Serialism of Cruelty:

Artaud, Boulez, and Musical violence

by Andrew Infanti
The makers of manifestos hold a dubious status as artists. Usually absorbed in
revolutionary urgency, these scrupulous authors risk the irony of losing their
message to posterity by fault of the painfully organized form of the document
which they chose for its necessary clarity. Past the blazing moment of
inception, their batty treatises are deemed unreadable- more "history" than
literature by general consensus.
Yet, the poetics of much twentieth century music places the composer in a
situation where s/he must confront the manifesto syndrome to be understood
at all. Umberto Eco elucidates this, postulating about serial thought (almost
specifically that propounded by Pierre Boulez):
Every artistic message is a discourse on the language that generates it. At the
extreme, each message posits its own code; each work is its own linguistic
basis, a discourse on its own poetics, a declaration of freedom from all those
ties that presumed to determine it in advance, the key to its interpretation. (1)
While this radical notion provides fantastic possibilities for the composer who
has been freed from predetermined forms, it may doom the receiver of her/his
work to the task of a deciphering a manifesto.
In the days of "heroic serialism" (c. 1945-65), during which Boulez was an
angry young man in the spotlight, each work was expected to herald a new
direction for music history. [example 0] The implicit dogmatism in this mode
of production encouraged a nakedly grammatical approach to composition:
the Structure was the message, not merely the medium of its transmission. If
this manifesto-style of presentation was a goal of the music, how did
composers reintegrate it into an aesthetic which future listeners could grasp?
Since Boulez's poetic formulations have been singled out above as a cause of
the manifesto-syndrome in serial composition, his music conveniently
provides an internal response to it: violence. Obviously dissatisfied with the
self-imposed role of militant grammarian, Boulez forces his music to perform
acts of destruction aimed at its own rules. Boulez's musical violence provides
an easily supported rhetorical stance in this century of fragmentation and war,
but may be a result of abstract structural issues and their presentation. More
than surface fury, it aims at integrating formidable compositional restraints
with the experience of performing and hearing them aesthetically. His forms
have a characteristic destructiveness like a document which is read while it is
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being burned.
Boulez's earliest admitted influences were literary, and much of his conception
of structural violence derives from the theatrical luminary Antonin Artaud.
The elder artist remains famous for his manifestos for the "theater of cruelty"
which propound a jarringly physical experience based on elaborate codes.
The influence of Artaud on Boulez is well known, but surprisingly
underexplored. (Analogous studies of Boulez and Mallarm are legion but
thus far have only proliferated unenlightening sentiments.) Boulez's most
famous statement about Artaud formulates one of the mantras of his art:
I can find in his writings the fundamental preoccupations of contemporary
music. To have seen him and heard him speaking his own texts, accompanying
them with cries, noises, rhythms, showed us... in short, how to organize
delirium. What non-sense, it will be said, what an absurd mixture of terms.
What? Would you believe only in the vertigo of improvisation, in the power of
an 'elementary' ritualization? More and more, I imagine, to make it effective,
we will have to take delirium and yes, organize it.(2)
Thus, Boulez declares his attraction not only to Artaud's explosive rhetoric,
but obliquely to his sense of structure within that frenzy and vice-versa. It
would be useful to examine the possibility that Artaud's manifestos provided
"theatricalization" to Boulez's musical language.
Artaud's written manifestos barely transcend usual passionately dry
documents readers have come to expect from the genre. In a posthumously
published letter, Artaud criticizes the form of his two manifestos for the
theater of cruelty, outlining a more general danger for much of twentieth
century art:
I propose unexpected, rigorous principles, of grim and terrible aspect, and
just when everyone is expecting me to justify them, I pass on to the next
principle. (3)
Boulez's music often courts this very trap, but seems to look to Artaud for an
escape from this pattern.
Artaud's creative response to the dramatic shifts of principle within his work
is to favor the performativity of his texts even to the point of damaging its
language. If a manifesto is unreceptive to intellectual deliberation in language,
he allows its main crises to exhibit themselves.
