Pierre Boulez - AD MAJOREM HARPA GLORIAM

Ad Majorem harpa Gloriam. To the greatest glory of the harp.
This dedication by Pierre Boulez to Jacqueline and Francis Pierre shows, no doubt anecdotally but no less sincerely, how important the harp occupied his heart and his ears. Unlike his professor at the conservatory, Olivier Messiaen, who never wrote a single note for the harp, Pierre Boulez always had the good taste to never abandon it, and if his works are almost as few as those of Webern, almost all of his ensemble or orchestral pieces have one, two, or three harps.
Only five partitions are completely private : Rituel, Explosante-Fixe, Dérive, Mémoriale, et le Marteau sans Maître.

In chronological order :
- Le Visage Nuptial (1947) : two harps.
- Le Soleil des Eaux (1948) : one harp.
- Pli selon pli (1959) : three harps, or rather three harpists for five harps, two of which are tuned in quarter tones.
- Figures, Doubles, Prismes (1958) : three harps.
- Eclat-Multiples (1965-1970) one harp.
- Domaines (1968) : one harp.
- Cummings ist der Dichter (1970) : three harpes.
- Notations I à IV (1980) et VII (1999) : three harps.
- Repons (1981-1988) : one harp.
- SurIncises (1996-1998) : three harps.
- Dérive 2 (2006) : one harp.

If the harp is present in these works, two major scores particularly highlight it: Repons, and SurIncises.

Repons is a kind of big modern concerto grosso for six soloists and instrumental ensemble. Taken over by IRCAM electronics - at the time, the huge 4X machine - the six soloists are resonant sound instruments arranged around the concert hall: two pianos, harp, vibraphone, xylophone / glockenspiel and cymbalum. The orchestra, on the contrary, is placed in the center of the hall, and is made up of the 24 other musicians of the InterContemporary Ensemble, instruments with fixed sounds only.
Marie-Claire Jamet gave the world premiere on October 18, 1981 in Donaueschingen, and Fabrice Pierre the French premiere on December 15 of the same year, at the Maison de la Culture in Bobigny. Marie-Claire Jamet then created the second and third versions, in 1982 and 1984, but above all the memorable, outdoor version of the Boulbon career at the Festival d'Avignon on July 12, 1988.
SurIncises. It is a huge extension of a very virtuoso little piano piece, Incises, for three groups of three instruments: three pianos, three harps, and three percussions. A first 12-minute version was created in 1996 in Basel for the 90th birthday of Paul Sacher, with Boulez at the head of the EIC, but the full version, 37 minutes, was created on August 30, 1998 at the festival of Edinburgh by the InterContemporain ensemble under the baton of David Robertson, with Frédérique Cambreling, Sandrine Chatron and Marianne Le Mentec on harps.

Boulez's ties to the harp began very early.
In 1941-42, during his year in a higher mathematics class in Lyon, Pierre Boulez met the great singer Ninon Vallin, who had settled in a large property in Millery, near Lyon.
Enthused by the young man, and eager to support his project to settle in Paris, she then sends a letter to his friend Pierre Jamet in which she warmly recommends him (among other musical collaborations, Ninon Vallin and Pierre Jamet had engraved together in 1936 popular melodies from Peru - PATH2 PG 38). Upon his arrival in Paris in the fall of 1943, Boulez was greeted by Pierre Jamet and his wife Renée Hansen-Jamet, who found him a small maid's room with their friends, the Henri-Martin family, who would later become fervent subscribers of the Musical Domain. It was the Jamets who introduced young Boulez to the Parisian musical scene, taking him out to all concerts, including those at the conservatory, before he joined the institution the following year. Boulez remained loyal to Pierre Jamet all his life, and many harpists still remember this memorable concert by Gargilesse in 1983, where Pierre Boulez came to celebrate Pierre Jamet's 90th birthday by accompanying him in Debussy's Dances with the 'InterContemporain Ensemble.

