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100-684: The organization launched its first season as “Evenings on the Roof,” A series of 12 concerts (6 programs, each performed twice) mixing classical and contemporary works, performed at the top floor of the Rudolf Schindler -designed home of Peter Yates and Frances Mullen in 1735 Micheltorena Street in Los Angeles. The series was priced at 50 cents per concert, or $ 3.00 for the complete series. Performers were drawn from world-class studio and classical musicians living in Los Angeles. The first program (April 23, 1939)

200-541: A Chopin piano concerto. Boulez recalled: "It was terrible, I felt like a waiter who keeps dropping the plates." His appearances with the orchestra over the next five years included his debuts at the Proms and at Carnegie Hall (1965) and tours to Moscow and Leningrad, Berlin and Prague (1967). In January 1969 William Glock, controller of music at the BBC, announced his appointment as chief conductor. Two months later, Boulez conducted

300-721: A chamber orchestra specialising in contemporary music. Later he co-founded the Cité de la musique , a concert hall, museum and library dedicated to music in the Parc de la Villette in Paris and, in Switzerland, the Lucerne Festival Academy , an international orchestra of young musicians, with which he gave first performances of many new works. Pierre Boulez was born on 26 March 1925, in Montbrison ,

400-691: A contemporary revaluation for its inventiveness, character, and formal qualities, which are making his designs familiar to a new generation of architects. The Mackey Apartments and the Schindler Residence are maintained by the Friends of the Schindler House and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture . The MAK Center offers a variety of exhibitions and events. The center also sponsors six-month residencies for emerging architects and artists who are housed in

500-507: A cut in pay to be in that progressive American city, which was the home of Frank Lloyd Wright . He found New York City , which he visited along the way, to be crowded, unattractive, and commercial. Chicago was more appealing to him, however, with less congestion and providing access to the architectural work of Henry Hobson Richardson , Louis Sullivan , and Frank Lloyd Wright . Schindler continued to seek contact with Wright, writing letters despite his limited English. He finally met him for

600-742: A dogmatist. Boulez was also one of the most prominent conductors of his generation. In a career lasting more than sixty years, he was music director of the New York Philharmonic , chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra . He made frequent appearances with many other orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic and

700-494: A large hillside villa, which was his main home for the rest of his life. During this period, he turned increasingly to conducting. His first engagement as an orchestral conductor had been in 1956, when he conducted the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra while on tour with Barrault. His breakthrough came in 1959 when he replaced the ailing Hans Rosbaud at short notice in demanding programmes of twentieth-century music at

800-543: A mythical quality like that of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire ". When Boulez conducted the work in Los Angeles in early 1957, Stravinsky attended the performance; he later described the piece as "one of the few significant works of the post-war period of exploration". Boulez dined several times with the Stravinskys and (according to Robert Craft ) "soon captivated the older composer with new musical ideas, and an extraordinary intelligence, quickness and humour". Relations between

900-408: A number of buildings in and around Los Angeles that seem to be admirable from the standpoint of design, and I have not heard of any of them falling down." "He has a good mind, is affectionate in disposition, and is fairly honorable I believe. Personally, though strongly individual, he is not unduly eccentric and I, in common with many others, like him very much." "Personally, I appreciate Rudolph. He

1000-475: A private performance of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano . When Cage returned to New York they began an intense, six-year correspondence about the future of music. Their friendship later cooled as Boulez could not accept Cage's increasing commitment to compositional procedures based on chance ; he later broke off contact with him. In 1952 Stockhausen arrived in Paris to study with Messiaen. Although Boulez knew no German and Stockhausen no French,

1100-618: A programme of Schoenberg ( Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene and the Piano Concerto ), Mozart (Piano Concerto No.19 in F major K459) and Stravinsky ( Pulcinella Suite ). Thereafter he cancelled all conducting engagements. In mid-2012 Boulez was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease, probably a form of Parkinson's . Later that year, he worked with the Diotima Quartet, making final revisions to his only string quartet, Livre pour quatuor , begun in 1948. In 2013 he oversaw

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1200-417: A publicity man, but I am not willing to sail under his flag as an architect." "I consider myself the first and still one of the few architects who consciously abandoned stylistic sculptural architecture in order to develop space as a medium of art. ... I believe that outside of Frank Lloyd Wright I am the only architect in U.S. who has attained a distinct local and personal form language." "He has built quite

1300-666: A series of annual residencies with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1995 he was named principal guest conductor in Chicago, a post he held until 2005, when he became conductor emeritus. His 70th birthday in 1995 was marked by a six-month retrospective tour with the London Symphony Orchestra, taking in Paris, Vienna, New York and Tokyo. In 2001 he conducted a major Bartók cycle with

