Rationalizing CultureIRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (original) (raw)

xv ing to see me through much turmoil and physical tiredness. His intellec¬ tual receptivity and imaginative openness, by challenging and comple¬ menting me, have made his (deferred) voice a significant one in this book. Our small son Theo came along in the process of writing. Thanks to Tom and Jean Barry for being there in times of need to help with him, and thanks too for the loving and vivacious help of Elli Antoniou and Conni Buerkle as my sometime substitutes-without which, no book. Camden Town, London June 1993 This book centers on an ethnographic study of IRCAM (Institut de Re¬ cherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique). IRCAM is a large computer music research and production institute in Paris, which opened in 1977, and which is handsomely funded by the French state. IRCAM was founded, and until 1992 was directed, by the renowned conductor and avant-garde composer Pierre Boulez. 1 Rochberg. Babbitt's 1958 article, "The composer as specialist" (orig¬ inally entitled "Who cares if you listen?") argued that contemporary music had become such a complex area of theoretical enquiry that it was necessarily unintelligible to the layman. To secure the future evolution of music, it must therefore withdraw from the public and find support and protection, like the sciences, within the universities. By contrast, Roch¬ berg, who engaged with serialism before renouncing it dramatically in favor of a return to a classical or romantic style, gave a speech in 1971 called "Music: science vs. humanism" (Rochberg 1984) in which he re¬ jected absolutely the "rational madness" of the serialists. For Rochberg, Boulez's personal vision. It is also widely held to be a progressive experi¬ ment, both aesthetic and sociological, in the transformation of contem¬ porary composition and one that might provide a path out of the histor¬ ical impasse. Despite these gigantic ambitions, IRCAM is shrouded in mystery. Little is known, beyond publicity and polemics, about the inter¬ nal dynamics of the organization. My study aims to remedy this. A different take on these issues comes from my personal history as a Boulez. Finally, it has seemed to me far more to the point to report the representation of Boulez, and the sense of his impact, through infor¬ mants' testimony and my own observations rather than to invite being overwhelmed by his own authoritative, and better-known, account of things. It may be apt here to discuss briefly the status of my own discourse. I cultural critique that is not simply relativizing or engaging with culture only at the level of ideology, form, or aesthetic value. Instead, I sketch a theoretical basis from which to engage in critique of cultural forms as at once social, theoretical, technological, and aesthetic: as complex total¬ ities operating at all of these levels, all of which must be addressed if we are to attempt to develop new possibilities both for contemporary music and for cultural production in general. It seems to me probable, and very necessary, that some kind of cultural sphere defined not by the market but by judgments of legitimacy fueling cultural policy and subsidy will