Artaud's own readings of his manifestos involved an extreme physicality of
enunciation and presentation. Anas Nin recalled that in his lecture "theater
and the plague" at the Sorbonne in 1933, he gradually invaded the text of his
essays with screaming, contortions, and spasms. He sought to theatrically
convey the experience of the plague in this presumably academic
environment. The manifesto wanted to be performative- destructive even to its
own written rules. He was, of course, roundly mocked, upon which he
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responded bitterly,
They always want to hear about ; they want to hear an objective conference
on 'The theater and the plague,' and I want to give them the experience
itself...so they will be terrified and awaken... I feel sometimes that I am not
writing, but describing the struggles with writing, the struggles of birth. (4)
The crisis of the artist forced into a manifesto-language situation by the
unfamiliarity of his work communicates that crisis through the very act of
writing and speaking (composing and performing.) Both Artaud and Boulez
share an unique tendency to treat their respective languages with planned
brutality. In Boulez's compositions, musical violence is often focused in and
upon the points of most structural clarity- call them manifesto statements. The
constraints these musical moments embody often receive a savage structural
attack or a swift dissolution.
Another weakness of manifesto expression addressed by Artaud surfaces
when a work takes greater concern with the possibilities of saying a given
statement than with the statement itself. Art inflected with manifesto is always
in danger of being less of a work than an outline for a multitude of future
works. When, Artaud finally presents an example of a concrete "theater of
cruelty" production, "La Conqute du Mexique," in his second manifesto, the
result is so absorbed in its own poetics that it barely exists as a play. Act three,
for example, is simplified in the phrase, "At every level of the country,
revolt." (5) Artistically, Artaud's manifesto urges cause him to treat his
material in a considerably external way. The conflicting materials are heaped
together, so the violence can be structurally evoked by the artist who is
principally concerned with orchestrating these crises from without. The
narrative of "La Conqute" consists of scraps of borrowed plot, while Artaud
carefully details the disastrous and spectacular aspects of the mise-en-scene:
Space is stuffed with whirling gestures, horrible faces, dying eyes, clenched
fists, manes, breastplates, heads, stomachs like a hailstorm bombarding the
earth with supernatural explosions. (6)
Boulez will take a similarly external approach to his material, carefully
choosing and forming it so it is capable of maximum conflict, with the
composer acting as principle detonator.
The elements of spectacle in Artaud, apparently gratuitously violent, assume a
careful organization which supersedes that of articulate speech. He speaks of
his theatrical units very much like the elements of serial music, arranged as
"hieroglyphs." He describes this language in depth in the first manifesto:
[a] language of objects, movements, attitudes, and gestures [intervenes], but
on condition that their meanings, their physiognomies, their combinations be
carried out to the point of becoming signs, making a kind of alphabet out of
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these signs. Once aware of this language in space... the theater must organize
it into veritable hieroglyphs...and make use of their symbolism and
interconnections in relation to all organs and on all levels... It ultimately
breaks away from the intellectual subjugation of the language, by conveying
the sense of a new and deeper intellectuality which hides itself beneath the
gestures and signs, raised to the dignity of particular exorcisms. (7)
Artaud disdains the supremacy of articulate speech, but remains careful about
constructing a semiotic system to replace it.
The principal role of violence in this scheme derives from the physicality of
this language- deriving from the body to address the body. The violence is
"unreasonable" in order to direct the message within it to organs other than the
brain: senseless but sensual. For all his propagandistic tone, Artaud does not
expect of his audience an intellectual stance, but that of a "fine nerve
meter." (8)
Boulez's musical language shares a huge affinity with Artaud's quagmires
along with his ingenious methods. Examining his scores we can see that
violence, externality, hieroglyphic arrangement, and performativity attempt to
save his work from the abysmal fate of the musical manifesto. In all of his
piano music, (9) but especially in the series for two pianos
entitled Structures (premire livre 1951-52, deuxime livre 1956-61), Boulez
examines the frenzy inherent in radical restriction of the musical elements. He
creates and refutes manifestos of compositional fixity.
I
The truth of life lies in the impulsiveness of matter.
A. Artaud "Manifesto in clear language" (10)
Since a considerable number of composers contemporary with Boulez used
strict restraints on their material with varying results, it does not follow that
such an approach naturally yields Artaudian frenzy. The material itself for
Boulez seems able to engender its own violence. This holds true for his early
works in which he manipulated a single series to the point of shattering, and
for the mature works in which "multiplication" technique provides him with
literally thousands of harmonic fields in which to move. A nearly identical
gesture begins thePremire Sonate of 1946 and Structures II (finished 1961):
the disposition of the material creates the violence of the maneuver. [example
1]
In the Sonate, the composer disperses the elements of a cluster in an uneven
spiral in a five-octave musical space. Boulez exploits two aspects of the pitch
relationships. First, he postulates that chromatic pitches which saturate an
interval (here a major third) suggest a cluster and tend toward such a form in
the same octave. Thus, he treats his airy material like a volatile gas, which will
violently expend energy to arrive at its entropic form. Initially, the expanding
gesture suddenly condenses into a sforzando . A later passage expands this
small shock into a five-octave explosion sending a single pitch into outer
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space and back. [example 2a] Second, Boulez proliferates the material , not
the series in this excerpt. The four note figure F# D F Eflat is transposed three
times and asymmetrical distributed. Thus the third and fourth gestures contain
the figure beginning on E (C Eflat C#), then on D, then on C, etc. [example
2b] The frustration of serial progress, through this kind of proliferation, will
eventually merit an explosive "correction." The manifesto-oriented young
composer derisively negates his relation to classical dodecophany established
by Schoenberg, perpetuated in France by Boulez's professor Rn Leibowitz.
