Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger

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Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger
Studio album by Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble intercontemporain , Frank Zappa

Publication
(s)

1984

Label (s) His Masters Voice , EMI , Barking Pumpkin Records , VACK, Zappa Records (CD)
Rykodisc (CD)

Format (s)

LP vinyl , CD

Genre (s)

New music

Title (number)

7th

running time

37:11

occupation

production

Frank Zappa

Studio (s)

IRCAM

chronology
London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1
(1983) 		Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger Them or Us
(1984)

Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger is an album that resulted from a collaboration between the French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez and the musician Frank Zappa . It was released in 1984. Boulez recorded three pieces with the Ensemble intercontemporain , and Zappa realized another four compositions on the Synclavier . All pieces were composed by Frank Zappa.

History of origin

At the age of seventeen Zappa had already acquired the album Le marteau sans maître by Pierre Boulez , which had been recorded under the direction of Robert Craft and which later compared it with the score. On June 11, 1980, Boulez was a spectator at a concert by Zappa in the Palais des Sports , Paris; and Zappa used this opportunity to demonstrate the new technical effects devices that he used for his concerts. A few months later, Zappa sent Boulez sheet music together with the request whether Boulez could conduct these pieces. Boulez offered Zappa the opportunity to rehearse a few pieces with the 28-person ensemble intercontemporain and asked Zappa to create a new composition that was tailored to this ensemble. Zappa composed the piece The Perfect Stranger , which was premiered by the ensemble at a concert on January 9, 1984 in the Théâtre de la Ville . In addition, the pieces Dupree's Paradise and Naval Aviation in Art? given. These three compositions were then recorded in the IRCAM studio at the Center Pompidou and form the first two and fourth tracks on the album Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger .

Track list

No. title Duration
01. The Perfect Stranger 12:44
02. Naval Aviation In Art? 02:45
03. The Girl In The Magnesium Dress 03:13
04. Dupree's Paradise 07:54
05. Love story 00:59
06. Outside Now Again 04:06
07. Jonestown 05:27

Album art and liner notes

Album art Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger
External web links to copyrighted content.

The album cover consists of a picture designed by Donald Roller Wilson , depicting a white dog in a girl's dress with sunglasses sitting at a table with the remains of a meal on a child's chair. On the right-hand side it reads Boulez conducts Zappa in large, round letters , with The Perfect Stranger underneath it . The Ensemble intercontemporain and the Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort are named as performers of the chamber works in smaller but the same font size . The latter name stands for the synclavier used by Zappa for four of the titles.

On the back there is a photograph by Pierre Boulez, which was made by Don Hunstein. Boulez is shown as the conductor, Zappa as the producer in the same font size. The liner notes in the 1992 edition are in four different languages. The text is headed “The Seven Dances of this album - each composed of sound effects - each tell a story. The style is grotesquely unfashionable. "

reception

The critic for European classical music John Rockwell of the New York Times looked into the album the meeting of two completely different cultures, both in terms of Boulez and Zappa, as well as in terms of their followers. Boulez performed the pieces more unadulterated than Kent Nagano managed to do with Zappa's orchestral pieces on the London Symphony Orchestra album . However, Rockwell criticizes Zappa's attitude as a “music comedian” with regard to the chosen title and the scenarios of the individual pieces described in the liner notes. He raises the question of whether these scenarios are the basis of "sound poems" that manifest themselves in the pieces or whether they were constructed afterwards for the amusement of their own fans or as an "ironic mask".

Rockwell emphasizes the seductive acoustic color of the recordings and praises the good amalgamation of the orchestral instruments with electronic tones. He sees parallels to jazz rock in the tendency to provide the music's actual tonal expression with a few thrown in dissonances . He speculates that Boulez wanted to offend other American composers of modern music by choosing Zappa over them. He closes his review with the remark that it took a foreigner to work out the significance of the musical loner Zappa.

The music journalist Barry Miles sees The Perfect Stranger as a good example of how Zappa's music is based on language patterns that have been rewritten for musical instruments. In addition, Boulez gave the pieces a new meaning, which made them very popular with the audience. Due to the fact that four of the tracks were recorded purely electronically with the Synclavier and thus sounded very mechanical, the album is unbalanced.

literature

  • John Rockwell: Meeting of Musical Extremes . In: The New York Times . September 30, 1984 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 25, 2010]).
  • Barry Miles : Zappa . Rogner & Bernhard bei Zweiausendeins, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 , p. 355-357, 371-373 .
  • Ben Watson: Frank Zappa. The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play . Quarted Books Ltd., London 1996, ISBN 0-7043-0242-X , Chapter 10, Section The Perfect Stranger , p. 427-428 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barry Miles : Zappa . Rogner & Bernhard bei Zweiausendeins, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 , p.  355-357 .
  2. ↑ globalia.net. Retrieved April 27, 2010 .
  3. ↑ a b Barry Miles : Zappa . Rogner & Bernhard bei Zweiausendeins, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8077-1010-8 , p.  371-373 .
  4. ^ Inlet Booklet of Boulez conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger , Barkin Pumpkin Records, CDZAP 49, 1992
  5. ^ John Rockwell: Meeting of Musical Extremes . In: The New York Times . September 30, 1984 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 25, 2010]).