Polyphonie X
Polyphonie X (1950–51) is a three-movement composition by Pierre Boulez for eighteen instruments divided into seven groups, with a duration of roughly fifteen minutes. Following the work's premiere, Boulez withdrew the score, stating that it suffered from "theoretical exaggeration". (In a 1974 interview, he referred to it as a "document" rather than a "work".) Despite Boulez's dissatisfaction with the piece, it played a key role in his development: one writer called it "the linchpin connecting Boulez's early mastery of gesture and contour... with his later interest in large ensembles and grand forms", his "brave 'first attempt' to produce a work that exhausted a particular musical technique with large orchestral forces by developing an expansive, additive structure at the earliest stages of composition", and "one of the purest representations of Boulez's first turn toward integral serialism". Background In 1948 and 1949, Boulez worked on Livre pour Quatuor for string quartet, in which he began to explore the notion of expanding serial technique to encompass rhythms and dynamics as well as pitches. This was followed by further efforts in the direction of integral serialism in the form of the first book of Structures for two pianos, Polyphonie X, and Deux Études for