Motivically, Boulez make a rather clear statement of his early procedure. The
opening "phrase" contains four gestures- (A) a two note figure followed by a
rest, (B) a note preceded by an acciacatura (and a rest), (C) an isolated note,
and (D) a rapid figure. [see again example 1] The unity of this phrase is
quickly put to the test, as its constituent elements become more isolated and
variously combined. The syntax of the entire first movement of the Sonate is
based on various permutations of this sequence of events. The reasonable
detectability of motives along with their extreme plasticity, suggests Artaud's
"hieroglyphic" theater language. As a manifesto, the work is arranged to
outline the various "meanings" (i.e. combinations) which a given set of
elements can assume. [examples 3a, 3b] Such a plan is unusually clear for
Boulez, but shows how much of his rhetorical violence derives from a
response to the material and how the unpredictability of this can be used
dramatically.
II
If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic
dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling
through the flames. Artaud, "The Theater and Culture" (11)
Most critics limit the sphere of Artaud's influence to Boulez's Deuxime
Sonate (1948), completed shortly after the dramatist's death. The hysterical
rhetoric of the sonata creates for many listeners an easily audible parallel with
Artaud's "performances." For Artaud, when the word could no longer
sufficiently express, he did not hesitate to damage his language. (12) Young
Boulez wields similar violence against traditional forms. Compositionally,
Boulez discursively employs all of the sonata form's traditional unification
devices- motives, "themes," phrase structures, recapitulations, etc.- and
presses them to such an extreme that they become untenable. Lost in the
tangle of established relationships, the effect of all the standard schemes
becomes trapped in a teeming web of explosive tendencies. The "detonation"
of these sites becomes Boulez's most active creative role. By following all the
rules- too many, in fact- the composer's act begins to be placed at distance,
externalized from traditional involvements. Boulez's hostile rigor with
"academic" forms and devices allows the great institutions to
burn themselves to the ground. [example 4]
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III
An expression does not have the same value twice, does not live two lives... a
form, once it has served, cannot be used again and asks only to be replaced
by another... Artaud, "No more masterpieces" (13)
Boulez's increasingly external and destructive relationship to his chosen
material and forms eventually led him to a point where new forms would have
to be made if here were to have anything further to smash. His work from the
fifties on explores possibilities in which the material itself would suggest the
form. The first conundrum encountered by this scheme is also considered
Boulez's most militant manifesto document, Structures Ia (1951)- a work in
which all parameters are organized in advance by an "automatic" serial plan.
Boulez challenges the fecundity of total serialism by jumping straight into an
endgame with the "system." The composer is theoretically externalized to the
point of simply choosing the various automatisms which will manufacture the
work.
Boulez mentions the extreme tension of each point in Structures Ia which is
required to represent so many layers of information. Each note played by
either pianist articulates the intersection of at least four organizational
controls: pitch, duration, intensity (dynamic), and mode of attack. (14) The
elaboration lavished on each pitch suggests Artaud's theatrical hieroglyphs
which aim to communicate an intellectuality to the physical being. The sheer
impossibility of "hearing" the pure structure of the piece, which may be due to
the overload of information, does not preclude its possible "symbolism and
interconnections in relation to all organs and on all levels." (15)
Boulez was deeply dissatisfied with Structures Ia , because he felt each
organizational parameter was treated equally, lending a flat quality to the
possible interaction of these controls. (16) The nearly arbitrary nature of the
extreme organization, along with the sudden imposition/ dissolution of rules
makes Structures Ia Boulez's composition most inextricable from the
manifesto-trap. Neither form nor material can enact violence against their
mutual constraints because of their unilateral dependence on each other. As
much as Structures Iaseems to be a document of the void, a nearly absurd
game, its aesthetic is paradoxically too positive to achieve Artaudian theatrical
status. (17) In Structures Ia , everything acts without reacting; each moment is
the manifestation of several rules which impose themselves on a point of
sound which has no defense against this mechanism. Without a model of
negation for this admittedly impressive scheme, Boulez is left with no outlet
for his signature compositional destruction.
