PAST MUSIC, FUTURE MUSIC: TECHNOLOGY AND MUSIC INSTITUTIONS IN THE 20TH CENTURY

By using Boulez's text(s) as a point of departure, the author considers the roles those new technologies had in the development of some musical institutions and questions how institutionalized discourse moulds ideas on the roles music technology should have. Pierre Boulez certainly marked the musical world as we know it today.2 His many activities could be seen as part of his larger project and general mission of fighting for avant-garde musical thought, and against the musical establishment, while he successfully balanced his position in music institutions and between different, at the time, current musical and cultural policies. [...]when focusing on one aspect of his general output, one cannot overlook others, because they were inevitably intertwined (e.g. composing was followed by auto poetical texts, preparing the repertoire of a certain composer led to writing essays on them; performing activities included performances of new works, but also making a canon of 20th century authors' opuses; his pedagogical efforts followed as an endeavour to promote ideas on the contemporary musical scene, and so on). [...]the electronic reproducibility of music and the variety of technologies and electronic music instruments made it possible to pursue new paths and posed challenges in musical invention and composition. Even a more or less random list of pairs of 'palpable categories' without any regard for context, will reveal the general lines along which Boulez's mind works - material/invention, past/future, choice/chance, discipline/freedom (...) (emphasis by M.M.)".7 Nattiez understands this as he calls it "binary" habit as a "way of approaching...