notes down the techniques he used for
the base layer and for the work itself: Technique: [1-5 =
base layer] 1. cardboard 2. white oil, enamel, while 2 is still
sticky 3. gauze with a layer of plaster 4. aquarelle with red-
brownish colour 5. tempera [brand: Neisch] white zinc, glue
added 6. delicate striped design, painted on the aquarelle
7. loosely fixed with varnish oil [diluted with turpentine]
8. made lighter by spots of white zinc oil 9. covered with blue-
grey oil 10.washed madder enamel oil.
To Klee, preparing the base layer is a primordial stage of
the creative process for which he takes all the time he
needs to create exactly what he is looking for. Sometimes
it takes him a month, during which he uses various
techniques. His working method will result in a base layer
that, although it is very much ‘developed’, also remains
shapeless, meaning that it lacks orientation. It is unclear
how one should look at it, or: there are thousands of ways
in which it can be looked at, as with a cloud, but a cloud
that is suddenly fixed, so that its agility has become
dependent on the way you look at it, instead of on ‘the
object’ – the cloud itself. If we look at a cloud, our eyes
will adjust to the agility of that cloud and we will follow
it. But for a base layer by Klee, the agility depends on the
way we look, which will determine whether the space has
or lacks orientation, depending on the person looking.
In other words: the way we look is crucial because of the
‘raw material’ the painting ofers to the eye.
Against that background, intended to confront the eye
with a range of perspectives, Klee draws a very exact
figure with a black line. He engraves it, as it were, leaving
us not much choice in establishing whether it is an animal
or a vegetable form [some botanical gardens have been
designed on the basis of that concept]. These shapes have
been incised in the work and are essential to a well-con-
sidered, consistent observation. What strikes me, how-
ever, is the fact that paintings in which the concept of
movement plays no role have a shapeless base layer, which
requires active observation, while the background is filled
with a morphology that asks for a fixed gaze. This is the
only example of mental imagination in painting that
I know of. It is unlike the structures that were later
created by someone like Soto, in which the physical
aspect of the gaze itself determines the agility or fixation
of the observation.
And thus we can also imagine a kind of music that, like
the clouds in the sky, does not truly develop but that only
exists through changes in its appearance as such. That
kind of music is not written to be heard from beginning
to end. It could be a sound basis recorded on tape. This
music can only be heard if it is activated [unchained as it
were] by an instrument, like a piano, and if that piano
reaches a certain dynamic threshold. If the piano is not
playing very loud, or not at all, the sound basis will vanish.
I have taken this insight from the works of Klee. During
the years 1951–1952 I was working on Structures pour deux
pianos [premier livre]. I had just finished the first part of
Structures when, if I remember well, I saw a black- and-
white copy of that aquarelle by Klee, titled Monument à la
limite du pays fertile. What struck me in it was its rigidity,
the strict way in which the space had been divided into
more or less equal parts, but still with light variations
through subtle, rich arrangements, created almost imper-
ceptibly by means of an understandable technique.
Whereas that technique has been integrated in other
canvases, it seemed to me that it was deliberately
‘exposed’ here.
All this was closely related to themes I myself was work-
ing on during that period, but at that time I did not yet
analyse the form of the aquarelle. Sometime later, I read
the Bauhaus publications and thus learned about the
analysis of proportions and their development. I then had
only a slight idea of the method and did not have the
adequate means at my disposal. I was aware of the fact
that laws and rules are indispensable, and the wish to
provide a guiding framework to understand the universe.
A framework that is both exact and flexible. When the
86 analytical method had come within my reach, it was as 87
much a confirmation as it was a revelation to me – and an not copy the title from his work, is because I did not want
encouragement too. It lent my own creative process the to give the impression in any way that my work was a
highest possible proof of authenticity. musical illustration of Klee’s. The work by Klee has
remained symbolic to me. If we are unable to avoid the
Subsequently, I learned through the work of Grohmann obstacles we are confronted with in any attempt to create
that there was a second aquarelle: Monument en pays fertile. an unimaginative structure, that is: if that structure has
Grohmann shows exactly how Klee creates coloured become so rigid that it pushes the poetic aspect aside and
lengths of varying widths as a basis for these works, which makes it disappear, then, indeed, we will have reached the
he painted after a trip to Egypt. Here and there they run limit of the fertile land, on the side where infertility
from one side to the other. They are cut of by verticals or reigns. However, if the active structure forces our imagi-
diagonals, depending on the shape that is created, in such nation to pursue a new poetics, then, truly, we are in the
a way that the horizontal structure on the canvas is to fertile land.
a certain extent neutralised by the vertical one.
There is another system of lengths, which are much Descriptive translation of Pierre Boulez, Paul Klee: Le Pays Fertile, 1989
bigger and which have diferent colours. Its design seems
to express nothing more than the structure it reveals.
The structure takes the form of the architecture of a
landscape.
I was able to see these aquarelles quite recently at the
occasion of the exposition Paul Klee and Music, shown in
1985 at the Musée de l’Art Moderne. Ole Hendrik Moe,
who arranged the exhibition, draws a parallel with music
in his discussion of the works. His view is that some
paintings with stripe patterns unmistakably evoke the
same diferentiation that sounds do, because they are split
in two. In that way a rhythmical or flexible motive is
created.

