ABSTRACT
The manuscript bears the dedication, ‘To my dear master L. de Pachmann2 from his respectful and grateful student P. Boulez’,3 and is dated September 1943. To judge from the style of this final offering to his piano teacher in Lyon, the young musician already felt a strong affinity with the music of Debussy and Ravel, and has recalled specifically the influence of the Prelude La puerta del Vino.4 The languid opening avec douceur recalls the Prelude’s Habanera rhythm, whilst the piano figuration of the contrasting mid section suggests a possible acquaintance with the pianism of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. If elsewhere the sequences are rather predictable, and the texture of parallel harmonies over a sustained bass somewhat conventional, the ambiguous tonality of the final bars strikes a personal note and the stirrings of an exploratory turn of mind.5