1400-469: A series of pieces which used the potential, developed at IRCAM, electronically to transform sound in real time. The first of these was Répons (1981–1984), a 40-minute work for soloists, ensemble and electronics. He also radically reworked earlier pieces, including Notations I-IV , a transcription and expansion for large orchestra of tiny piano pieces (1945–1980), and his cantata on poems by Char, Le Visage nuptial (1946–1989). From 1976 to 1995, he held

1500-523: A shoulder injury resulting from a fall. In late 2011, when he was already quite frail, he led the combined Ensemble intercontemporain and Lucerne Festival Academy, with the soprano Barbara Hannigan , in a tour of six European cities of his own Pli selon pli . His final appearance as a conductor was in Salzburg on 28 January 2012 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Mitsuko Uchida in

1600-484: A small town in the Loire department of east-central France, to Léon and Marcelle ( née Calabre) Boulez. He was the third of four children: an older sister, Jeanne (1922–2018) and younger brother, Roger ( b. 1936) were preceded by another child called Pierre ( b. 1920), who died in infancy. Léon (1891–1969), an engineer and technical director of a steel factory, is described by biographers as an authoritarian figure with

1700-400: A strong sense of fairness, and Marcelle (1897–1985) as an outgoing, good-humoured woman, who deferred to her husband's strict Catholic beliefs, while not necessarily sharing them. The family prospered, moving in 1929 from the apartment above a pharmacy, where Boulez was born, to a comfortable detached house, where he spent most of his childhood. From the age of seven Boulez went to school at

1800-587: A substantial work for eighteen solo instruments, Polyphonie X , caused a scandal at its premiere at the Donaueschingen Festival , some audience members whistling and hissing during the performance. Around this time, Boulez met two composers who were to be important influences: John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen . His friendship with Cage began in 1949 when Cage was visiting Paris. Cage introduced Boulez to two publishers ( Heugel and Amphion) who agreed to take his recent pieces; Boulez helped to arrange

1900-465: A tribute to Stravinsky and which again used the electronic resources of IRCAM, and sur Incises (1998), for which he was awarded the 2001 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Boulez continued to work on institutional organisation. He co-founded the Cité de la musique , which opened in La Villette on the outskirts of Paris in 1995. Consisting of a modular concert hall, museum and mediatheque—with

2000-496: A while led an MEC touring ensemble), and David Tudor . With 34 years in post, the composer Dorrance Stalvey had the longest tenure as music director of Monday Evening Concerts at the Los Angeles Museum of Art. Under Stalvey's leadership, MEC branched out into bringing guest artists and ensembles from all over the world and enhanced the series' international reach. In addition to directing Monday Evening Concerts, Stalvey became

2100-541: A year before Schindler's death. Schindler's early buildings usually are characterized by concrete construction. The Kings Road House, Pueblo Ribera Court, Lovell Beach House, Wolfe House, and How House are the projects most frequently identified among these. The Kings Road house was designed as a studio and home for Schindler, his wife, and their friends Clyde and Marian DaCamara Chace. The floor plan worked itself around several L-shapes. Construction features included tilt up concrete panels cast on site, which contrasted with

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2200-724: A year early, he spent the academic year of 1940–41 at the Pensionnat St. Louis, a boarding school in nearby Saint-Étienne . The following year he took classes in advanced mathematics at the Cours Sogno in Lyon (a school established by the Lazaristes ) with a view to gaining admission to the École Polytechnique in Paris. His father hoped this would lead to a career in engineering. Wartime conditions in Lyon were already harsh; they became harsher still when

2300-512: Is an incorrigible Bohemian and refuses to allow the Los Angeles barber to apply the razor to the scruff of his neck. He also has peculiarly simple and effective ideas regarding his own personal conduct. I believe, however, that he is capable as an artist. I have found him a too complacent and therefore a rotten superintendent. The buildings that he has recently built in Los Angeles are well designed, but badly executed. I suspect him of trying to give his clients too much for their money. I should say that

2400-410: Is associated with the fringes of the modernist movement in architecture. His use of complex three-dimensional forms, "warm" materials, and striking colors, as well as his ability to work within tight budgets, however, have placed him as one of the mavericks of early twentieth century architecture . Reyner Banham said he designed "as if there had never been houses before." Rudolf Michael Schindler

2500-478: Is undertaken, primarily focused on documenting the long historical activities of the organisation. Rudolph Schindler (architect) Rudolph Michael Schindler (born Rudolf Michael Schlesinger ; September 10, 1887 - August 22, 1953) was an Austrian-born American architect whose most important works were built in or near Los Angeles during the early to mid-twentieth century. Although he worked and trained with some of its foremost practitioners, he often

2600-650: The Aix-en-Provence and Donaueschingen Festivals. This led to debuts with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw , Bavarian Radio Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras. In 1963 Boulez conducted his first opera, Berg's Wozzeck at the Opéra National de Paris , directed by Barrault. The conditions were exceptional, with thirty orchestral rehearsals instead of the usual three or four; the critical response