The one control which was left to his conscious intervention, registration of
the pitches, led him to a unique form of limitation in which various rules
could be formed and abolished in violent interplay. Indeed, registral fixity
may be a defining obsession for Boulez's language- a perhaps unintended
manifesto which constantly evokes reaction from the composer trapped by it.
The confining of pitches to specific realms of musical space suggests the most
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Artaudian of Boulez's violent responses to his language, because the restraints

are made physical and tangible.
Gyrgy Ligeti, in an analysis of Structures Ia , suggests that registral fixitytotal vertical control of the elements- becomes a requirement of total
horizontal predetermination in order to respect a canonical phonological law
of dodecaphony- the avoidance of octaves. Thus two or more "threads" of
serial polyphony require a certain fixity. If the succession of pitches is fast,
dense, or continuous, each "section" may comprise a unique twelve-note
verticality. (Ligeti resolutely rejects the term "chord".) (18) These fixities
in Structures I exist in a virtual state- the sensitive listener may be able to hear
these vertical regions within the horizontal hyperactivity. In Structures II ,
fixity becomes a governing principle frequently attacked by the musical
matter it devises to control.
IV
I suspend this book in life, I want it to be eaten away by external things and
above all by all the rending jolts, all the thrashings of my future self. Artaud,
"L o d'autres..." (19)
Structures II provides an excellent focus for examining Artaudian echoes in
Boulez's thought. The aspect of the work which is most clear and most
constantly assaulted is registral fixity. A quick perusal of Boulez's score shows
how most serial statements quickly gel into an immobilized chord in which
every pitch has a strict register. This restriction begins as an invisible
precondition of serial thought- octaves must be avoided. But the struggle with
which Boulez invests this parameter of his work, suggests argument about the
nature of limitations themselves- the manifesto questions itself. Boulez
continues his path of externalizing his controls as a composer. The law
inherent in Structures book I, becomes performative in the two "chapters" of
book II as this rigidity is increasingly explored between the pianos. The
dramatization of the elements creates a paradoxical improvisation about
unfreedom- a type of organized delirium.
Between the two books of Structures , Boulez's musical vocabulary had
undergone a significant change. The technique of chord multiplication
directed his serial usage from a linear row to a network of harmonic fields.
This is achieved by taking a "general" series and dividing it into "frequency"
groups through the intervention of a numerical series. [example 5] The chords
(or "groups") formed from this action can be subject to the superimposed
structure of another chord in the series. This elaborate form of transposition is
called "multiplication" and allows the composer a degree of unified vertical
(e.g. harmonic) control over his music. (20)
Important to the multiplication process is the absolute structure of a chord, as
opposed to its "abstracted" form used in analysis. The distinction between a
minor third and a major sixth (not to mention a tenth or a seventeenth!)
normally dismissible in serial theory as the same "interval class", could
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drastically alter the structure of a multiplied chord. Often, pitch fixity in

"multiplication"-era Boulez refers to his movement between harmonic regions
which have definite vertical structures.
The first two phrases Structures II provide the manifesto statement of Boulez's
fixity issues for the work. Immediately, he establishes an antiphony of
responses, a double "improvisation" to contrast with the simultaneous track
of Structures Ia . Closer examination shows that this "dialogue" behaves as a
set of traps. The second piano arranges a nine-note chord in a configuration
similar to the Premire Sonate . Here, the divisions mark the internal tension
of the harmony which is again a diffused cluster. The explosive entry of the
first piano is a unsuccessful attempt to be liberated from the fixity established
by the second in its opening statement. Every movement of the first piano is
simply a type of arpeggiation of this material with a few significant
exceptions. Boulez introduces two pitches not included in the fixed chord: C,
and C#. These can be stated in any octave, and in fact are used to specifically
contrast with the fixed chord. The dynamics of the passage reflect the effort of
the outnumbered "free" pitches to shake the spell of the fixed majority. Note
the movement from ffff to ffffas the initial rage is stifled and resumed. The
final note of the passage, the "neutral outsider" D, used only once, completes
the chromatic total and dissolves the structure completely. [example 6]
The second phrase repeats the trap, but reverses the situation of the pianos.
The seven-note chord of the first piano, enslaves the second on a lesser scale.
