Boulez's 'Œuvre: fragment' Explores the Unfinished in Art and Music

Published to accompany the 2008 Louvre exhibition 'Œuvre: fragment' conceived by Pierre Boulez, this richly illustrated book with a DVD examines the notion of completion—provisional or otherwise—a central obsession for the composer committed to the work-in-progress principle. Boulez frames the issue through dualities: the opposition between the unfinished and the finished parallels his earlier distinction between 'striated' and 'smooth' time. Reflecting on his late-1950s engagement with chance in creation, debated with John Cage and tested in performer-driven paths, Boulez returns to the 'open work' to acknowledge that 'utopia was followed by a certain disenchantment.' His true passion for the fragmentary state emerges in the study of preparatory sketches, which he says reveal 'the disorder of urgency,' unlike the resulting scores. An interview with Henri Loyrette suffers from awkward phrasing that clashes with its typological ambitions ('Filiation,' 'Hierarchy,' 'Exoticism'). Marcella Lista's text more effectively traces Boulez's intellectual journey, providing keys to the exhibition's sources—from Delacroix to Beuys, via Webern and Berio—and to the composer's questioning mindset.