2700-603: The Berlin Philharmonic . He was known for his performances of the music of the first half of the twentieth century—including Debussy and Ravel , Stravinsky and Bartók , and the Second Viennese School —as well as that of his contemporaries, such as Ligeti , Berio and Carter . His work in the opera house included the production of Wagner 's Ring cycle for the centenary of the Bayreuth Festival , and

2800-519: The Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen , and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz . He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music , playing an important role in the development of integral serialism in the 1950s, controlled chance music in the 1960s and

2900-513: The Conservatoire de Paris , his father accompanied him, helped him to find a room (in the 7th arrondissement ) and subsidised him until he could earn a living. In October 1943, Boulez auditioned unsuccessfully for the advanced piano class at the Conservatoire, but he was admitted in January 1944 to the preparatory harmony class of Georges Dandelot . He made rapid progress, and by May 1944 Dandelot

3000-518: The Domaine musical . The concerts focused initially on three areas: pre-war classics still unfamiliar in Paris (such as Bartók and Webern), works by the new generation (Stockhausen, Nono) and neglected masters from the past ( Machaut , Gesualdo )—although the last category fell away in subsequent seasons, in part because of the difficulty of finding musicians with experience of playing early music. Boulez proved an energetic and accomplished administrator and

3100-515: The New York Philharmonic for the first time. His performances so impressed both orchestra and management that he was offered the chief conductorship in succession to Leonard Bernstein . Glock was dismayed and tried to persuade him that accepting the New York position would detract both from his work in London and his ability to compose but Boulez could not resist the opportunity (as Glock put it) "to reform

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3200-520: The Vichy government fell, the Germans took over and the city became a centre of the resistance . In Lyon, Boulez first heard an orchestra, saw his first operas (Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ) and met the soprano Ninon Vallin , who asked him to play for her. Impressed by his ability, she persuaded his father to allow him to apply to the Conservatoire de Lyon . He

3300-540: The Wende Museum . Monday Evening Concerts is a not for profit company under section 501(c)(3) of local tax laws. The Board of Directors and President (Isaac Malitz) provide strategic governance, with an executive committee and professional staff managing day-to-day operations. Artistic matters are managed by the Artistic Director (Jonathan Hepfer). MEC's work is focused on concerts and events. Some scholarly work

3400-924: The 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Portrait Concerts during this era included: Earle Brown , Sylvano Bussotti , Steve Reich , and Frederic Rzewski . The concerts featured other composers, including Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina , Girolamo Frescobaldi , Jean Baptiste Loeillet , Heinrich Schutz . Modern music was also represented with Harold Budd , Sylvano Bussotti , Joan La Barbara , Helmut Lachenmann , Conlon Nancarrow , Olga Neuwirth , Wadada Leo Smith , Kaija Saariaho , and Iannis Xenakis . Distinguished soloists, conductors and visiting artists from this era included Magnus Andersson , Nicholas Isherwood , Ursula Oppens , Richard Stoltzman , Charles Wuorinen , and Frank Zappa . Visiting and resident ensembles included: Aeolian Chamber Players , Flux Quartet , Nexus Percussion , Steve Reich and Musicians , and Tashi. Long-time director Dorrance Stalvey stepped down in 2005; in

3500-600: The Academy's orchestra. Boulez's last major work was Dérive 2 (2006), a 45-minute piece for eleven instruments. He left several compositional projects unfinished, including the remaining Notations for orchestra. He remained active as a conductor over the next six years. In 2007 he was re-united with Chéreau for a production of Janáček's From the House of the Dead (Theater an der Wien, Amsterdam and Aix). In April that year, as part of

3600-482: The Bayreuth Festival, invited Boulez to conduct the 1976 centenary production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . The director was Patrice Chéreau . Highly controversial in its first year, according to Barry Millington by the end of the run in 1980 "enthusiasm for the production vastly outweighed disapproval". It was televised around the world. A few new works emerged during this period, of which perhaps

3700-632: The Bayreuth company at the Osaka Festival in Japan in 1967, but the lack of adequate rehearsal made it an experience he later said he would rather forget. His conducting of the new production (by Václav Kašlík ) of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at Covent Garden in 1969 was praised for its combination of "delicacy and sumptuousness". In 1965, the Edinburgh International Festival staged

3800-552: The Beaubourg district of Paris. The Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM) opened in 1977. Boulez's model was the Bauhaus , which had been a meeting place for artists and scientists of all disciplines. IRCAM's aims included research into acoustics, instrumental design and the use of computers in music. The original building was constructed underground, partly to isolate it acoustically (an above-ground extension

3900-511: The Californian climate, and sometimes, both would work for the same clients. At one point, they and their wives shared a communal office and living structure that Schindler designed as his home and studio. In Vienna, Schindler acquired experience in the firm of Hans Mayr and Theodore Mayer , working there from September 1911 to February 1914. Schindler then moved to Chicago to work in the firm of Ottenheimer, Stern, and Reichert (OSR), accepting

