The CD by Pascal Gallois and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) with the mezzo-soprano Katalin Károlyi is dedicated to Le Marteau sans maître by Pierre Boulez.
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective committed to transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. ICE is the US leading ensemble for new music .

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Le Marteau sans maître is the standard reference work in Boulez's oeuvre and indeed in integral serialism (which in fact only lasted six months, as Boulez was fond of saying). Its distant relation to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21, composed in 1912 and comprising a suite of short pieces for a small ensemble of musicians paired with a female soprano, is a sort of tribute to the Viennese master from whom Boulez so often drew inspiration. He frequently named Schoenberg and Stravinsky as the founders of 20th century music. But in Le Marteau, Boulez also demonstrates his openness to musical styles from outside Europe, from the Far East, Africa and South America. He shared with Olivier Messiaen, his teacher, the same insatiable curiosity. I can still see him describing to me the interpretation of the sigle initial of Dialogue de l'ombre double during our work sessions - he had recalled a film seen at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in the 1950s. He enthusiastically described to me a rain song sung by an old African woman, imitating it to describe the raindrops resonating among the puddles. Boulez perfectly evoked this characteristic rhythmical and rather unmelodious “singing”, a quasi-chanting thanks to the use of onomatopoeia. What he most enjoyed in extra-European songs and rhythms were their ritual “roles”.

In Le Marteau sans maître, it is the flexibility and sonorous diversity of the percussion ensembles from Bali that provide structure. The evocation of the Japanese “koto” by the guitar and the pizzicato of the viola. The human, sonorous proximity of the alto flute and the Japanese “shakuhachi” thanks to the musician's breath being felt as much as the sound. The breathing of the alto voice transcending the poem by René Char.

Pascal Gallois