20th century
Baroque
Classical
Romantic
20th century
21st century
Solo repertoire
Piccolo
Alto flute
Bass flute
Boulez Pierre
Aitken, Robert
Amirov, Fikret
Amlin, Martin
Amram, David
Andriessen, Jurriaan
Arnold, Malcolm
Arrieu, Claude
Auric, Georges
Babbit, Milton
Bacchus, Peter
Bacri, Nicolas
Baker, Michael Conway
Baksa, Robert
Barber, Samuel
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Bernofsky, Lauren
Bernstein, Leonard
Bloch, Ernest
Bolling, Claude
Bon, Maarten
Bonis, Mel
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Boulanger, Marie-Juliette
Boulez, Pierre
Bourdin, Roger
Bournonville, Armand
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Bozza, Eugène Joseph
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Sonatine for flute and piano
Sonatine for flute and piano
Pierre Boulez: Sonatine for flute and piano was written at the beginning of 1946 and is widely considered as his Op. 1, marking the beginning of his published output and the first major synthesis of his revolutionary musical language. Boulez extensively revised the piece in April 1949, modifying or rewriting more than a third of the original score before its eventual publication in 1954.
Originally, it was dedicated to Jean-Pierre Rampal. However, in the late 1950s, Boulez added a new dedication to Pierre Souvtchinsky on a specific manuscript.
The world premiere took place on February 28, 1947, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. It was performed by Herlin Van Boterdael (flute) and Marcelle Mercenier (piano).
The official premiere of the revised and published version was held on July 15, 1956, at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, performed by Severino Gazzelloni (flute) and David Tudor (piano).
In 1946, the twenty-year-old Boulez was at a critical turning point, transitioning from a student to a radical leader of the avant-garde. This year marked his graduation from Olivier Messiaen’s harmony class (where he won first prize) and his subsequent expulsion from the Paris Conservatoire after refusing to attend classes taught by professors he deemed too conservative. Having recently studied with René Leibowitz, Boulez began moving away from the strict dodecaphony of his teachers. The Sonatine was his first attempt to combine classical twelve-tone technique with independent rhythmic structures inspired by Messiaen.
Although dedicated to Rampal, a professional rift occurred when Rampal refused to premiere the work. Rampal claimed the notation was impractical and the music was "too extreme" for his tastes. The piece's extreme technical challenges, including violent shifts in dynamics and complex "delirious" rhythms, reflected Boulez's desire to "obliterate what had gone before" and create a post-war tabula rasa for French music.
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
1. Trés Librement – Lent
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
2. Rapide
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
3. Trés Modéré, Presque Lent
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
4. Tempo Scherzando
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
5. Trés Modéré, Mt. De L'introduction
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
6. Tempo Scherzando II
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
7. En Eclaboussures
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
8. Tempo Rapide
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
9. Ralentire Un Peu Ralenti
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
10. Trés Rapide
Laetitia Bougnol (piano), 2018, ASR Aktiv Sound Records / recordJet
11. Trés Modéré, Trés Large, Trés Rapide
Boulez Pierre
Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) was a major figure of 20th-century modernism, excelling as a composer, conductor, theorist, and institutional visionary. He was a primary architect of the post-World War II avant-garde and one of the most influential musical minds of his era.
Born in Montbrison, a small town in east-central France, in a family of an authoritarian engineer and the technical director of a steel factory. Boulez began piano lessons around age seven, and demonstrated high ability in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, which led his father to pressure him toward an engineering career. As a result, he went to study at the Institut Victor de Laprade in Montbrison, and then he moved to Lyon to prepare for the École Polytechnique. While there, he experienced orchestral music and opera for the first time, seeing Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Despite his father's strong opposition, Boulez's sister Jeanne helped convince their father to let him pursue music. In 1943, he moved to Paris
with his father's reluctant support to audition for the Paris Conservatoire. After an initial failed audition for the advanced piano class, he was admitted to the conservatory in 1944. He quickly excelled, particularly in the advanced harmony class of Olivier Messiaen, where he discovered the works of Stravinsky and Debussy.
Quickly, Boulez became the leading proponent of "Total Serialism", a method of organizing not just pitches, but also rhythms, dynamics, and articulations into rigorous mathematical sets. His Sonatine for flute and piano (1946) and Le Marteau sans maître (1955) are considered cornerstones of the avant-garde, blending relentless technical complexity with a shimmering, "Gallic" tonal palette. In his youth, he was famously polemical, once stating that "any musician who has not experienced the necessity of dodecaphonic [twelve-tone] language is USELESS."
Besides composition, Boulez became one of the world's most sought-after conductors, serving as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic (succeeding Leonard Bernstein) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He was legendary for his analytical precision and "X-ray" ears, capable of detecting a single wrong note in a dense orchestral texture. He famously conducted without a baton, using fluid, precise hand movements.
In 1977, at the request of the French government, he founded IRCAM (a center for electronic music research) and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, both of which remain global hubs for new music in the 21st century.
Additionally, he was instrumental in the creation of the Cité de la Musique and the Philharmonie de Paris, physically reshaping the musical landscape of France.
Among his most notable compositions: Le Marteau sans maître (1955) for alto voice and six instruments; Pli selon pli (1962/1989), a massive cycle for soprano and orchestra based on the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé, and Répons (1981–1984), a breakthrough in electroacoustic music for soloists, ensemble, and live Electronics.