4000-599: The Chair in Invention, technique et langage en musique at the Collège de France . In 1988 he made a series of six programmes for French television, Boulez XXe siècle , each of which focused on a specific aspect of contemporary music (rhythm, timbre, form etc.) In 1992, Boulez gave up the directorship of IRCAM and was succeeded by Laurent Bayle. He was composer in residence at that year's Salzburg Festival . The previous year he began

4100-870: The Colburn School. Seasons were reduced to between four and six programs per season from twelve. Portrait Concerts during this era included: Hans Abrahamsen , Frank Denyer , Mauricio Kagel , Lewis Nielson , Charlemagne Palestine , and Galina Ustvolskaya . Other composers significantly represented included Harrison Birtwistle, György Kurtág, Jo Kondo , Jose Maceda , Salvatore Sciarrino, Horatiu Radulescu , Wolfgang von Schweinitz , and Jakob Ullmann . Distinguished soloists, conductors and visiting artists associated with MEC during this era included Marino Formenti, and Richard Valitutto. Visiting ensembles during this period included: Asamisimasa, Calder Quartet , JACK Quartet , Ensemble Recherche , and Red Fish Blue Fish. Conductor, percussionist and curator Jonathan Hepfer took

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4200-471: The Conservatoire de Paris on an adjacent site—it became the home to the Ensemble intercontemporain and attracted a diverse audience. In 2004, he co-founded the Lucerne Festival Academy , an orchestral institute for young musicians, dedicated to music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For the next ten years he spent the last three weeks of summer working with young composers and conducting concerts with

4300-563: The Conservatoire. Boulez moved to two small attic rooms in the Marais district of Paris, where he lived for the next thirteen years. In February 1945 he attended a private performance of Schoenberg 's Wind Quintet , conducted by René Leibowitz , the composer and follower of Schoenberg. The strict use of twelve-tone technique in the Quintet was a revelation to Boulez, who organised a group of fellow students to take private lessons with Leibowitz. It

4400-832: The Festtage in Berlin, Boulez and Daniel Barenboim gave a cycle of the Mahler symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin , which they repeated two years later at Carnegie Hall. In late 2007 the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble intercontemporain presented a retrospective of Boulez's music and in 2008 the Louvre mounted the exhibition Pierre Boulez, Œuvre: fragment . His appearances became more infrequent after an eye operation in 2010 left him with severely impaired sight. Other health problems included

4500-456: The Institut Victor de Laprade, a Catholic seminary where the thirteen-hour school day was filled with study and prayer. By the age of eighteen he had repudiated Catholicism; later in life he described himself as an agnostic. As a child, Boulez took piano lessons, played chamber music with local amateurs and sang in the school choir. After completing the first part of his baccalaureate

4600-548: The Mackey Apartments. "My dear Rodolph Schindler: ...I am in receipt of a letter from the Board asking if you had made designs for me. The answer to that is,-- No you didn’t. Nobody makes designs for me. Sometimes if they are in luck, or rather if I am in luck, they make them with me. ...Nevertheless, I believe that you now are competent to design exceedingly good buildings. I believe that anything you would design would take rank in

4700-582: The Orchestre de Paris. This period also marked a return to the opera house, including two productions with Peter Stein : Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1992, Welsh National Opera and Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris ); and Schoenberg's Moses und Aron (1995, Dutch National Opera and Salzburg Festival ). In 2004 and 2005 he returned to Bayreuth to conduct a controversial new production of Parsifal directed by Christoph Schlingensief . His two most substantial compositions from this period are ...explosante-fixe... (1993), which had its origins in 1972 as

4800-407: The Roof transitioned to a new director, and with this new leadership, the series changed its name. Thus, on September 20, 1954, Monday Evening Concerts was born, with the music scholar and critic Lawrence Morton as Director. On this program, the writer Aldous Huxley spoke about the poet Dylan Thomas before Robert Craft led the first performance of Igor Stravinsky's In Memoriam Dylan Thomas. Morton

4900-554: The Roof, he saw himself as a 'coordinator' of the series, which existed solely 'for the pleasure of the performers.' It was mainly through his intense efforts that the MEC organization and its concerts were established, with a specific vision, and series of programs. Yates presented concerts in Los Angeles at his Micheltorena home, the Wilshire-Ebell Theater, and other venues. Starting with a humble audience of nineteen in 1939, some of

5000-568: The Schindler-Wright relationship. Schindler complained, with some validity, of being underpaid and exploited. As well as his architectural affairs, he was running Frank Lloyd Wright's businesses, such as the rental of the Oak Park houses. Of the houses Wright built in this period, the Hollyhock House was undoubtedly the most significant, for which Schindler did most of the drawings and oversaw

5100-556: The United States with the Cleveland Orchestra . In February 1969 he became its principal guest conductor and, on the death of George Szell in July 1970, assumed the role of music advisor for two years. In the 1968–69 season, he also made guest appearances in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. Apart from Pli selon pli , Boulez's only substantial new work to emerge in the first half of the 1960s