In 1955 I borrowed from Klee the title for a text in which

I tried to explore new opportunities for composers who
work with electronic music, by bringing this new domain
into contact with the instrumental domain. But I did not
use it for Structures. Neither the work itself, nor the title
have given me cause to do so. Structures have left an
indelible mark in the development of my work. I did not
write it under the influence of Klee. I met him only later,
in the context of a development that was also related to
the Mode de valeurs et intensités by Messiaen, which I had
literally taken as my starting point. I had borrowed from
that piece in a very rigid manner: the essence to me at the
time was to allow elements to develop almost completely
without the intervention of the composer; the composer
only displays a certain arrangement.
When I saw Klee’s aquarelle for the first time and looked
at it carefully, I established that there was question here
of a similar approach, tending towards de-personalisation
of the creator, towards anonymisation. The title À la limite
du pays fertile would be just right, since extreme rigidity in
procedures can very well lead to infertility. Whoever puts
all his trust in materials and mechanisms, is doomed to
fail. Free choice, that primordial gift to creative human
beings, can then no longer be used by them to make their
magic felt. To me that experience has been the most
frustrating, closest to a nadir – which explains why using
Klee’s title was a possibility. The fact that I eventually did 88 89
Comments on Paraphrases 1 and 2

Given the complexity of the source texts by Pierre Boulez, I have

adapted the Dutch and English texts in an informed way, to the best of
my ability, for the convenience of the reader. The creative powers of
expression of Boulez’s language as a French music theorist would
threaten to loose their communicative meaning if literalness – a power-
less communication instrument – were put first.
I have started from the assumption that we must consider these texts by
Boulez, in which he as a composer describes his drastic interdisciplinary
orientation, to be crucial for the development of twentieth-century
music.
Precisely because of that, is my assumption, the contents of these texts
is essential. After all they are pioneering, and this is combined with their
zest, agogics, and the dynamic character of Boulez’s statements.
After in-depth studies and various phases in translations of these impor-
tant essays, and to prevent damage to their enormously rich contents,
I have found that a rigid translation of the material could only serve as
a basis to subsequently get through to its true meaning. Various subse-
quent versions have – fruitlessly – passed my desk, before, in these two
paraphrases, I finally and consciously left literalness behind, with all my
respectful excuses to the language used by Pierre Boulez, all this for the
sake of what he has to say to us.

