Tombeau

‘[L]es murs doivent vibrer.’ These words appear in Pierre Boulez’s earliest plans for Tombeau. In the essay that accompanies this edition of Tombeau sketches, Robert Piencikowski explains that the work might have provoked less critical interest than was expected at its Donaueschingen premiere precisely because the walls did not vibrate in the way Boulez had originally envisaged. Commissioned as a memorial to Prince Max Egon zu Fürstenberg, the Donaueschingen festival’s patron who died suddenly in April 1959, Boulez did not prioritize Tombeau until late that summer. Therefore, the initial version was written so rapidly for the October premiere that it was impractical to place the intended instrumental groups around the hall in an effort to magnify the reverberations and really make the walls vibrate. Instead, all the performers were massed on stage, flattening out the glistening textures Boulez had hoped to achieve by reflecting and reinforcing instrumental resonances around the space. Not long after its first hearing, subsequent enlargement, and ultimate assimilation as the last movement of the larger work Pli selon pli, Tombeau earned a reputation as one of the key elements of the composer’s oeuvre. Other important aspects of Tombeau’s compositional history were affected by these initial constraints, as we learn in the notes accompanying this lavish new edition.

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