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5200-632: The academic year 1945–46, he soon boycotted Simone Plé-Caussade 's counterpoint and fugue class, infuriated by what he described as her "lack of imagination", and organised a petition that Messiaen be given a full professorship in composition. Over the winter of 1945–46 Boulez immersed himself in Balinese and Japanese music and African drumming at the Musée Guimet and the Musée de l'Homme in Paris: "I almost chose

5300-586: The aesthetic principles that guided Monday Evening Concerts during his directorship. During his tenure at MEC, Morton presented concerts at the Wilshire-Ebell Theater, Plummer Park , and starting in 1965, at the newly opened Los Angeles County Museum of Art 's (LACMA) Bing Theater, where Monday Evening Concerts became the museum's first resident music program. Portrait Concerts during this era included: Béla Bartók, Lou Harrison, Joseph Haydn , Claudio Monteverdi , Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen , and Hugo Wolf . Other composers significantly represented in

5400-526: The architectural and structural plans of the Imperial Hotel. Wright, however, refused to validate these claims. Eventually, disputes over whose work was whose, escalated until Schindler released a flier for a series of talks with Richard Neutra, describing himself as having been, "in charge of the architectural office of Frank Lloyd Wright for two years during his absence". Wright refuted this claim. The two split in 1931 and didn't reconcile until 1953, less than

5500-530: The biographer Joan Peyser ) he saw the younger man supplanting him as the leader of the avant-garde. In 1959, Boulez left Paris for Baden-Baden , where he had an arrangement with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra to work as composer-in-residence and to conduct some smaller concerts. He also had access to an electronic studio where he could work on a new piece ( Poésie pour pouvoir ). He moved into, and eventually bought,

5600-561: The career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time." On 12 February 1946, the pianist Yvette Grimaud gave the first public performances of Boulez's music ( Douze Notations and Trois Psalmodies ) at the Concerts du Triptyque. Boulez earned money by giving maths lessons to his landlord's son. He also played the ondes Martenot (an early electronic instrument), improvising accompaniments to radio dramas and occasionally deputising in

5700-407: The chance to work with professional musicians, while leaving time to compose during the day. His involvement with the company also broadened his horizons: in 1947 they toured to Belgium and Switzerland ("absolutely pays de cocagne , my first discovery of the big world"); in 1948 they took Hamlet to the second Edinburgh International Festival ; in 1951 they gave a season of plays in London, at

5800-563: The classical and romantic repertoire, particularly at the Proms (Beethoven's Missa solemnis in 1972; the Brahms German Requiem in 1973), but for the most part he worked intensively with the orchestra on the music of the twentieth century. He conducted works by the younger generation of British composers—such as Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies —but Britten and Tippett were absent from his programmes. His relations with

5900-404: The commission for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo , a major project that would keep the architect in Japan for several years. Schindler's role was to continue Wright's American operations in his absence, working out of Wright's Oak Park studio. In 1919, Schindler met and married Pauline Gibling (1893–1977). In 1920, Wright summoned him to Los Angeles to work on the Barnsdall House . Schindler

6000-1098: The concerts at Wilshire-Ebell were attended by over one thousand people by the early 1950s. During this era, Evenings on the Roof presented Portrait Concerts of J.S. Bach , Béla Bartók, Ludwig van Beethoven , Ferruccio Busoni, John Cage , Aaron Copland , Henry Cowell , Charles Ives, Ernst Krenek , Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schubert , and Igor Stravinsky . Other concerts focused on numerous early Baroque (pre-Bach), Classical/Romantic, and Modernist composers. Modernist composers with works presented included Béla Bartók, Alban Berg , Ferruccio Busoni, John Cage, Elliott Carter , Carlos Chavez , Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Sergei Prokofiev , Sergei Rachmaninoff , Maurice Ravel , Dane Rudhyar , Dimitri Shostakovich , Gerald Strang , Igor Stravinsky, Ernst Toch , Heitor Villa-Lobos , Anton Webern , Distinguished performers during this era included Sol Babitz , Richard Bühlig , John Cage, Robert Craft , Ingolf Dahl , Marni Nixon , Eudice Shapiro , Felix Slatkin , Leonard Stein , Josef Szigeti , and Paul Wittgenstein . Starting in 1954, Evenings on

6100-539: The concerts were an immediate success. They attracted musicians, painters and writers, as well as fashionable society, but they were so expensive that Boulez had to turn to wealthy patrons for support. Key events in the Domaine's history included a Webern festival (1955), the European premiere of Stravinsky's Agon (1957) and first performances of Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques (1955) and Sept haïkaï (1963). Boulez remained director until 1967, when Gilbert Amy succeeded him. On 18 June 1955, Hans Rosbaud conducted

