An Analytical Study on Pierre Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître

Since its 1955 premiere, Le Marteau sans maitre, by Pierre Boulez, has consistently been regarded as one of the more important modernist compositions of the post-war era. Certainly, it ranks among the best-known works of Pierre Boulez and our purpose is to see if we can uncover some of its structures. This composition, based on a text by René Char, was written for alto voice, flute, viola, guitar, vibraphone, and percussion. Before Le Marteau, Boulez had created some other serial works: Structures I for two pianos, Polyphonie X for eighteen instruments, and another tour-de-force, known as the Second Piano Sonata which gained him an international reputation back in 1950. Although many have attempted to analyze Le Marteau's serial organization, Lev Koblyakov has been considered successful in analyzing it. Boulez’s multiple serial compositional techniques have been greatly illuminated through Koblyakov’s work; taking this as my touchstone, I will herein discuss a few of the compositional strategies utilized by Boulez. keywords: music analysis, composition, music theory, Pierre Boulez