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Dear Pliable. Just to put things right: The reader who told you that Henri Pousseur's birthplace Malmédy was German speaking, is not quite correct. While Malmédy is part of the so-called East Cantons (which were originally German, but became Belgian after the First World War), and which are now part of Wallonia, it is officially a French speaking town with language facilities for the German speaking minority there.
I promise this will be the last time I bother you with the Belgian situation. ;-) Great blog, by the way.
Cordially, Ivo Swinnen, As, Belgium
Ivo, please don't apologise. All this helps explain why Belgium hasn't been able to form a government for nearly six months. And this path took me to some wonderful graphics connected to Henri Pousseur. That's where my header image comes from, it's part of a portrait of Henri Pousseur by Maxime Godard. Thank you for helping us explore the labyrinth of serial music.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Kyle has left a new comment on your post "New music from the old world":
I see that Belgian serialist Henri Pousseur is not mentioned. Or, perhaps, he has already been forgotten.
Not forgotten Kyle. Just wating for someone to fill in the details. Henri Pousseur was born in Malmédy in French speaking Wallonia in 1929. In the 1950s he was active in the international avant-garde music scene (dodecaphonic, serial, electronic, aleatoric music), together with Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, and others, and like Boulez he was heavily influenced by Webern. The image above is a page from Pousseur's score for Electre (credit Universal Editions, Vienna).
After 1960 Pousseur rejected the narrow viewpoint of the avant-garde, and, in collabaration with the French writer Michel Butor, he adopted an inclusive approach which embraced a range of styles and viewpoints. Their 1962 opera Votre Faust forged a connection between contemporary music and history by casting the audience as performers. The influential Centre de recherches et de formation musicales de Wallonie (CRFMW) in Liège was founded by Pousseur in the 1970s. He also established the Institut de Pédagogie musicale de Paris in the 1980s, which is now integrated into Paris' Cité de la Musique.
Among Henri Pousseur's prolific output are the electro-acoustic music sequences for the 1961 production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The choreography for this opera was created by the great Maurice Béjart, who died yesterday (Nov 22, 2007) aged 80.
The English website of Henri Pousseur's publisher is here, his own French website is here. And read about yet another serialist from the old world here.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