There are now three "free" pitches, which the second piano interposes with
only four of the fixed(a limitation of a limitation) in a set of gyrations. The
dramatic gesture in measures 10-11 show the second piano gathering
momentum: first a chord with all its free members quasi f , then a deflating
gesture pppp on the fixed notes, followed by a violent move which "picks off"
the the fixed tones, striking them sforzando one by one, accelerating into a
dismissal of the free pitches in a diminutive high arpeggio. [example 7]
This laborious description focusing only on dynamics and pitches hints at the
concrete ways in which Boulez's material and its constraints create the form of
his work. What should suffice in this example is the destructive attitude
Boulez holds toward his own language. Carefully set up harmonic fields and
relations are shattered in an instant or assaulted in a sustained manner. The
potentialities of his grammar are carefully laid out as in a manifesto. Yet, what
may remain for the listener within all of the detail is the procedure of
destruction which passes from one elaborately built section to the next. As in
Artaud's "lecture," we hear the progressive damaging of the language of
manifesto from within. Each method of compositional elocution which Boulez
outlines in his work is subject to a brutalizing treatment which may be the
defining communicative element.
Hardly a believer in improvisation, Boulez has structured a non-tonal
framework which allows a gradual amount of freedom through a hard struggle
with fixity. The form of Structures II externalizes and performs this argument.
Written as two chapters, the first struggles within a notated format.The
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elements of improvisation are limited to several "cadenzas" in which each

piano violently reacts to the limitations placed on it by the other, in a manner
similar to the opening phrases. Boulez, compositionally hostile to the
burgeoning freedom of the material, eventually traps both pianos within a
single pitch, B-flat.
The second chapter uses formal mobility to perform the fixed/free argument.
The pianos begin synchronized in a chordal sequence which is subjected to a
constant fluctuation in tempo. Responding separately to the inertia of the
accelerandi and ritardandi, the pianos radically divide paths. Piano II is
submitted to a tremendous degree of restraint- almost atrophied, it plays five
sections of music consisting of composed arpeggios in the middle register of
the instrument. The harmonic material for piano II derives from five twelvenote chords which are completely fixed in register. Within these regions,
Boulez further restricts the possibilities for forming sub-statements. The
whole system forms a classical arch of 5 harmonic fields arranged
symmetrically. [example 8]
Piano I takes the energy and agitation to an extreme. Largely liberated from
linear notation, it is given a folio of materials including two "cadenzas," six
"texts," and four "inserts." These items are given certain ordering restraints
and are placed through mutual cues between the players. The disposition of
material for piano I, though internally mobile, ultimately refers to the arch
structure of the second piano.
Some of Boulez's most rhetorically violent music is contained in the two solo
"cadenzas" for Piano I. A salute to Artaud's maniacal shrieking would not be
hard to locate in the "premire piece" for the highest two octaves of the piano.
Even more severe in violence yet opposing in register is the muttering
"deuxime piece" which is locked in the very bottom range of the keyboard.
[examples 9a, 9b] The disorder and calculated incoherence of these two pieces
suggest a sudden breakdown of language and communication. They interrupt
the measured argument of the second piano in a shockingly physical way.
Since these pieces frame the "liberated" portion of the chapter, they deliver a
grim commentary on that freedom. The second piano, locked in total pitch
determination, is able to create a rich variety of harmonic material. The other
instrument desperately vacillates from one extreme to the other, equally
trapped for all its physical mobility.
The extreme dissociation of the pianos further externalizes the drama began in
chapter one. The strange stalemate of this second chapter suspends judgment
on the position taken by either piano. Easy moralizing about restriction and
liberty in art, tempting for the manifesto composer, must be resisted here
because one cannot ascertain which is the free and which is the fixed
in Structures II . Blurring this binary, Boulez assaults even his most basic
linguistic premise in an attempt to confound the arguments which raged in
European art music at the end of the fifties. Perhaps from this viewpoint,
neither the manifestos of Cage's indeterminacy nor Stockhausen's unified
serial universe mattered as much as the hostility their opposing camps
9

mobilized. Boulez took the risky move of staging these battles in his own
work, in effect achieving a cancellation. Artaud asserted, "Life consists of
burning up questions." (21)
V
The actor does not make the same gestures twice, but he makes gestures, he
moves and although he brutalizes forms, nevertheless behind them and
through their destruction he rejoins that which outlives forms and produces
their continuation. Artaud, "The Theater and Culture" (22)
Examining the influence of Artaud on Boulez has here been a type of defense:
of the possibility for an aesthetic in a compositional realm where organization
is fetishized and dubiously conveyed to an audience through manifesto-like
means. The focus has been on a structural violence which is arguably a
reaction to the dry process of setting up and executing rules in serial music.