When Pierre Jamet died in 1991 at 98, Boulez wrote this particularly eloquent tribute:

Pierre Jamet embodied the very elegance of the performer. I mean elegance not in the superficial sense of prettiness, pleasant, flattering; but in a sense where it denotes acuity of perception, refinement of sensitivity, mastery of the apprehension of a musical text. Whoever heard him play Debussy's repertoire, Ravel, could only be transported to an ideal place where passion and radiance reinforce each other. If one can speak, on its subject, of clarity, it is not of a quality which diminishes, which shrinks, even which removes the mystery; it is indeed a clarity which deepens the mystery by seizing it in a blinding light. Few performers are able to both seduce and enrich you, to chain you to sound as to thought: Pierre Jamet was one of them.

Pierre Boulez.

Two "historic" musicians marked the harpistic life of Boulez: Marie-Claire Jamet and Francis Pierre.

When he arrived in Paris in 1943 with the Jamets, Pierre Boulez was just eighteen, and Marie-Claire Jamet not even ten. Over the years, the age difference will be less marked, and will form an almost fraternal friendship. It was therefore quite natural for Marie-Claire to bring Boulez to the pit of the Théâtre Marigny at the home of Jean-Louis Barrault in the early 1950s - Boulez conducted stage music for the Renaud-Barrault Company there since 1946. Then in 1954 , when Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renault welcomed the Musical Estate in their theater, Marie-Claire naturally followed Boulez in this new adventure. The following year, in 1955, Marie-Claire Jamet left France for Canada. Unable to continue the Domaine's concerts, she then presented to Boulez Francis Pierre, who was to succeed him. From there began a new friendship as faithful as it was lasting.

Very active, Francis Pierre has performed an impressive number of new pieces within the Domaine, whether in chamber music or under the direction of Boulez. However, Pierre Boulez has always avoided entrusting the creations of his works to the Domaine Musical, thus avoiding possible accusations of conflict of interest. At most, Francis gave the Domaine the French premiere of Éclat in 1966, premiered in Los Angeles the previous year for the composer's forty years. But outside the Musical Field, Pierre Boulez recommended Francis whenever he could. It is Francis Pierre for example, who was already on the harp in the chamber versions of the Deux Improvisations sur Mallarmé, then in the orchestral version, Pli selon Pli, or the version with ensemble of Domaines, with the Ensemble Musique Vivante and Diego Mason. Much later, on June 18, 1980, Francis Pierre was playing the harp, with his wife Jacqueline and their son Fabrice, 20, when creating Notations I to IV for orchestra, with the Paris Orchestra and Daniel Baremboïm at its head, in the Salle Pleyel.

After the Musical Domain, Pierre Boulez created IRCAM in 1974, and above all, two years later, the Ensemble InterContemporain. Pierre Boulez then naturally proposed to Francis Pierre to join this new group, who, after long hesitation, had to resign himself to keep his position at the Paris Orchestra rather than embarking on an adventure - at the very beginning, the EIC did not necessarily seem very long-lasting, and the closure of the Estate in 1973 had left the musicians with a slightly bitter taste. Boulez also proposed the place to Marie-Claire Jamet, who declined it for the same reasons as Francis, being already a soloist at the National.
There were therefore two recruitment competitions, one with Francis on the jury, the other with Marie-Claire. In the last competition, if the young Fabrice Pierre actually came out on top, Boulez was probably wary of his eighteenth birthday, and the competition ultimately lapsed. However, Boulez called Fabrice in 1981 to appoint him assistant conductor to Peter Eötvös, then musical director.
After these two unsuccessful competitions, Marie-Claire Jamet finally decided to apply for the Ensemble InterContemporain. Pierre Boulez auditioned her in the Châtelet hall (notably with Stratus by Yoshihisa Taïra, with Christian Lardé), after which she joined the EIC for the first concert in October 1976. Marie-Claire remained soloist with the InterContemprain ensemble for almost 17 years, until 1993, when Frédérique Cambreling succeeded her... a second time, since like her, she had been a soloist with the National Orchestra of France before. For 23 years, Frédérique Cambreling has always been as loyal and active to the InterContemprain Ensemble, creating in turn a dizzying amount of new repertoires.
Marie-Claire Jamet and Frédérique Cambreling both played more than any other under the direction of Boulez. Marie-Claire Jamet created the final versions of Repons in 1984, and Cummings ist der Dichter, in 1986 in Strasbourg - again with Francis and Fabrice Pierre. Frédérique Cambreling created SurIncises and Dérive 2. Historically speaking, Dérive 2 also links the two harpists: Marie Claire Jamet created the initial version, of 16 minutes, in 1988, and Frédérique Cambreling the final version, of 45 minutes, in 2006 .