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6200-466: The construction of, while Frank Lloyd Wright still was in Japan. The client, Aline Barnsdall , subsequently chose Schindler as her architect to design a number of other small projects for her on Olive Hill and a spectacular beach-side 'translucent house' in 1927, which remains one of the great uncompleted projects of the twentieth century. As Schindler was applying for a Los Angeles license to practice architecture in 1929, he mentioned his extensive work on

6300-434: The director of expanded music programming at LACMA, resulting in series with a wide variety of focuses including the Pro Musicis series (dedicated to early music), Ensembles in Residence ( California E.A.R. Unit and Xtet) and Bing Concerts (typically for guest soloists and ensembles). The widening scope of these ancillary concert series led to Monday Evening Concerts narrowing its focus almost solely on contemporary music during

6400-473: The electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time from the 1970s onwards. His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces considered landmarks of twentieth-century music, such as Le Marteau sans maître , Pli selon pli and Répons . His uncompromising commitment to modernism and the trenchant, polemical tone in which he expressed his views on music led some to criticise him as

6500-436: The film Pineapple Express . He developed his own platform frame system, the Schindler Frame in 1945. His later work uses this system extensively as a basis for experimentation. Schindler's early work, such as the Kings Road House and Lovell Beach House, largely went unnoticed in the wider architectural world. As early and radical as they were for modernism, they may have been too different for recognition and Los Angeles

6600-513: The first large-scale retrospective of Boulez as composer and conductor. In 1966, he proposed a reorganisation of French musical life to the minister of culture, André Malraux , but Malraux instead appointed the conservative Marcel Landowski as head of music at the Ministry of Culture. Boulez expressed his fury in an article in the Nouvel Observateur , announcing that he was "going on strike with regard to any aspect of official music in France". In March 1965, Boulez had made his orchestral debut in

6700-410: The first performance of Boulez's best-known work, Le Marteau sans maître , at the ISCM Festival in Baden-Baden. A nine-movement cycle for alto voice and instrumental ensemble based on poems by René Char, it was an immediate, international success. William Glock wrote: "even at a first hearing, though difficult to take in, it was so utterly new in sound, texture and feeling that it seemed to possess

6800-425: The first time on December 30, 1914. Wright had little work at this stage, was still plagued by the destruction of Taliesin and the murder of his mistress earlier that year, and did not offer Schindler a job. Schindler continued work at OSR, keeping himself occupied with trips and study, notably familiarizing himself with the early tilt up slab work of Irving Gill . Wright was able to hire Schindler after obtaining

6900-414: The helm in 2015. Under Hepfer, MEC's programming and production expanded with an emphasis on unconventional curatorial combinations, such as Steve Reich, Léonin and Pérotin . In addition to MEC's traditional home of Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School, during this era, MEC has presented concerts at Hauser & Wirth , the Getty Museum , LAXART Gallery, BP Hall at Walt Disney Concert Hall , and

7000-554: The invitation of Laurence Olivier ; and between 1950 and 1957 there were three tours to South America and two to North America. Much of the music he wrote for the company was lost after the occupation by students of the Théâtre de l'Odéon during the civil unrest in May 1968 . The period between 1947 and 1950 was one of intense compositional activity for Boulez. New works included the first two piano sonatas and initial versions of two cantatas on poems by René Char , Le Visage nuptial and Le Soleil des eaux . In October 1951,

7100-414: The leaders of the post-war modernist movement in the arts. As the music critic Alex Ross observed: "at all times he seemed absolutely sure of what he was doing. Amid the confusion of postwar life, with so many truths discredited, his certitude was reassuring." In 1954, with the financial backing of Barrault and Renaud, Boulez started a series of concerts at the Petit Marigny theatre, which became known as

7200-401: The more 'open' walls of redwood and glass. It has largely become the symbol of Schindler's architecture. In a search to create a more inexpensive architecture, Schindler abandoned concrete and turned to the plaster-skin design. This type of construction is characteristic of his work throughout the 1930s and 1940s, but his interest in form and space never changed. The Rodriguez House appears in

7300-470: The most important is Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna , a large-scale orchestral work, prompted by the death at a relatively young age of Boulez's friend and fellow composer. In 1970 Boulez was asked by President Pompidou to return to France and set up an institute specialising in musical research and creation at the arts complex—now known as the Centre Georges Pompidou —which was planned for

7400-589: The music-making of both these world cities" and in June the New York appointment was confirmed. His tenure in New York lasted between 1971 and 1977 and was not an unqualified success. The dependence on a subscription audience limited his programming. He introduced more key works from the first half of the twentieth century and, with earlier repertoire, sought out less well-known pieces. In his first season, he conducted Liszt's The Legend of Saint Elizabeth and Via Crucis . Performances of new music were comparatively rare in

