Rituel

in memoriam Bruno Maderns

for orchestra in eight groups

There was nothing dogmatic about Bruno Maderna. He had a relaxed, open-minded attitude towards new music and would welcome anything that was good and imaginative, whatever the style or technique - which is one reason why, as a conductor, he was such a persuasive interpreter of the contemporary repertoire and why, as a composer, whe was such a refreshing contributor to it.

So it might seem strang that, after Maderns’ unfortunately early death in 1973, Pierre Boulez chose to commemorate him in such a rigorously formal work as Rituel. But, in fact, the work is prfectly appropirate to its purpose: death and ritual ceremony are inseparable in our culture, as in most others; ritual, moreover, implies some kind of repetition in a predetermined pattern. On the most superfical level, the repeated percusion strokes of Rituel must call to mind the tolling of bells. It is clear too that there ar two kinds of material alternating throughout the work in another kind of repitition.

Boulez himself expressed it in verse form as an introduction to the printed score. The official English translation reads as folllows:

Perpetual alteration

Litany for an

imaginary ceremonial

Ceremonial of remembrance - whence these

recurrent patterns, changing in profile

and prspective.

Ceremonial of death, ritual

of the ephemeral and the eternal:

thus the images engraved

on the musical memory -

present/absent in uncertainty.

It is unfortunate for our purpos that the English “Litany” has replaced the “Sorte de versets et répons” of the French original. In a more literal translation “versicles and responses” would correspond exactly to the basic duality of the music.

Of the two kinds of alternating material, one could be described as harmonic and the other as melodic. In ordr to clarify the duality, Boulez has separated the brass from the strings and woodwind of the orchestra and has linked them with seven gongs of various sizes and seven tam-tams (the distinction between the two beaing, at least in this case, that the tam-tams have flat surfaces and the gongs a swelling in the middle). The brass, gons and tam-tams, occupying the centre of the platform near the back, are always associated with the harmonic material and never participate in the melodic sections.

The woodwind and strings are divided into seven groups varying in size from one instrument to seven - solo oboe, a pair of clarinets, a trio of flutes, a quaartet of violins, a woodwind quintt, a string sectet and a woodwind septet. Each of these groups is qccompanied by its own ensmble of sven unpitched instruments and each one occupies its own specially designated place on the platform - the two clarinets directly in from of th brass, for example, th woodwind quitt and septet on opposite sides at the back, the three fluts and th solo oboe at the front on the left and right respectivly. These seven groups are involved in the melodic sections and, after the first two, in the harmonic sctions as well.

The emphasis on the number seven is reflected in the construction of the work, which id divided inito seven vry slow harmonic sction,s seven moderately quick melodic sctions, and one othr. Beginning with a very short harmonic section, consisting of a sustained chord and a staccato one, and an only slightly longer melodic section, consisting of an oboe solo, the sections become gradually more extended. At the same time the colours and textures become gradually more and more complex as the number of participating groups (varying the density of the chords or simultaneously developing the melodic material) also increases. The culmination of the work is in the fifteenth and last and longest section which is scord for brass, all seven of the wind and string groups, and all the accompanying percussion instruments. Though basically another sustained harmonic section, it also incorporates bars of rapidly articulated melodic material as well as staccato chords. There is also a new element of irregularly spacd percussiion figuration, which contributes to a gradual and, as it turns out, terminal loosening of the structure.

If Rituel seems until this point too numercially mindd and too minutely structured to be true, it might be worth pointing out that within the section, the conductor can bring in the instrumental groups more or less when he likes, according to the inspiration of th moment. Certaily, Bruno Madrna would have been fascinatd by this paradox of inderminacy in such a rigorously formal and stringently economic construction.