Boulez is the author of countless writings on music. The only lines devoted to the harp repeat a conference given in Strasbourg in 1961 on the Deuxième improvisation sur Mallarmé. Pubished in Points de repère. Tome I : Imaginer (chapitre 39 : Construire une improvisation - Christian Bourgois Éditeur, 1995 p.448-450), this conference shows how, at the time, Boulez heard the harp :

The harp offers an unusual richness of sound. So far, however, we have only partially used the possibilities of this instrument. I would like to say that the impressions received when listening to certain traditional music were very important to me as a composer, because they allowed me to free myself, in the treatment of instruments, from Western conventions. In the Peruvian Andes, I heard Indian peasants playing on harps of a very singular sound. I learned by listening to them how to use the high notes of the instrument as well as certain effects of "muffled sounds". We Europeans have the harp of Debussy and Ravel on our ears. They used it admirably; but this usage has degenerated: today we could remain under the impression that the harp is an instrument that each concert obliges to conscientiously dust in a succession of glissandi.

It is indeed a shame that such a comprehensive instrument is used for such a reduced effect. For this reason, I would like to present some possibilities of playing and sound. First the harmonic sounds; they are strangled, but at the same time quite aggressive, because you have to pluck the strings very hard so that the harmonic sound comes out well. I choose measure 66:

It is in the treble that the degree of aggressiveness of which the harp is capable is the highest (measure 68):

Another game mode is to pluck the string near the soundboard. The strings plucked thus cannot vibrate as freely as when they are attacked in the middle. The resulting sound is dry, more piercing, and somewhat reminiscent of the guitar. Also very characteristic, the little echo that follows the attack here (measure 55):

Finally, one last possibility of use which I would like to emphasize: small dry arpeggios instead of chords (measures 48-50):

It is necessary to put into perspective this presentation of the harp. The modes of play that Boulez evokes are indeed relatively conventional, but we do not forget that it was in 1961, that is to say two years before the creation of the Sequenza II of Berio by Francis Pierre. And besides, contrary to what he claims, there was, ultimately, nothing terribly new in the game: Debussy and Ravel have widely used harmonic sounds, and even so, the Modern school of the harp de Salzedo was already published in 1921 - it was Boulez himself who presented this work to Francis Pierre. But indeed, the resolutely modern use that Boulez reserves for the harp is not located through the modes of play, but directly through its musical language in itself.

It is funny to note that at this period of Pli selon Pli, Boulez largely took a position in favor of the American harp of the Lyon & Healy type, preferring it to the Erard harp which was then living its last hours, to the point of specifying it in the nomenclature of its own partitions. First cautiously in the chamber version of the Première Improvisation sur Mallarmé, in 1957: "Harp (American preferably)", then two years later, in Tombeau, fifth and last part of Pli selon Pli, in a slightly more categorical: "2 harps (American)" - he also specifies Piano Steinway 3 pedals.

As anecdotal as it is, this remark is revealing of the way in which Boulez was already nourished by the opinion of the musicians with whom he worked, and the loyal trust he has always placed in them.