90 91

Special thanks to Michael Baumgartner and
Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern for providing
the texts discussed and published here, see
p. 22, p. 104.
92
6 Strophes
Paul Klee and Music
One of the most recent texts written by Boulez is devoted to Paul Klee.
It is entitled La Leçon de Paul Klee. This text appeared in several editions
and was also included in the elaborate catalogue accompanying the
exhibition of Klee’s works called Le Théâtre de la Vie, in Dutch Overal
Theater, which was on show in Bern and Brussels and has been published
in several editions. Its organisor, Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, asked
Pierre Boulez to act as a guest curator and, in that role, to arrange a small
section of it. A clearer and more direct link between these two titans
of twentieth-century art could not have been made.
Boulez’s creative contribution as a curator led to the addition of a textual
triptych to the catalogue about and by Boulez with the title Paul Klee and
Music, written by Michael Baumgartner together with Claude Lorent.
This important part of the catalogue was published in French and Dutch
to accompany the exhibition in Bern and Brussels at the Palais des Beaux
Arts. Next to La Leçon de Paul Klee by Pierre Boulez, the part Paul Klee and
Music contains an interview with Boulez on the works of Paul Klee and an
essay on music and Bauhaus, entitled Een inleiding in Paul Klees didactische
en kunsttheoretische omgang met schilderkunst en muziek aan het Bauhaus [An
introduction to Paul Klee’s didactic and art-theoretical views on painting
and music at Bauhaus]. Author Michael Baumgartner is head of the
research department and general curator at Zentrum Paul Klee.
In this article by Baumgartner, several themes are discussed that are of
crucial importance to the history of twentieth-century art. This impor-
tance lies in the relationship between the creative process and inter-artis-
tic connections between painting and music. These themes have still not
fully been worked out in art theory and given their complexity they fall, as
yet, somewhat out of the general scope of interdisciplinary art studies.
Discussions of themes like these in Baumgartner’s essay have the follow-
ing titles: From structural rhythm to a polyphonic composition of image and
Bauhaus in Weimar; contributions to morphology in the plastic arts. What
follows are a few impressions from this meaningful catalogue-text.
The starting point is the question how Klee tries to find
interrelations between the arts. His quest starts long
before he is engaged as a teacher at Bauhaus. He writes
in his diary: ‘More and more similarities between music
and the plastic arts urge themselves upon me.’
At the basis of this perception is the observation that both
arts have a ‘temporal character’. Referring to Robert
Delaunay and Wassily Kandinsky, pioneers of Orphism
and synesthesia respectively, Klee tries to visualize
musical structures and introduces the phenomenon of 93
 ‘simultaneity’ in both arts as a concept which he refers to
as polyphonic painting. It is clear that he, by displaying a
fascination with the polyphony that keeps turning up in
various texts, has in fact great doubts about the develop-
ment of the ‘non-polyphonic’ musical repertoire after
Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.
— tion – by coincidence saw these works of Klee. In fact, they are but small
It is remarkable that he first uses the term ‘polyphony’ to
refer to the transposition of time into the spatiality of the
plastic arts: ‘Polyphonic painting is in so far superior to
music that the time element has a more spatial character
there. The phenomenon of simultaneity has much more
chance to flourish.’
— text Boulez stresses the importance of a subsequent development.
The systematic study of structural similarities between
music and image dates back to the beginning of his teach-
ing post at Bauhaus in November 1921.
At that time, he is constantly keeping notes and saves
separate pages with observations on the parallels between
image and music in Beiträge zur bildernischen Formlehre, or on
the relation between tonality and timbre from a music
theoretical perspective. For example, there are pages full of
notes on rhythm, with transformations of linear arrange-
ments of ‘measure rows’ into patterns of coloured surfaces.
He shows how, for example, by superimposing primary
colours, a rhythmical movement of colours can be created.
Klee’s research into ‘structure’ reaches its highest degree
of diferentiation where he speaks of so-called ‘homo-
phonic’ and ‘polyphonic’ image structures. For instance,
there is a folder full of images that only serve as examples,
without any theoretical discourse. Essential here is the
development of monophonic image structures into
polyphonic ones. Polyphonic image structures appear
when simple homophonic surface compositions are
superimposed. For example, there is one page with a poly-
phonic arrangement that in fact shows a two-voice struc-
ture, based on a grid of ‘cooler and warmer red colours’,
subdivided into 39 parts by a black pencil.
—
It was only after he had given up teaching at Bauhaus
when Klee creatively worked out his study of polyphonic
image structures, transferring them into freely painted
creations, such as Polyphon gefasstes Weiss [p. 5]. Until long
after his death the mutual influence of painting and music
was in general dealt with only very briefly, and in fact
without paying any attention to Klee’s art-theoretical
observations. In-depth research of these works was made
accessible in 2005 through digitized facsimiles at Zentrum
Paul Klee. […]
[end of extract from the text]
The irrevocable and decisive meaning of ‘the encounter’, le rencontre,
was defined by Boulez, in the context of his introduction to René Char.
He repeatedly uses similar words when referring to Paul Klee, although
the power of coincidence seems to play a greater role here.
Like with Char, there is question of a confrontation of, so to speak, initial
value: its importance is felt directly, and although it is not yet clear what
will originate from it in a creative sense, the encounter will certainly have
creative consequences.
He refers to a crucial event several times: that he – in a modern art exhibi-