7500-406: The musicians were generally excellent. He was chief conductor between 1971 and 1975, continuing as chief guest conductor until 1977. Thereafter he returned to the orchestra frequently until his last appearance in an all- Janáček programme at a 2008 Prom. In both cities, Boulez sought out venues where new music could be presented more informally: in New York he began a series of "Rug Concerts"—when

7600-401: The new work being done in the country as worthy of respect." "Can't you give me two lines, just two lines of recommendations without any hints at what a great man the boss is and what poor fishes they are in comparison." "You further called it an exhibition of ‘California Architects’. Now it has become one of ‘Neutra and others’. I am quite willing to give Neutra the crown for his ability as

7700-691: The pit orchestra of the Folies Bergère . In October 1946, the actor and director Jean-Louis Barrault engaged him to play the ondes for a production of Hamlet for the new company he and his wife, Madeleine Renaud , had formed at the Théâtre Marigny . Boulez was soon appointed music director of the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, a post he held for nine years. He arranged and conducted incidental music, mostly by composers whose music he disliked (such as Milhaud and Tchaikovsky ), but it gave him

7800-663: The programming of this era include: J.S. Bach, John Blow , Carlo Gesualdo , Claude Le Jeune , Henry Purcell , Domenico Scarlatti , and Heinrich Schutz . The featured modern composers included Harrison Birtwistle , Sylvano Bussotti , Luigi Dallapiccola , Leon Kirchner , Rene Leibowitz , Luigi Nono , and Karlheinz Stockhausen . Distinguished soloists, conductors and visiting artists associated with MEC during this era included: Cathy Berberian , Luciano Berio , Lukas Foss , Lawrence Foster , Severino Gazzelloni , Marilyn Horne , Karl Kohn , William Kraft , Andre Previn , Lalo Schifrin , Leo Smit , Michael Tilson Thomas (who for

7900-627: The rapport between them was instant: "A friend translated [and] we gesticulated wildly ... We talked about music all the time—in a way I've never talked about it with anyone else." In July 1952, Boulez attended the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt for the first time. As well as Stockhausen, Boulez was in contact there with other composers who would become significant figures in contemporary music, including Luciano Berio and Luigi Nono . Boulez quickly became one of

8000-472: The same time, the attitude to the public was open and welcoming. Over the course of eight decades, Monday Evening Concerts has been led by five directors: Peter Yates was a self-described passionate musical amateur. In addition to his career as a social worker in Los Angeles, Yates was a poet and music critic, contributing to the music column for John Entenza 's Arts & Architecture magazine. Rather than seeing himself as an Artistic Director of Evenings on

8100-612: The same year, Monday Evening Concerts lost its contracts with the Museum of Art . MEC reorganized its operations, re-emerging as an independent organization led by arts administrator and amateur pianist Justin Urcis, and a board of fifteen members, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic executive director Ernest Fleischmann. After an opening sold-out concert at REDCAT, the principal home base for concerts became Herbert Zipper Concert Hall at

8200-690: The seats in Avery Fisher Hall were taken out and the audience sat on the floor—and a contemporary music series called "Prospective Encounters" in Greenwich Village . In London he gave concerts at the Roundhouse , a former railway turntable shed which Peter Brook had also used for radical theatre productions. His aim was "to create a feeling that we are all, audience, players and myself, taking part in an act of exploration". In 1972, Wolfgang Wagner , who had succeeded his brother Wieland as director of

8300-520: The subscription series. The players admired his musicianship but regarded him as dry and unemotional compared to Bernstein, although it was widely accepted that he improved the standard of playing. He returned on only three occasions to the orchestra in later years. Boulez's time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was happier. With the resources of the BBC behind him, he could be bolder in his choice of repertoire. There were occasional forays into

8400-821: The two composers soured the following year over the first Paris performance of Stravinsky's Threni for the Domaine musical. Poorly planned by Boulez and nervously conducted by Stravinsky, the performance broke down more than once. In January 1958, the Improvisations sur Mallarmé (I et II) were premiered, forming the kernel of a piece which grew over the next four years into a large-scale, five-movement "portrait of Mallarmé ", Pli selon pli . It received its premiere in Donaueschingen in October 1962. Around this time, Boulez's relations with Stockhausen deteriorated as (according to

8500-514: The world premiere of the three-act version of Berg 's opera Lulu . His recorded legacy is extensive. He also founded several musical institutions. In Paris he set up the Domaine musical in the 1950s to promote new music; in the 1970s he established the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM), to foster research and innovation in music, and the Ensemble intercontemporain ,

8600-652: Was a seminal figure for classical/contemporary music in Southern California, best remembered for his leadership of both MEC and the early years of the Ojai Music Festival . His wide-ranging tastes resulted in MEC not only presenting new music but also numerous significant performances of music from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods. His close friendships with Igor Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez (who made his US conducting debut with MEC in 1957) shaped many of

