Le Marteau sans maître

Avant “L’Artisanat furieux” begins as two duos, flute with vibraphone and guitar with viola. After a short viola cadenza the four instruments mingle more freely.

The sleeve calls this the fourth concert of the Domaine musical’s 1956 season, recorded under the auspices of the International Music Council with UNESCO’s help. Boulez had conducted the French première, with Marie-⁠Thérèse Cahn, at the Petit Marigny on 21 March 1956.

Commentaire I de “Bourreaux de solitude” is roughly in three parts. A long flute solo over the soft murmur of the other instruments is followed by a harsher section led by the xylorimba, then a brief return of the flute.

Boulez told Jed Distler in 2000 that the start of this second piece was “very much under the influence of central African music”, with its wood percussion and xylophone. In 1945–⁠46 Mady Sauvageot, curator of music collections at the Musée Guimet, had introduced him to recordings from Africa and Asia.

Pierre Souvtchinsky’s sleeve note says the work divides into nine parts separated by silences of unequal length, each with its own meaning. The next movement follows one of those pauses.

In “L’Artisanat furieux” the voice sings Char’s poem, which begins “La roulotte rouge au bord du clou”, with the flute alone. Lonchampt notes that this scoring cites “Der kranke Mond” from Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, and that the melodic lines alternate between superposition and overlap.

Commentaire II is the only movement without the flute. It moves in blocks of different lengths, separated by stops and sometimes filled with vibraphone resonance. The viola plays pizzicato until a section where it takes up the bow, and the triangle enters at the end of a rapid passage.

“Bel édifice et les pressentiments”, first version, alternates unstable instrumental sections with entries for the voice over a more homophonic accompaniment. It is the first of two settings of the same Char poem; the second ends the work.

Hans Rosbaud conducted the first performance on 18 June 1955 at the International Society for Contemporary Music festival in Baden-⁠Baden, with Sybilla Plate as soloist. The work was chosen after a hard struggle within the French selection committee.

The sung setting of Char’s “Bourreaux de solitude”, the poem that the earlier Commentaires comment on. Lonchampt calls it the most austere piece of the work, and hears complementary rhythms among the instruments at the start, perhaps inherited from Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21.

Vega’s companion disc C 30 A 66, headed as the fourth concert of 1956, holds extracts of Le Marteau with Webern’s Symphony and Lieder, Nono’s Incontri and Stockhausen’s Kontra-⁠Punkte, all conducted by Boulez.

Après “L’Artisanat furieux” is the shortest movement. Lonchampt finds it close to the first movement, written for three instruments, with a rhythmic play that is easy to follow.

Commentaire III resembles Commentaire I: Lonchampt hears the flute solo and the harsh double notes of the xylorimba laid over one another. The percussion has a formal role, playing claves, then a double bell, then bongos.

L’Express listed this disc on 12 November 1959 as the complete version of the work, conducted by Boulez with M. T. Cahn, and noted that it had won the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles-⁠Cros.

The three poems come from René Char’s collection Le Marteau sans maître. Boulez had already set Char in Le Visage nuptial, composed in 1946.

In the second “Bel édifice et les pressentiments” the whole ensemble plays together for the only time in the work. Lonchampt hears a free, recitative-like tempo at the start and quotations from earlier movements.

The voice is soon freed from the text and uses Sprechgesang at moments. It then alternates wordless phrases with the flute, supported by the ensemble except for the percussion.

The movement closes with the flute against two low tam-tams and a gong. Lonchampt describes the mood as recollected (“recueillie”).