compared to the large canvases of Picasso, Kandinsky and others. But
these large works stand out as insignificant against the poetic layeredness
of Klee.
He mentions this in his text The Fertile Land from 1989 in various inter-
views and finally in La Leçon de Paul Klee from 2008 which forms part of
the catalogue chapter on Paul Klee and music. At several points in this
Boulez:
His original graphics and transcriptions with strange signs
lured me into the strongly individual world of a fascinat-
ing and puzzling eccentric. Maybe the word transfigura-
tion suits better here than ‘transcription’.
Stockhausen subsequently gave him Klee’s important book Das bildner-
ische Denken as a present, which was his introduction to Klee’s teachings at
Bauhaus and which contained the analytical principles on which these
lessons were based. More than painting, it dealt with concepts and forms
that at first seem hard to apply to painting, but that do reveal a universal
connection with the world around us. That text, according to Boulez,
searches for answers to questions such as how to assign significance and
power to painting, and how to stimulate the imagination or to find the
means needed for new inventions in the true sense of the word. He goes
on to discuss the actual relationship between painting and music. Klee
was very musical by birth, but the question is whether that fact alone was
suicient motivation for a composer to bury himself in Klee’s didactic
works, since the domain of composing has a totally diferent basis. Boulez
explains how certain forms of expression and concepts in Klee’s analyses
can be applied to other artistic disciplines than painting alone. Examples
are terms like law, function and form, which can easily be associated with
the musical idiom, and which therefore are unrelated to any specific field.
Boulez chooses the line as a starting point. It enables him to point out at
the same time the close relationship and the great diference between
music and painting. It must be seen as a point moving in space: the drawn
line has many similarities and can even be equated with the melodic line,
the most recurrent concept in music. We can understand the line as an
occurrence in itself and do not need to add anything to it. However, we
can also see the line as an active power, carrying with it other lines, in a
certain arrangement. The direction of these other lines depends on the
movement of the first line. They can run strictly parallel or may be syn-
chronous – parallel and at a short distance from each other in space or in
time. Klee describes ornamental arabesques and compares these, not
without humour, to a friendly walker with his playful dog by his side.
The variable that is created here can also exist independently. All we need
to do is erase the active main line. What then remains is the variation that,
nevertheless, was governed by the line that no longer exists. ‘This is
94 just one example based on the notion of a line.’ [see p. 111] 95
 Boulez draws another example from a more specifically musical context,
involving the music-theoretical term ‘heterophony’. Relevant here is a
musical phenomenon which according to him is more common in other
cultures than in ours.
Going further back in history, he also mentions the cantus firmus, a
Gregorian melody which is so much extended in time that it is in fact no
longer perceivable, but that can only be recognized through its
unchanged intervals. This sustained melody forms the basis of other
melodic curves. Boulez derives musical forms from the purely visual
perspective chosen by Klee.
Some of the subjects discussed in La leçon de Paul Klee were already dealt
with from a broader perspective in Le pays fertile.1 It is very informative to
read them again in this new context. An example is the relation between
spatiality and musicality, in which the terms dividuel and individuel are
relevant – terms with equivalents in the concepts of so-called smooth and
striated time: temps lisse and temps strié. These concepts must be associated
with a regular or an irregular beat, with the division of large time units or
the multiplication of smaller ones. Boulez continues:
I could go further into the perspective, or rather the
perspectives Klee deals with elaborately by literally
choosing a point of view and attaching certain conse-
quences to it. It is much harder to do the same in music,
unless we use so much instruments as to allow for multi-
focal perspectives, comparable to those in a painting.
Since this is not only about the music itself, which is
transmitted into the space surrounding us, but also about
acoustic perspectives and various registers of several
instrument groups. The musical creation conveys several
layers at the same time, as if we could listen under and over
a certain level at the same time.
Rather than drawing up an endless list of unrelated ideas, Boulez chooses
to go more directly into deliberations on and examples of compositions.
He wants to discuss an already well-known example from Klee. Accord-
ing to Stockhausen, this is literally the best composition lesson one could
wish for, and it is based on the interaction between a straight line and a
circle. We can either emphasize the circle or the straight line. Boulez:
If the circle is defeated by the straight line, it will be cut
into halves, like the witnesses of a violent separation.
However, the circle and the straight line may also form
a unit, in such a way that the circle deflects the straight line
from its normal course, forces it to follow the circle and
thus to create a new object. The circle and the straight line
have suicient power to produce that action. Something
comparable can be done in music, although it is not very
useful there to confront conflicting powers while retain-
ing their autonomy. We must in both elements find those
rhythmic, harmonic or melodic powers that may allow
1
one element to cause change in the other. […] The reader
Boulez’s musical principle of ‘work in may wonder why I do not mention colour here at all.
progress’: recapitulation and extension,
is also present in his texts and involves
The reason is that this similarity between music and
repetitions also in this book. painting is the hardest to define. Several attempts have
been made in this field, for instance referring to utopian
