It's a fine, sunny New England day, children play, grandfather sits on the
porch, a young female drug addict awaits her fix while having visions of
white elephants being led through gates...

Just kidding.  Now for the review.

Beethoven and Brahms....
Bruckner and Mahler....
Boulez and Ligeti?

Though it's dubious to compare Beethoven to Brahms, or Bruckner to Mahler
on the basis of quality, I can't help but look at how each traditionally
paired composer evokes such different reactions in different people.  When
I listen to the works of Beethoven or Bruckner, the word "scrupulous" comes
to mind, but while listening to Brahms and Mahler, I find myself awed by
what I would call their compositional deftness.

What I see in Beethoven and Bruckner is a compositional mastery not lacking
in logic, innovation, balance, and beauty; though with Mahler and Brahms,
these elements seem to build upon each other, in a spiraling quality, so
that by the time the music reaches our ears, it reflects the seamless,
infinite dimensions of life itself.

So on to Boulez.  "What," you may ask, "is John doing listening to Boulez?
Did the police close down the Neglected Composer's Room?" (Well, I'm
realizing that there's more to a composer than just his big orchestra.)
Repons is scored for a small ensemble, solists, and audio speakers, (for
delivering the computer-processed sounds of the soloists.)

Unlike Varese's "Deserts," where live music is alternated with taped
electronic interludes, Boulez' computer has been programmed to react to
the solists in real time, so that the music making between players and
electronics is integrated.  Repons definitely has its moments of
complexity, much like Explosante--fixe, but more so than E-f, the
listener can also find many moments of reflection and repose.

Boulez prepares us for the first real-time processing event with a sense
of mystery strangely reminicent of Saint Saens in the moments before the
grand entry of the organ in the finale of his 3rd symphony.  Alas, though
the resulting new sounds *are* vibrant and interesting, and though one can
find, (surprisingly for Boulez), extended periods of steady rhythmic pulse
and motivic repetition; in the end, this listener finds the taped musical
sounds of Stockhausen far more intriguing, and the live musical sounds of
Ligeti far more rarefied than what Boulez' hybrid product has to offer.

Boulez' music reminds me very much of Ligeti's, and I wonder if posterity
will pair these two men in much the same way Bruckner and Mahler have been
paired; though with Ligeti--his Violin Concerto, Atmospheres and Lontano,
the Etudes--here again is where I sense a deftness--art concealing art,
that does much more for my ears than the scrupulous-sounding, yet estimable
music of Boulez.

John Smyth