8700-545: Was added later). The institution was criticised for absorbing too much state subsidy, Boulez for wielding too much power. At the same time he founded the Ensemble intercontemporain , a virtuoso ensemble dedicated to contemporary music. In 1979, Boulez conducted the world premiere of the three-act version of Berg's Lulu at the Paris Opera in Friedrich Cerha 's completion of the work, left unfinished at Berg's death. It

8800-453: Was all-Bartók, performed for an audience of nineteen spectators. Subsequent early programs were devoted to Frédéric Chopin , Alexander Scriabin, Charles Ives, Ferruccio Busoni , Erik Satie , Arnold Schoenberg , and keyboard music from the early Baroque era. The initial vision for the series was to allow top musicians to program and perform according to their artistic interests without concern about audiences and financial matters; however, at

8900-747: Was born on September 10, 1887, to a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna , Austria . His father was a wood and metal craftsman and an importer; his mother was a dressmaker. He attended the Imperial and Royal High School , from 1899 to 1906, and enrolled at the Vienna University of Technology before attending the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts , or Wagnerschule , being graduated in 1911 with a degree in architecture. For unknown reasons, his family changed their surname from 'Schlesinger' to 'Schindler' in 1901. Schindler

9000-462: Was describing him as "the best of the class". Around the same time he was introduced to Andrée Vaurabourg , wife of the composer Arthur Honegger . Between April 1944 and May 1946 he studied counterpoint privately with her. In June 1944 he approached Olivier Messiaen and asked to study harmony with him. Messiaen invited him to attend the private seminars he gave to selected students; in January 1945, Boulez joined Messiaen's advanced harmony class at

9100-589: Was directed by Chéreau. Otherwise he scaled back his conducting commitments to concentrate on IRCAM. Most of his appearances during this period were with his own Ensemble intercontemporain—including tours to the United States (1986), Australia (1988), the Soviet Union (1990) and Canada (1991) —although he also renewed his links in the 1980s with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Boulez composed significantly more during this period, producing

9200-642: Was engaged to design several private commissions while in Los Angeles, notably, he completed what many think is his finest building, the Kings Road House , also known as the Schindler house or the Schindler-Chase house, as an office and home for two professional couples by late spring 1922. He and his wife were one of the couples living in the communal structure. He also started to take on several projects of his own. During this time, fractures started to appear in

9300-556: Was favourable and after the first performance the musicians rose to applaud him. He conducted Wozzeck again in April 1966 at the Oper Frankfurt in a new production by Wieland Wagner . Wieland Wagner had already invited Boulez to conduct Wagner's Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival later in the season, and Boulez returned to conduct revivals in 1967, 1968 and 1970. He also conducted performances of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde with

9400-416: Was here that he also discovered the music of Webern . He eventually found Leibowitz's approach too doctrinaire and broke angrily with him in 1946 when Leibowitz tried to criticise one of his early works. In June 1945, Boulez was one of four Conservatoire students awarded premier prix . He was described in the examiner's report as "the most gifted—a composer". Although registered at the Conservatoire for

9500-423: Was his extreme fault in these circumstances of endeavoring to build buildings." "Rudolph was a patient assistant who seemed well aware of the significance of what I was then doing. His sympathetic appreciation never failed. His talents were adequate to any demands made upon them by me." In 2024 Schindler Space Architect , a feature-length documentary film by Valentina Ganeva on the life and works of Schindler,

9600-577: Was most influenced by professor Carl König , despite the presence of many other famous professors such as Otto Wagner and particularly, Adolf Loos . Most notably, in 1911, he was introduced to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright through the influential Wasmuth Portfolio . Schindler also met his lifelong friend and rival Richard Neutra at the university in 1912, before completing his thesis project in 1913. Their careers would parallel each other: both would go to Los Angeles through Chicago, be recognized as important early modernists creating new styles suited to

9700-529: Was not a significant location on the architectural map. Schindler was not included in the highly influential International Style exhibit of 1932, while Richard Neutra was and, to add insult to injury, Neutra, incorrectly, was credited as the Austrian who worked on the Imperial Hotel with Wright. His first major exposure came in Esther McCoy 's 'Five California Architects' of 1960. His work is undergoing somewhat of

9800-425: Was rejected but was determined to pursue a career in music. The following year, with his sister's support in the face of opposition from his father, he studied piano and harmony privately with Lionel de Pachmann (son of the pianist Vladimir de Pachmann ). "Our parents were strong, but finally we were stronger than they", Boulez later said. In the event, when he moved to Paris in the autumn of 1943, hoping to enroll at

9900-487: Was released. Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez ( French: [pjɛʁ lwi ʒozεf bulɛz] ; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music . Born in Montbrison , in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at

10000-460: Was the final version of Book 2 of his Structures for two pianos. Midway through the decade, he produced several new works, including Éclat (1965), a short and brilliant piece for small ensemble, which by 1970 had grown into a substantial half-hour work, Éclat/Multiples . Boulez first conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in February 1964, at Worthing , accompanying Vladimir Ashkenazy in

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