realism in Scriabin or the highly individual perceptions
of Messiaen. The truth is that timbre as a category is most
diicult to define and delimit. Timbre depends on an
infinite number of criteria. No matter how certain we may
be of forms and functions; we can be totally lost when
dealing with colour.
Boulez ends this text with two comments that he presents as if they were
indirect hints only, but that in reality represent the crux of what he
intends to say. First he points out to the reader how important it is to
theorize about music, although many people are rather reticent about it.
Second he breaks a lance for interdisciplinary approaches, introductions
to other forms of expression than musical ones. Boulez:
We must not be afraid of a theoretical approach. It allows
us to stay away from a purely emotional one, while imagi-
nation continues to play a vital role. If we had no poetical
universe, the theoretical approach would be merely
prosaic. Imagination must be leading. Second: dealing
with forms of expression that are not naturally ours does
not only enrich our imagination but also our musical
idiom. This is a huge incentive to the presentation and
development of ideas that, without it, might not have
been presented at all, or at least in a less emphatic and less
surprising way. To me this is, at least in part, the lesson of
Paul Klee.
Talking with Boulez
In the catalogue-part Paul Klee and Music, Boulez’s text from 2008 is
followed by an interview with Michael Baumgartner: here are a few
passages.
In 1947, at the first Festival of Avignon, you were introduced to
Paul Klee’s work. You said that you were struck by it. What did
you mean by that?
I remember very well that the exhibition was dominated
by the French: Picasso, Braque, Matisse. Together they
formed the Paris Group. There was also a very large
painting by Picasso that, however, did not impress me
much. Somewhere in a corner I descried Klee, whom I had
never heard of up until that moment. I was especially
captured by two paintings that displayed some kind of
alphabet in a language unknown to me, a vocabulary that
I never could have known existed. To me, that was a rev-
elation, comparable to my introduction to Webern or
Schönberg.
Stockhausen later drew your attention to Klee’s Das bildner-
ische Denken. According to him, Klee was absolutely the best
composition teacher. You had your doubts, but later admitted
that he was right. How can a contemporary composer say that a
96 painter is a master in composing? 97
I think that has to do with a diference between Klee and all You speak of Klee’s rebellion against his own teachings.
other painters, even Kandinsky. In his books, the latter What makes you say that?
never goes so far as to discuss a method, technique or Maybe this is my own reaction which I have projected
construction principle… I have seen the sketches in onto him. I have found that applying certain didactics may
Das bildnerische Denken. They were so meaningful that the eventually cause a person to become completely withered.
text was sometimes superfluous. I have found that the way The only possible reaction to that is to distance oneself
in which Klee touches upon a problem leads to unusual and, from it, to avoid being crushed by its mechanical nature.
even to him, unforeseen conclusions. Klee surpasses the
theoretical level: his paintings have a marvelous poetical You attach great value to his lesser known works. Do these
dimension. For instance, he connects logic and irrationality. perhaps display a connection with music? Are they a result of that
He draws a freehand circle, which lacks anonymous rebellion?
‘straightforwardness’. Kandinsky would never do that. They are works that I discovered only much later. In them,
Klee clearly shows a rebellion against himself, against that
The unknown alphabet you mention is a visual creation. Did you order of his. He examines whether a certain intervention
immediately relate it to composing techniques? in his own working logic could lead to something interest-
Absolutely not. After all, it is unclear in which order words ing. The results I have seen of that are fascinating, because
could be made from this alphabet. In his later and more strangely enough we have no idea that they are ‘distorted’
rigorous works, we see how chaos emerges from excessive paintings. The order takes revenge and no one notices that
order. And that it what interested me: there is no diference the artist has briefly gone astray.
between extreme order and extreme chaos. Between them
is a vocabulary with certain rules, a logic which makes of the Is this what you referred to earlier: the transformation of order
alphabet a spoken language instead of something that is into chaos?
stuck in the preliminary phase of the image. Most certainly, but at the same time this is not chaos.
He cuts out vertical strips which he then rearranges.
[…] It is much more a rearrangement than a variation, because
the contents are not afected. A certain order is destroyed
The combination of vertical lines, referring to the time factor, and to make way for a new order, which is just as coherent.
horizontal ones, referring to the space factor, inspired Klee to
start working with patterns. How did he succeed in escaping the [end of extract from the text]
‘rigidity’ you mention in connection with Mondriaan and
Kandinsky?
Actually, that is very simple. The lines he draws are not
strictly ‘straightforward’; they dance on the canvas and
follow diferent tracks. This leads to a completely dis-
turbed pattern, because its underlying structure is
destroyed from within. Thus Klee lays bare an order
which is about to be disturbed, or at least to undergo
a transformation. Klee adds a ‘chromatic’ meaning to this:
with certain identification marks he shows how he will use
specific colours to emphasize the structure and destroy it
again immediately.
A comparable procedure is used in connection with
perspective. How does Klee create multiform surfaces?
Again, this is quite simple. He changes the eye’s viewing
direction. He plays with a series of alternating perspec-
tives. These perspectives constantly change the way in
which the painting is seen, and the focus continues to
shift. This is a Renaissance technique, which is only used
by him, although he applies it in a totally diferent way.

