Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna is a composition for orchestra in eight groups by Pierre Boulez. Biographer Dominique Jameux wrote that the piece has "obvious audience appeal", and that it represented a desire to establish "immediate, almost physical contact with the public". Jameux also noted that Rituel represents one of the few examples of repetitive music written by Boulez. Author Jonathan Goldman wrote that, of Boulez's works, Rituel is the one that "most evokes... the sound worlds of non-Western musical ensembles, be they Indonesian, African or South American."
History
Rituel, commissioned by BBC London, was written a year after the death of Boulez's friend and fellow composer/conductor Bruno Maderna in December 1973. It was first performed in London on 2 April 1975 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Boulez. Following the premiere, Boulez revised the score, removing optional, "open" features due to concerns regarding the ability of a large ensemble to react in a coordinated way to unpredictable situations. Gunther Schuller conducted the Berkshire Music Center Orchestra, a student ensemble, in the U.S. premiere of Rituel on 14 August 1975 as part of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music.The musical material of Rituel was derived from ...explosante-fixe..., a two-page tribute to Igor Stravinsky, described by Goldman as "a kind of open-ended composition kit", that Boulez composed for a 1972 issue of the journal Tempo. Over the course of roughly twenty years, Boulez would base a number of compositions, including Anthèmes I and II, on this material.
Instrumentation
In Rituel, the musicians are divided into eight groups that are placed in widely-separated positions throughout the performance space. The groups are as follows:- one oboe
- two clarinets in B
- three flutes
- four violins
- wind quintet
- string sextet
- wind septet
- brass ensemble
The total instrumentation consists of 3 flutes, alto flute, 3 oboes, english horn, 3 clarinets, E clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, 4 bassoons, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 9 percussion, 6 violins, 2 violas, and 2 cellos.
Analysis
In the preface to the published score, Boulez wrote:The piece is structured as an antiphony with fourteen sections in which seven "responses" alternate with seven "verses", followed by an extended coda which is, in turn, composed of seven sections. The responses are marked by dense homophonic writing, with the instrumental groups producing chords that are triggered by the conductor at different times. The verses are more linear, and feature passages of varying length that can be cued by the conductor so as to sound all at once or with staggered entrances, with the result being a heterophonic texture. The verses are not conducted; instead, groups are cued by the conductor and proceed independently, with each group's tempo maintained by the associated percussionist.
Overall, Rituel is structured like an arch, beginning with only one of the groups playing, and leading up to a tutti, followed by the coda, in which the forces are gradually reduced to two groups. At the same time, the percussion instruments gradually assume a more prominent role. In an interview, Boulez described the form of the piece as "in general very simple: it is the form refrain-couplet-refrain-couplet until the middle of the work. After, the percussion becomes denser. The percussion, 'utilitarian' in the first part, becomes the most interesting part in the second." In an essay published in 2004, Boulez elaborated on this aspect of the piece:
At the opening of the piece, where the oboe plays alone, you pay little attention to the percussion, in order to follow the oboe's melodic line. When two or three groups play together, of course you notice the interference patterns of the different percussion instruments, all the more so because each uses a different timbre; but their role remains in the background, since you are occupied with making out the melodic identity of the different groups, and following the heterophonic game through which they correspond with each other. As the number of groups increases, the density can no longer be perceived analytically, and you latch onto the rhythmic interference patterns of the percussion. The more the perception loses its footing in one realm, the more it latches onto a related realm which it had neglected up till then. The principal phenomena become the secondary, and vice versa.
Boulez based the pitch structure of Rituel on a set of seven notes, corresponding to the number of the letters in the name "Maderna". This set appears in melodic form in the verses, where it is gradually developed, transposed, reordered, and extended, and its inversion governs the harmony of the refrains.
Reception
In a review of the work's premiere, Peter Heyworth called Rituel "music that, once heard, stamps itself indelibly on the memory". After Boulez conducted the New York Philharmonic in the New York premiere on 13 January 1977, Harold C. Schonberg wrote that he "was greeted with boos as well as cheers. He took several bows, and the cheers eventually won out."Later in 1977 Krzysztof Penderecki, asked which contemporary composers he liked, said: "I like Boulez's last piece Rituel, because it's like Messiaen; Boulez seems to have changed his style." Paul Griffiths wrote of the work's "awesome grandeur", calling it "a curious throwback to the world of Messiaen, and especially to that of Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, Messiaen's own liturgy of solos and ensembles with percussion." However, according to Griffiths, Rituel "is neither a celebration of resurrection nor a venturing into new worlds: it is a memorial. In paying tribute to Bruno Maderna, the first of the central Darmstadt band to have died, it seems to throw a wreath over the whole enterprise of the 1950s and 1960s."
Writing for AllMusic, James Harley stated: "the music is... rich in tone and detail. The ritualized unfolding of the refrains and verses provides a framework for a complex, dynamic musical universe. Heard in concert, the spatial distribution of the eight ensembles clarifies the heterophonic nature of the music, enabling the layers of simultaneously unfolding material to be perceived both as distinct entities and as components of the whole. The combination of logic and spontaneity produces a powerful musical experience, a worthy tribute to a valued friend lost too soon." In a New York Times article following Boulez's death, Zachary Woolfe called Rituel a "shimmering memorial... funeral music, as surely as any by Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner or Mahler. Never has Mr. Boulez's lifelong study of the precious immediacy of sound, its resistance to permanence, been more poignant."
Mark Swed, in a review for the Los Angeles Times, wrote: "The score has a processional character and an Asian flavor. Percussion tolls, with gongs favored. Surprisingly, Boulez toys with repetition, which was all the rage in New York at the time but not by Boulez, who was known for favoring ever-changing complexity in his music. Rituel became the best of both worlds — intricate, of course, but also a real and unforgettably poignant ritual." Alex Ross called Rituel "the most sensuously appealing score of Boulez’s career" and commented: "plangent oboe solos, rasping choirs of brass, and intricate splatterings of percussion rang out in ever-changing sonic perspectives, in a musical approximation of a Calder mobile."