Seminar

Pierre Boulez, Seminars 1980–1981

Material Generation

  • Material outside of use, outside of time
  • Hierarchy of origin, principle, and generation
  • Functions—to be defined—of generation and the resulting use
  • Specific characteristics of the material: continuous/discontinuous, absolutely/relatively perceptible (intervals, durations, timbres, dynamics)

Frameworks for realization (use)

  • Monody, Polyphony: Elementary Categories
  • Heterophony, Antiphony: Subsidiary categories, involving the preceding ones

Methods of use

  • Initial or Combinatorics State
    • Compressions, Extensions, Inversions, Structural Modifications
    • Transformations
    • Self-generating systems
    • Sound/Silence
  • Strictly Combinatorics State
    • Interferences of various cycles
    • Interpolations
    • Filters and Screens
    • Influence of one structure on another