In Le pays fertile you say that Klee does not have a specialized
vocabulary. What do you mean by that?
I think it is hard for a painter to understand the lessons
of Klee. He speaks a universal language that can easily be
applied to other disciplines too. 98 99
7 Structures the composition process – a network of numbers I myself
could influence only indirectly, lending it a certain auton-
omy while at the same time ensuring that these automatic
mechanisms would not lead to chaos. The musical vocabu-
lary was incorporated in a strict network of well-defined
options.

I was so strongly aware of this that, immediately after the

work had been written, I felt compelled to give the very
first part of it the title borrowed from an image by Paul
Klee: Monument à la limite du pays fertile. However, the
Structures is the title of the composition for two pianos, in two separate obligation this presented to find similar dedicated titles
parts, on which Boulez worked with an interruption of almost ten years: for the other two parts of the work held me back and made
Structures 1, premier livre was composed in 1952, and Structures 2, deuxième me choose to grant the patent only to myself.
livre in 1961. The first piece is about 12 minutes, the second 23 minutes. Be that as it may, that [revoked] title indicates how
This is the work, especially the first book, he emphatically refers to in strongly I felt that I must stay there, at the limit of the
conversations and texts when trying to explain what ‘reaching the limit’ fertile land.
in his personal creative experience has meant to him. It was Structures 1
that brought Boulez À la Limite du Pays Fertile, especially the very begin- Three minutes were suicient for me to mark the border
ning of Structures 1a [3½ minutes]. with a sea of infertility.1
In the internal organization of Structures Boulez has confronted himself
unintentionally with the point of no return that is thematized in the texts In his texts about Paul Klee, Pierre Boulez links the question of ‘the
that together form this book. It is a problem dealt with earlier by Olivier method’ to limitations in the ‘significance’ of the creative system. In his
Messiaen in his Modes de valeurs et d’intensités. In that work too, the cre- case and according to his view, after dodecaphony – composing with
ative work coincides with the creative method. The question to which twelve tones that are mutually interrelated – it is all about compositions
extent the ‘creative method’, in this case the serial technique, can coincide of rows in which duration, timbre, dynamics and harmony are laid down:
with the creative work itself, has in the history of music been brought up seriality. Where is the limit of comprehensibility in musical powers of
ever since the eighteenth century, in connection with Bach’s Wohltempe- expression?
rierte Klavier and Die Kunst der Fuge. The latter work, in fact not written for This question is especially relevant to his Structures 1, which he describes
a specific instrumentation, has for almost a century and a half been as ‘some kind of tunnel that could not be avoided; a tunnel I had to go
considered a technical exercise in fugue composing, with all its variables. through in order to make progress’. In this work, he feels he is approach-
Boulez refers to his famous Structures in several occasions, stating: ing Anton Webern as regards rigidity. Speaking of both ‘structures’ and of
the diference between them, he says that he found himself in a stage
I wanted to free my musical vocabulary completely from where he had to reduce musical language to nothingness. In a way: the
any form of inner coherence, be it in figures, phrases or wheel had to be re-invented.2
developments within the form. I wanted to reconquer
every stage of compositional form, step by step, element The extreme lucidity, the richness and beauty of the works of Pierre
by element, so that a completely new synthesis would Boulez witness to which extend this ‘re-invention of the wheel’ appeared
emerge. A synthesis that is not immediately corrupted to be crucial in the music of our times.
by stylistic reminiscences (external influences).
Subsequently, I had the ambition to unite precisely those
aspects of musical language that up to that moment had
been in conflict with each other.

I had no intention, so to speak, to borrow a pitch structure

from one composer, rhythmic principles from the other
and a form concept from a third. In my view, the most
pressing order was to create a unity of all elements within
musical vocabulary, welded together according to one and
the same organizational principle. A principle that would
be responsible for the existence, development and mutual 1
Boulez is referring to the duration of
relationships within musical vocabulary. Structures 1a.
And how did I think I would be able to free my musical 2
Pierre Boulez: 1962, in: M. Brandt, Wegen
vocabulary from any form of inner coherence? naar Boulez, 1995, p. 79-86 [the first Dutch
I included a numerical construction in diferent stages of 100 book on Pierre Boulez]. 101
 8 Literature and Sources

1 Texts on Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez
Texts by Pierre Boulez
Collections
Points de Repère i. Imaginer, Paris, Bourgois, 1995
Regards sur Autrui. Points de Repère ii, Paris, Christian Bourgois,
2005
Leçons de Musique. Points de Repère iii, Paris , Christian
Bourgois, 2005
Orientations, collected writings, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez,
translated by Michael Cooper, Harvard University Press,
Massachusets, 1986
Leitlinien, Gedachtengänge eines Komponisten, Bärenreiter,
Kassel, 2000
Nécessité d’ une orientation esthétique [ii]. Canadian University
Music Review/ Revues de Musique des Universités
Canadiennes no. 7: p. 46-79, 1986 a [on Structures]
Boulez Papers; ‘Translating Boulez in Dutch’ 5 volumes, Stichting
Pierre Boulez, The Netherlands, 2005,-07,-10,-12,-14
Separate studies
Penser la musique aujourd’ hui, Paris, éditions Gontier, 1964
German translation:
Musikdenken heute, Darmstädter Beiträge zur
neuen Musik v en vi, Mainz, Schott, 1963, 1985
Relevés d’ apprenti, textes réunis et présentés par Paule
Thévenin, Paris, Coll. Tel Quel, Le Seuil, 1966
English translations:
Notes of an Apprenticeship, New York, Knopf, 1968
Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1991
Par volonté et par hasard, entretiens avec Célestine Deliège, Coll. Tel
Quel, Paris, Le Seuil, 1975
Points de repère, textes réunis et présentés par Jean-Jaques Nattiez,
Paris, Christian Bourgois, coll. Musique/passé/présent, 1981
Jalons, pour une décennie, dix ans d’ enseignement au Collège de
France[1978-1988], textes réunis et présentés par Jean-Jacques
Nattiez, Paris, Christian Bourgois , 1989
German translation:
Josef Häusler Leitlinien Gedankengänge eines Komponisten,
Bärenreiter, Kassel, 2000
L’ écriture du geste , entretiens avec Cécile Gilly sur la direction d’
orchestre, coll. ‘Musiques’, Paris, Christian Bourgois , 2002
Brandt, Maarten, Wegen naar Boulez, De meester in dialoog met de
traditie, gesprekken met Pierre Boulez, Kok Lyra, Kampen,
1995 [Ways to Boulez, the master in dialogue with the
tradition]
Breatnach, Mary, Boulez and Mallarmé, a study in poetic influence,
Ashgate, Aldershot,1996
Fesefeldt, Christine, Bild-Körper-Schrift, zur Poetik und
Kompositionspraxis bei Pierre Boulez. Schrift und Bild in
Bewegung, Band14, Aisthesis, Bielefeld, 2006
Goldman, Jonathan, La pensée de Pierre Boulez à travers ses écrits,
Coll. Musique, recherches , Paris, Delatour, 2010
Hirschbrunner, Theodor, Pierre Boulez und sein Werk, Laaber Verlag,
Regensburg, 1985
Jameux, Dominique, Pierre Boulez, Fayard/Sacem, 1984
English translation:
Translated by Susan Bradshaw, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge Massachusets,1991
Ligeti, György, Entscheidung und Automatik in der Structure 1a,
Die Reihe, nr.4, 1958, pp. 38-63
Samuel, Claude, Pierre Boulez; Eclats, Paris, Mémoire du Livre, 2002.
Stacey, Peter, Boulez and the modern concept, Scolar Press, Aldershot,
1987
Here:
Poetic confrontation 1: René Char: Le Visage Nuptial,
Poetic confrontation 2: Portrait de Mallarmé
Steinegger, Catherine, Pierre Boulez et le théâtre, De la Compagnie
Renaud-Barrault à Patrice Chéreau, Coll. Musica, Wavre,
Mardaga, 2012

