God cvnt it all, I'd just written a thorough comparison of Boulez's and Craft's versions of Webern and offered analytical minutiae. Just as I was applying the final finishing touch, my browser quit. Here's a partial paraphrase:
Quote:
Originally posted by FCJ
That's funny, but I like the Craft set much better. It's never been released on CD, IIRC. |
I hadn't said that Craft's versions were released as a box set *on CD*, only that I preferred Boulez's versions to Craft's. (Because I have a degree in music composition, I had to listen to Craft's versions of Webern extensively in college, and have always devoted special attention to Webern generally -- I'm well aware that Craft's Webern is a vinyl outing.)
I do give Robert Craft his props for having made pioneering recordings of Webern, and for having championed Webern's cause -- particularly in America and particularly to other musicians, such as Stravinsky, whose later works show Webern's influence largely because of the efforts of Craft (which *Conversations with Stravinsky*, a book of interviews with which you're doubtless familiar, clearly shows). And I don't intend to disparage Craft in any way.
But as to Boulez's versions of Webern, their superiority over Craft's is generally acknowledged. Here's why, I think:
(a) Boulez was, and to some degree still is, an ultra-rationalist composer. His magic-square-matrixed technique of total integration (i.e., the serial integration of all aspects of music -- timbre, rhythm, dynamics, etc., as opposed to merely serializing pitch-classes, as in Schoenberg) were derived wholly from Webern. This means that, compositionally, Boulez is in a better position than Craft to understand the strata of Webern's delicate and complex palindromic structures, as well as the ultimate implications of said structures.
(b) Webern demands exactitude; Boulez is a more surgically exacting conductor than Craft when he wants to be; and since Webern is Boulez's favorite composer, Boulez wants to be.
(c) Craft's versions, through no fault of his, were seriously marred by the unavailability of reliable scores, which meant in some cases that Craft had to use bad Xeroxes of questionable sources.
(d) Boulez is a trained mathematician and Webern's use of math is legendary (Webern cited the horizontal-and-vertical palindrome, Sator-Arepo-Tenet-Opera-Rotas as a compositional ideal, paving the way for Boulez (along with Stockhausen, Babbit, et al.) to use magic squares).
(e) The first movement of Webern's Symphony Op. 21, with its deceptively transparent-sounding orchestration, is also a double crab canon as strict as any by Bach. Yet the nuances of that polyphony can be hard to hear, initially, because of Webern's use of klangfarbenmelodie (literally, tone color melody): each phrase of each of its four voices is passed from one instrument to the next. This is a technique that derives from medieval music or, more precisely, from a device called the *hocket* (literally, *hiccup* -- which is what the technique sounds like in medieval vocal music). Most listeners could probably hear the measured structure of the first movement of the Op. 21 -- that parts repeat, for example, or that the first part of the movement is a twenty-four-bar double period. But it is harder to hear the coherence of the contrapuntal lines, particularly for the untrained listener. Boulez does everything possible to bring out the individual lines in a way that Craft does not. One need only compare their versions of Op. 21 to hear the difference.
(f) Boulez used engineers who were also classically trained musicians. He also insisted on using singers with perfect *intonation*, which is necessary in Webern because his music is difficult to sing but is also transparent and exacting in a way that much twentieth century music is not. As good as they were, Craft's singers often sound muddy by comparison.
(g) There is a purity of color in Boulez's versions that could not have been achieved in Craft's because elements of the orchestra couldn't be miked and isolated as they can now. Ordinarily, this is a subject of controversy among audiophiles, and if you were to insist on a puristic approach to the stereo field (two mikes without any close-miking of instruments whatsoever), I would respect your preference. But in the case of Webern, I do think the music benefits from a close-miked approach.
(h) The Boulez version is more complete because we now have access to certain earlier compositions and because it is more inclusive.
(i) Boulez has studied Webern's music his whole life and is now an old man. He has the advantage of decades of familarity with Webern while, to Craft, Webern was comparatively new.
