pierre boulez on scoring
Hans Ulrich Obrist: You see a lot of young composers today who work on computers and don’t write the musical score. You might get the impression that electronics are going to lead to the disappearance of the musical score. Do you think that the score should be saved?
Pierre Boulez: Yes, it must exist, because it enables musicians to combine things. And for our collective memory. You know that technique is in a transitory period, however perfect it is, even nowadays. As time goes by the transitory periods are getting shorter. You know, even work made twenty years ago has to be re-recorded onto new support. Hardware is completely renewed every five to ten years, so we have to adapt the old to the new, copying into another language, onto another piece of hardware. We have less problems with nineteenth-century pianos than with twenty-five-year-old technology - and it is impossible to work with such time gaps, so the score is absolutely necessary. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a score with the notes and scales. It can be a different type of score, numbered and digital, any imaginable form is possible. But it must be written out so that whatever future developments take place, any technical incompatibility can be rethought, taking into account the new hardware. In other words, you can rethink the way in which the score is written, but its data is still needed.
Philippe Parreno: In a sense, would you say it’s the score of the score.
Pierre Boulez: Exactly.
from “an interview with pierre boulez”
in sound unbound: sampling digital music and culture
edited by paul d. miller
2008
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