The Fertile Land

Pierre Boulez, A la limite du pays fertile [Paul Klee], Points de Repère
i, Imaginer, Paris, Christian Bourgois , 1995, p.315-331
German version:
An der Grenze des Fruchtlandes, Die Reihe i, Elektronische
Musik Wien, Universal Edition, 1955, p.47-57
Pierre Boulez, Paul Klee: Le pays fertile, Regards sur autrui.
Points de repère ii, Paris, Christian Bourgois , 2005, p.723-769
Italian translation:
Il Paese Fertile, a cura di Paule Thévenin, Traduzione di Stefano
Esengrini, carte d’ artisti 58, Milano, Abscondita srl, 2004
Pierre Boulez, Marcella Lista: Oeuvre: Fragment. Essais de Pierre
Boulez, Marcella Lista, dialogue entre Pierre Boulez et Henri
Loyrette, Paris, Gallimard, 2008
Pierre Boulez, La leçon de Paul Klee, in: Paul Klee [1879–1940]
102 Polyphonies, p.42. Actes Sud, Cité de la Musique 2011 103
2 3 6
Paul Klee Poetry Compositions by Pierre Boulez [1925]

Char, René, Oeuvres Complètes, Paris, Gallimard, 1983–2008

Texts by Paul Klee Mallarmé, Stéphane, Oeuvres Complètes, Bibliothèque de la 1945 Douze notations for piano
Pleiade, Paris, 1945 1946 Sonatine for flute and piano
Gedichte, Veränderte Neuauflage, Hrsg. Felix Klee, Zürich- Starink, Gertrude, De weg naar Egypte, twintig passages, First sonata for piano
Hamburg ,1960–2004 Amsterdam, van Oorschot, 1977 1946, 1951,1989 Le Visage nuptial
Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre. Faksimilierte Ausgabe des 1947 Second sonata for piano
Originalmanuskripts von Paul Klees erstem Vortragszyklus 4 Le soleil des eaux
am staatlichen Bauhaus, Weimar, 1921/22. Hrsg. Jürgen Philosophy 1949 Livre pour quator à cordes
Glaesemer, Paul Klee-Stiftung, Kunstmuseum, Bern, 1951 Polyphonie x
Schwabe ag, Verlag, Basel, 2011 Ehrenzweig, Anton, The hidden order of art, University of California 1952 [two] études for tape
Das bildnerische Denken, Form-und Gestaltungslehre, Schwabe press, 1967/1995 Structures pour deux pianos [livre i]
Verlag, Basel, 1990 Spengler, Oswald, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, München, Beck, 1923 1954 Le marteau sans maître
Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch, Mann, Berlin, 2003 1955 Orestie
Théorie de l’art moderne, initialement paru dans Das bildnerische 5 La Symphonie mécanique, icw Jean Mitry
Denken, Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre, textes Mythology 1957 Deux improvisations sur Mallarmé
réunis et édités par Jürg Spiller, Bâle, Schwabe Verlag, 1956 Doubles
Editions Denoël, 1964, 1985, pour la traduction française Frazer, James George, The Golden Bough, London, Mac Millan, 1922 1957, 1963 Third sonata for piano
Tagebücher 1898–1918, Hrsg. Felix Klee, Dumont, Köln, 1957 1957, 1962 Pli selon pli
1960, 1989 Don and Improvisation i, ii, iii
Texts by Kandinsky 1959, 1962 Tombeau
1958 Poésie pour pouvoir
Ueber das Geistige in der Kunst, Wassily Kandinsky [1910], Hrsg. 1961 Structures pour deux pianos [livre ii]
Nina Kandinsky, Bern-Bümpliz,1952 1964, 1968 Figures–Doubles–Prismes
Der Blaue Reiter, Hrsg. Wassily Kandinsky und Franz Marc [1912], 1965 Eclat
Dokumentarische Neuausgabe von Klaus Lankheit, Piper 1968 Domaines
Verlag, München 1965 1968, 1988 Livre pour cordes
Klänge, Wassily Kandinsky [1912] German and English, translation 1970 Eclat/Multiples
Elizabeth R. Napier, Yale University Press, 1981 cummings ist der dichter
1974 Musique de scène pour Ainsi parla Zarathoustra
Texts on Paul Klee 1975 Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
