Pierre Boulez / Livre pour quatuor

Pierre Boulez: Livre pour Quatuor Revised version with fourth movement reconstructed by Jean-Louis Leleu and Philippe Manoury, commissioned by the Daniel Barenboim Stiftung and the Philharmonie de Paris, World Premiere Ia lb II IIIa IIIb IIIc IV V VII Diotima Quartet Yun-Peng Zhao, violin Constance Ronzatti, violin Franck Chevalier, viola Pierre Morlet, cello Pierre Boulez was barely 23 years old when he began to compose a string quartet of vast dimensions, which he was only going to complete (leaving dynamics and tempi aside) after sixteen months of work, in July 1949. In its original form, the work comprises six movements, or more precisely – depending on the material used and the type of writing – three pairs of movements: I-II, III-V and IV-VI. Although in a letter addressed to Cage in December 1950 Boulez mentions a publishing project for the Quartet on which he says he was then actively working, it seems that it was not until 1954 that, with