Uploaded February 2010 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
René Leibowitz (17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after the Second World War, and teaching a new generation of serialist composers.
In Paris Leibowitz earned his living as a jazz pianist and composed constantly. In his early twenties he married an artist from an illustrious French family and settled down in Paris, eventually taking French nationality. During the early 1930s he was introduced to Schoenberg's twelve-note technique by the German pianist and composer Erich Itor Kahn. Maguire writes that Leibowitz easily fitted into "the ebullient intellectual and artistic climate of Paris in the pre-war years". His aesthetic interests were not confined to music, and he became friendly with leading figures from the world of modern art, notably André Masson and Pablo Picasso, and with literary figures including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus. For Leibowitz composing was his most regular activity, and the one he thought most important, although he was known more for his commentaries, his critical and analytical writings, his conducting, and his teaching, all of which he considered secondary.
Leibowitz remained firmly committed to the musical aesthetic of Arnold Schoenberg, and was to some extent sidelined among the French avant-garde in the 1950s, when, under the influence of Leibowitz's former student, Pierre Boulez and others, the music of Schoenberg's pupil Anton Webern was adopted as the orthodox model by younger composers.
After 1945, René Leibowitz was one of the leading European advocates of the works of the Second Viennese School, in Paris above all but also at the Internationale Ferienkurse in Darmstadt starting in 1946. What is less known, however, is Leibowitzs compositional œuvre, comprising over 90 works in practically all genres. Even though he always insisted on the necessity of an interplay between theory and practice, composed continuously for forty years, and was not indifferent to the success of his works, he was remarkably circumspect as a composer. His first works date from the 1930s; his firth opera, Todos caeran, based on an originally libretto, was completed in 1972, shortly before his death. Both his musical philosophy and his works are indebted to the œuvre of Arnold Schoenberg. Throughout his life, Leibowitz held Schoenberg up as his model and honored the unyieldingness with which Schoenberg spurred on musical developments from the spirit of tradition. In the center of Leibowitzs interest in Schoenberg was the twelve-tone technique which he clung to even though it meant isolation from his contemporaries. Leibowitz saw the uniqueness of this compositional method in the synthesis of constructive discipline and inventive freedom. It was the task of the followers of the Schoenberg school to plumb the depths of this methods possibilities, which were far from exhausted.
Although Leibowitz was receptive to a wide range of musical styles, he could not bear the music of Sibelius, and published a pamphlet about him under the title of Sibelius: the Worst Composer in the World; he also severely criticised Bartók for writing music that was too accessible: Leibowitz felt that by failing to adopt dodecaphony in his later works Bartók was pandering to popular taste rather than helping to move music away from tonality in accordance with Leibowitz's notions of historical inevitability and composers' duty. For Leibowitz, to write a popular work like Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was a betrayal of modernism.
After World War II, young composers like Pierre Boulez and Hans Werner Henze went directly to Leibowitz to learn about the twelve-tone technique. In the zero hour, young composers hoped that the then widely unknown method would lead to a new beginning. However, Leibowitzs reliance on a traditional access to music soon came in conflict with the zeitgeist. This had become obvious to all at the latest in 1951, when Pierre Boulez, the spokesman of the French avant-garde, gave his lecture Schoenberg is dead in Darmstadt. It was a symbolic farewell to this traditional-mindedness. Serial music came to dominate contemporary musical development, forcing Leibowitz to withdraw from the public eye.
Leibowitz died suddenly in Paris on 28 August 1972, at the age of 59.
René Leibowitz (17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after the Second World War, and teaching a new generation of serialist composers.
In Paris Leibowitz earned his living as a jazz pianist and composed constantly. In his early twenties he married an artist from an illustrious French family and settled down in Paris, eventually taking French nationality. During the early 1930s he was introduced to Schoenberg's twelve-note technique by the German pianist and composer Erich Itor Kahn. Maguire writes that Leibowitz easily fitted into "the ebullient intellectual and artistic climate of Paris in the pre-war years". His aesthetic interests were not confined to music, and he became friendly with leading figures from the world of modern art, notably André Masson and Pablo Picasso, and with literary figures including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus. For Leibowitz composing was his most regular activity, and the one he thought most important, although he was known more for his commentaries, his critical and analytical writings, his conducting, and his teaching, all of which he considered secondary.
Leibowitz remained firmly committed to the musical aesthetic of Arnold Schoenberg, and was to some extent sidelined among the French avant-garde in the 1950s, when, under the influence of Leibowitz's former student, Pierre Boulez and others, the music of Schoenberg's pupil Anton Webern was adopted as the orthodox model by younger composers.
After 1945, René Leibowitz was one of the leading European advocates of the works of the Second Viennese School, in Paris above all but also at the Internationale Ferienkurse in Darmstadt starting in 1946. What is less known, however, is Leibowitzs compositional œuvre, comprising over 90 works in practically all genres. Even though he always insisted on the necessity of an interplay between theory and practice, composed continuously for forty years, and was not indifferent to the success of his works, he was remarkably circumspect as a composer. His first works date from the 1930s; his firth opera, Todos caeran, based on an originally libretto, was completed in 1972, shortly before his death. Both his musical philosophy and his works are indebted to the œuvre of Arnold Schoenberg. Throughout his life, Leibowitz held Schoenberg up as his model and honored the unyieldingness with which Schoenberg spurred on musical developments from the spirit of tradition. In the center of Leibowitzs interest in Schoenberg was the twelve-tone technique which he clung to even though it meant isolation from his contemporaries. Leibowitz saw the uniqueness of this compositional method in the synthesis of constructive discipline and inventive freedom. It was the task of the followers of the Schoenberg school to plumb the depths of this methods possibilities, which were far from exhausted.
