Link to home page

Domaine musicale

(Paris, 1954)

Prepared by Doris Pyee
Online only (2017)

A single issue of Domaine musical: Bulletin international de musique contemporaine [DMU], was published under the direction of Pierre Boulez, and issued by Bernard Grasset Éditeur of Paris in 1954. The journal consists of 158 pages in single-column format: nineteen articles devoted to the new compositional methods and theories of the twentieth century, music of the nineteenth century, folksong and questions about historical music and musical aesthetics that interested composers and musicologists in these years. Four plates feature a letter of Alban Berg to Hermann Scherchen, a portrait each of Arnold Schoenberg and Hermann Scherchen, and a photograph of the Cologne Experimental Music Studio.

Pierre Boulez begins with a discussion of the forms of criticism, and later writes a homage to Anton Webern. Philippot discusses the laws of art from academicism to incoherence, and André Hodeir deals with the tendencies of verbiage and eclecticism in writing. Michael Fanno considers the various compositional methods of Berg, Webern, Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen. Paul Jacobs centers his study on the orchestral conception in Beethoven’s piano sonatas, while Maurice Le Roux considers Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique to be the parent of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps. Constantin Brailoiu outlines the enlargement of musical sensibility through investigation of folkloristic and extra-occidental musics. Pierre Souvtchinsky writes on the division of intellectual and emotional music. Karlheinz Stockhausen reports on the numerous musical systems in existence and the importance of problems not yet resolved.

×