1976 Messagesquisse
Paul Klee und die Musik ed. Ole Henrik Moe, Exhibition Catalogue, 1980 Notations i–iv
Frankfurt am Main, Schirn Kunsthalle, 1986 1981, 1984 Répons
Bosseur, Jean-Yves, Musique et arts plastiques, Interactions au xxe 1984 Dérive
siècle, Coll. Musique ouverte, Paris, Minerve, 1998–2006 1985, 1995 Dialogue de l’ ombre double
Dessauer-Reiners, Christiane, Das Rhythmische bei Paul Klee, eine 1985 Mémoriale
Studie zum genetischen Bildverfahren, Worms, 1996 Initiale
Düchting, Hajo, Paul Klee Painting Music, Pegasus Library, 1988, 2005 Dérive ii
München, London, 1997 1991 Anthèmes i
Grohmann, Will, Paul Klee, New York, 1954 1991, 1993 Explosante-Fixe
Le Théâtre de la Vie/Overal Theater, Ueberall Theater, Christine 1994, 1995 Incises pour piano
Hopfengart, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Edition à l’ occasion de 1996, 1998 sur Incises
l’ exposition 2007, 2008, Zentrum Paul Klee, Palais des Beaux 1997 Anthèmes ii
Arts Bruxelles, 28 juin 2007–6 janvier 2008, Edition originale 1998 Notation vii
allemande 2007 Hatje Cantz 2005 une page d’ éphéméride for piano
Original German edition, 2007, Zentrum Paul Klee, Dutch- 1969, 2005 Improvisé pour le Dr. K.
Flemish edition 2008, Mercatorfonds and Paleis voor Schone
Kunsten, Brussel
here: p.266:
Michael Baumgartner: Paul Klee et la musique/Paul Klee en de muziek.
Pierre Boulez: La Leçon de Paul Klee/De Les van Paul Klee
À propos de l’oeuvre de Paul Klee, interview de Pierre Boulez,
Michael Baumgartner et Claude Lorent;
Over het werk van Paul Klee, interview van Pierre Boulez met Michael
Baumgartner en Claude Lorent;
Michael Baumgartner: Du rythme structural à la configuration
polyphonique, une introduction aux recherches de Paul Klee sur
la peinture et la musique
Dutch-Flemish: Van structureel ritme naar een polyfone beeldopbouw:
Een inleiding in Paul Klees didactische en kunsttheoretische
omgang met schilderkunst en muziek aan het Bauhaus

104 105
Paul Klee
Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre

1921–1922
Ink on paper
20.2 × 16.3 cm
bf/24
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern 106 107
Paul Klee
Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre

1921–1922
Ink on paper
20.2 × 16.3 cm
bf/10
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern 108 109
Paul Klee
Beiträge zur bildnerischen Formlehre

1921–1922
Ink on paper
20.2 × 16.3 cm
bf/40
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern 110 111
Etty Mulder
Improvisation I, Le Cygne
1964–1965
Lectures notes
Utrecht Institute for Musicology 112 113
Pierre Boulez
J’aime, Le Visage nuptial, 3
From Stacey, p. 39, ex 13 114 115
Pierre Boulez Le pays fertile
The Fertile Land, first page
Handwritten manuscript in blue ink on squared paper
Format A4
Inventory of text-manuscripts Paul Klee, 1988
Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel © Christian Bourgois Editeur

Manuscrit autographe, rédigé à l’ encre bleue sur papier quadrillé

Format A4
Inventaire de Textmanuskripte Paul Klee, 1988
Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel © Christian Bourgois Editeur
116 117
Pierre Boulez
Le vierge le vivace et le bel aujourd’ hui
Score for personal use 1964–1965
Universal Edition 1958
Nr. 12885 118 119
Pierre Boulez

ca. 1955
Photo: Kicia Lafon
Portraîts de musiciens, Exposition Paris, 07-01-2006
Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris 120