Although Leibowitz was receptive to a wide range of musical styles, he could not bear the music of Sibelius, and published a pamphlet about him under the title of Sibelius: the Worst Composer in the World; he also severely criticised Bartók for writing music that was too accessible: Leibowitz felt that by failing to adopt dodecaphony in his later works Bartók was pandering to popular taste rather than helping to move music away from tonality in accordance with Leibowitz's notions of historical inevitability and composers' duty. For Leibowitz, to write a popular work like Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was a betrayal of modernism.
After World War II, young composers like Pierre Boulez and Hans Werner Henze went directly to Leibowitz to learn about the twelve-tone technique. In the zero hour, young composers hoped that the then widely unknown method would lead to a new beginning. However, Leibowitzs reliance on a traditional access to music soon came in conflict with the zeitgeist. This had become obvious to all at the latest in 1951, when Pierre Boulez, the spokesman of the French avant-garde, gave his lecture Schoenberg is dead in Darmstadt. It was a symbolic farewell to this traditional-mindedness. Serial music came to dominate contemporary musical development, forcing Leibowitz to withdraw from the public eye.
Leibowitz died suddenly in Paris on 28 August 1972, at the age of 59.
![René Koering, Quatuor No 2nd mouvement, largo [second movement of two]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jbpD3mJL9O8/mqdefault.jpg "René Koering, Quatuor No 2nd mouvement, largo [second movement of two]
On dit et on répète à tous les compositeurs depuis Beethoven que la forme du quatuor à cordes est la chose la plus difficile (les vrais pervers, après vous avoir asséné cette vérité historique, vous font savoir que la vraie difficulté est le trio à cordes mais que ce divertissement nest réservé quà la catégorie quatre étoiles des compositeurs).
Je pense au contraire quil y a dans laustère (et brillante) gymnastique de quatuor une première « facilité* qui est celle des vois intermédiaires (situées entre le dessus et la basse) nécessaires à tout épanouissement. Et que ces deux voix (voies), tellement indispensables à la plénitude du discours ne sont vraiment exploitables que dans la formule du quatuor à cordes. En effet, le répartitions sur lambitus sont parfaites entre le do grave du violoncelle et lut ultime du violon, en passant par le second violon et le bienheureux alto. De là extrême confort du compositeur, libéré du handicap des deux mains au piano ou des innombrables pièges des jeux de cache cache à lorchestre. Là, tout est clair, chaque note est entendue et la virtuosité est lenfant de Bohême dont rêve limpétrant.
Cest pourquoi je me pose souvent le question des multiples et inutiles séductions ajoutées à la musique, depuis le piano jusquà lorchestres « gurreliederien », il existe, je le sais, le pur raffinement de la beauté « quartetisante ». Alors pourquoi hésiter ?
Parce quil est difficil dimaginer un audimat que satisfasse un éditeur, même passionné de quatuor, marié à un compositeur fécond seulement dans ce domaine. La carrière internationale et triomphante de Georges Onslow est là pous nous le rappeler. (Nata : Onslow est lauteur de 35 quatuors et 34 quintettes dans la continuité rare et appréciable de Schubert.)
Finalement je conclus, à titre personnel, que le quatuor à cordes simpose sans discussion possible au moment où la nostalgie du pays perdue ou égaré sempare de moi et que remonter à la surface, aborder les plages aux franges de lexistence, ne peut se faire quà la condition « quartettane ».
René Koering")
![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [1 of 2 total]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kuyEIDaKL8Y/mqdefault.jpg "Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements, Second Movement [1 of 2 total]
ABOUT the String Quartet in Two Movements, composer Billy Jim Layton has this to say: The
quartet was written during 1955 and early 1956 while I was at the American Academy in Rome as a
Rome Prize Fellow. It is a composition to which I devoted a great deal of thought and effort and, as
I look back on it, it seems to me that it represents a kind of summation of my artistic development
and convictions up to that point. In it my aim was to achieve the widest range of expression possible
without lapsing into incoherence, by always maintaining the strongest formal control.
The thought and effort expended by Layton on this work has resulted in a Quartet which holds
qualities of extraversion and introversion in an unusual balance, with areas of high emotional
tension and vigor being set off against other statements of the utmost passivity and inwardness,
sometimes almost expressionist in esthetic. A highly complex treatment of rhythmic resources is
always in evidence, whether the music flows along with an ethereal line singing above a lightly
punctuated counterpoint, or steps out in jazzy, muscular syncops. Indeed, rhythm would seem to
be the real heart of this Quartet. In more than one section, it constitutes the entire subject under
discussion. Instrumental color, however, is another string preoccupation of the composer. The
resources of his medium are constantly exploited to the full, bringing into combination writing con
sordino and senza sordino; non vibrato and molto vibrato; col legno plus high and low pizzicato.
There are even trills beginning as whole-step intervals and gradually contracting to quarter-tones.
Every measure of the score bespeaks meticulous handling of all materials; a high consciousness of
the potency of timbre, and a delight in its manipulation.
about the composer:
Billy Jim Layton was born in Corsicana, Texas, in 1924. He studied at the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, Yale University, and Harvard. Several scholarships and prizes
were awarded him by these institutions. He has also held the Hertz Travelling Fellowship from the
University of California and the Rome Prize, 1954-57. In 1958, a grant in recognition of creative
work in music was awarded him by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in connection with
which the present recording is issued. He has received several important commissions, including
one by the Koussevitsky Foundation. Performances of his music for solo, chamber, orchestral, and
choral combinations have been given in many cities of the United States and Europe.
Claremont St ring Quartet
Marc Gottli eb, violin
Vladimi r Weisman, violin
William Schoen, viola
Irving Klein, cello
We apologize must humbly, profusely, and in a virtual paroxysm of self-deprecation, for the poor sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions per minute micro-groove recording.")
