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unusual facts about Le Marteau sans Maître


Le marteau sans maître

The xylorimba recalls the African balafon; the vibraphone, the Balinese gamelan; and the guitar, the Japanese koto, though "neither the style nor the actual use of these instruments has any connection with these different musical civilizations" ("Speaking, Playing, Singing" (1963) in Boulez 1986, 341).


Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems

Fred Lerdahl's "Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems" cites Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maître (1955) as an example of "a huge gap between compositional system and cognized result," though he "could have illustrated just as well with works by Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Iannis Xenakis".


see also