Claude Lefebvre, Pierre Boulez, Paul Méfano

Featuring: Ensemble 2e2m

condition (record/cover): M / M (still sealed) Gatefold sleeve. Etwas Weiter / D'Un Arbre De Nuit / Messagesquisse / Mélodies on Le Chant Du Monde assembles Claude Lefebvre, Pierre Boulez, and Paul Méfano in program whose coherence isn't immediately obvious. Lefebvre remains marginal figure; Boulez needs no introduction; Méfano founded the Ensemble 2e2m and taught generations of younger composers.

Boulez's Messagesquisse is "message-sketch," cello septet that develops material later used in larger works. The sketch quality isn't deficiency but method: Boulez composed in spirals, returning to the same material at different scales, each version complete while pointing toward others. Méfano's Mélodies and Lefebvre's contributions provide context, showing what other composers made of similar resources.

Le Chant Du Monde, label with Communist affiliations, here embraces music that Stalinist aesthetics would have condemned as formalist. By the 1970s, French Communism had made peace with the avant-garde, recognizing that Luigi Nono and other leftist composers had legitimized modernist technique for progressive politics. The disc documents this reconciliation.