Artaud's rigorous meditations on a "theater of cruelty" attempt to create a
situation in which "life" is engaged through an organized struggle. (23) This
contrasts with those varieties of modern primitivism which try to inject
liveliness into bland gridwork. For Artaud destruction- especially to languagebecomes a basic principle for undoing mental subjugations.
The situation for Boulez is more complex, because he aims violence at or
derives it from restraints he has consciously espoused for his art. His musical
material is chosen/generated for its ability to create explosive situations.
Artaud may have ridiculed this nearly sado-masochistic approach to
composition since he claims "the dessication of language accompanies its
limitation."
For Boulez, exclusive emphasis on musical constraints becomes a risk. Yet,
most of his compositional actions have a negative or destructive impact,
usually on the very forms he has constructed. Declaration is almost
simultaneous with erasure or explosion. While unremarkable in itself, this
violent exteriority of composition seems to be a reasonable reaction to the
stolid documentarity of most "revolutionary," manifesto-style works. At best
Boulez's synthetic-destructive poetics may allow a certain type of musical
thought to survive- one which continually seeks new forms and must shatter
all the old ones to reduce the clutter.
Since the general fate of manifestos is to be negated or denounced by a
subsequent decree, Boulez may be protecting the historical reception of his
precious few declarations by ensuring that they performatively blow
themselves up. Thus, "bad boy" destructive methods may have lent Boulez
some of the self-perpetuating qualities of a patriarch. The inexorable moment
came when serialism was declared dead (or never alive) by its self-appointed
historical successors. For the new conquerors sorting through the rubble of
supposedly arid intellectualism, a fully armed bomb might command a certain
type of respect.
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Notes to "Serialism of Cruelty"

1) Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1989, pg. 220.
2) Hayman, Ronald. Artaud and After. London: Oxford University Press,
1977, pg. 144.
3) Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and its Double. New York: Grove Press,
1958, pg. 114.
4) Hayman, op. cit., pp. 89-90.
5) Artaud, op. cit., pg. 129.
6) ibid, pg. 130.
7) ibid, pp. 90-91.
8) The phrase "Rien, sinon un beau Pse-Nerfs" (translated as "a fine nerve
meter") is from Artaud's quasi-poem "Toute l'criture..." printed in <="" cite=""
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; fontstyle: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; lineheight: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Edited by Paul
Auster.
9) In what may be an arbitrary and cruel decision, the author excludes the two published
items of the Troisime Sonate considering it a torso in light of Boulez's projected five
movement compositional plan. The short solo piano work Incises, written for the 1995
Umberto Micheli piano competition was not available at the time of writing, nor is it
immediately applicable to the historical period (1945-65) discussed.- A. I.
10) Auster, ed., op. cit., pg. 267.
11) Artaud, op. cit., pg. 13.
12) In the poem-like text , "Il me manque," Artaud addresses his opponents, "literary"
people, admonishing, "For the mind is more reptilian than you yourselves, messieurs, it
slips away snakelike, to the point where it damages our language, I mean it leaves it in
suspense." Printed in Auster, op. cit., pg. 261.
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13) ibid, pg. 75.

14) Boulez, Pierre. Relevs d'apprenti. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, pg. 189.
15) Artaud, op. cit., pg. 114.
16) Boulez ,Relevs, pg. 190.
17) This seems unfair, since Artaud describes his concept of "cruelty" as signifying
"rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination." Yet
he qualifies that "there is no cruelty without consciousness and the application of
consciousness." (Theater and its Double, pp. 101-02) Perhaps this is to be understood
that an automatic process, though determined, cannot wield cruelty.
18) Ligeti, Gyrgy. "Decision and Automatism in Structures Ia." In Die Reihe, vol. V.
London: Universal Edition, 1959, pp. 55-57.
19) Auster, op. cit., pg. 255.
20) Koblyakov, Lev. Pierre Boulez: a world of harmony. New York: Harwood
Academic Publishers, 1990, pp. 3-7.
21) Auster, op. cit., pg. 255.
22) ibid, pg. 8.
23) ibid, pg. 13. "Furthermore, when we speak the word 'life,' it must be understood we
are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile,
fluctuating center which forms never reach."
ainfanti@ucsd.edu.

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