Leo Svirsky/ PIERRE BOULEZ/ DOUZE NOTATIONS

Pierre Boulez wrote Douze Notations in a few days, as a 20 year-old student of Olivier Messiaen (at the Paris Conservatoire) and the dodecaphonist Rene Lebowitz (private study). The Notations offer a particularly acerbic response to Lebowitz’s dogmaticism. 12 pieces, of 12 bars each (though the bars are irregular and the barlines somewhat arbitrary). Pitches are organized with a technique called cyclic permutation, where the first piece is based on the row in its root form, the second piece is based on a