About Répons, a composition by Pierre Boulez

...and what a work it is. Though it forsakes traditional melody and structural development, Répons is quite unlike Boulez's earlier, more serial pieces, which aggressively follow their atonal mathematics in the pursuit of a new language. Although the pitch sequences and harmonies are still atonal, Boulez has freely drawn from other modern compositional elements, including electronic manipulation, spatial acoustics, innovative coloring, and even a quasi-Minimalist use of repetition. While Boulez has certainly drawn from these currents in the past, nowhere do they seem more balanced and transformed into something so unique. Répons is a world unto its own, where the proliferation of sounds and the multiple layering of textures seems to generate its own reason for being, like a tropical storm conjuring itself from a confluence of differing fronts. Indeed, in some ways it reminds me of Debussy's expressionistic portrait of the sea, La Mer -- Répons rolls, undulates, swirls, murmurs, surges and shimmers, alive with its own potential for infinite creation.
Répons opens with "Introduction," a six-minute segment that winds up the orchestra into shivering vortex of sound. Events occur quickly, with small figures passed from instrument to instrument like spinning plates. The music sounds precarious, as if one instrument should slip, the whole structure would come crashing down. After establishing this whirling dynamic, the piece expands to pull in the six instruments waiting at the perimeter.

Section 1 wakes up the soloists and introduces the electronics. As each instrument enters, it plays an arpeggiated string of notes which are immediately absorbed into the computer and released back, transformed and multiplied, cascading down from the speakers in ripples. While it's obvious that the sounds have been electronically colored, they have a richness that elevates them beyond the cold world of squawks, drones, and bleeps usually associated with computerized classical music. The system transforms the plucked and hammered strings into beautiful new sounds, many of them having an almost liquid quality; and the percussion instruments are given a shimmer that sometimes fades into a haunting, mechanical rhythm, like the dreams of an old train submerged under water. Happily, this inventiveness continues as Répons unfolds.

Section 2 develops the soloists more aggressively, building up the structure of the work in lush thickets of texture, only to have the central orchestra surge back to life in the roiling boil of Section 3.

Section 4 sustains tension across the orchestral strings while the pianos bubble beneath a glassy, undulating field of electronic sound. Soon horns march closer into view, adding an ominous urgency which dissolves into the skittering soundscape of Section 5 with its tattoos of percussion and agitated strings.

Section 6 churns the whirlpool, pulling the orchestra and soloists into a gyre of increasing frenzy, adding layer upon layer of sound. Nowhere in Boulez's oeuvre can I think to better apply his famous dictum of music as "organized delirium," there's so much going on here it's intoxicating. I can almost hear Willy Wonka crying, "Faster! Faster!" as the work plunges onwards.

With Section 7, we momentarily enter the brooding eye of the storm. Although things aren't exactly tranquil, we can see the surrounding maelstrom more clearly, its edges sharply defined by individual instruments. Section 8 emerges from an almost jazzy vamp on the bass, and gathers instruments together in a surreal, slithery march to the Coda, which carefully winds things down in a series of slowing arpeggios and tolling, submarine bells. Répons does not so much end as it fades in the distance like a retreating storm, its thunders, flashes and gales achieving an eerie, lucid calm as seen from afar.