art press 302

interview

Pierre Boulez:
Stocktakings of a Master
interview by FRANCK MALLET

The musical investigations of Pierre Boulez are engaged on the paths opened up by modernism (écriture,
the deconstruction of structures and forms, the spatialization of sound, etc.). His artistic practice, which
embraces conducting, composing and working on live shows is accompanied by an ongoing process of
research which emerges, in constantly new forms, in his works, collaborative ventures and projects. This
musical process is also about reprising, replaying and revisiting; aesthetic issues are always treated in terms
of variation and repetition.

Why re-record Ravel and Debussy?

There are two reasons: the first is that the [previous] recordings are quite old, dating back thirty years, some
of them forty, made for different firms. Since then I’ve learnt quite a lot and I think I’ve changed, not so much
aesthetically, because Debussy and Ravel were composers I already knew well, but more in the way I convey
their music, which is simply more supple, more in control. It’s amusing, because I’m back with the Cleveland
Orchestra, which I’ve had close links with since 1965. I really enjoyed going back over certain scores with the
Orchestra, even if it has changed since those days and has other musicians. I appreciate its spirit.(1).

A record of you conducting Mahler’s Fourth came out recently. Do you plan to do the complete symphonies?
I never thought about it. That wasn’t the idea and there was no commercial intention. The retrospective fell
into place gradually, with different orchestras. Of course, I do conduct these works with the Cleveland,
Chicago and Vienna orchestras, but I also direct others that have nothing to do with that kind of repertoire.
So I had to wait ten or fifteen years to record them with the same orchestra. In fact, I don’t like to conduct
the same pieces too often—you get fed up, it becomes a kind of routine. In that sense, deep down I don’t
feel like a conductor. I like to maintain a certain distance from the scores. Next year, for example, I’m going
to direct Mahler’s Second Symphony, which I can’t have conducted for twenty years. Of course it is useful
to conduct a score several times in a row, but I am always loath to play works too often.

Bruno Walter, who knew Mahler, preferred to choose particular symphonies.

Walter conducted his favorite pieces, especially the First, Fourth and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der
Erde. Dimitri Mitropoulos was much more daring because the symphonies he conducted in New York—the
Fifth, Sixth and Seventh—were the least well-known in those days. People were frightened of their length,
the duration of each movement and the difficulty of following their trajectory. That made him a pioneer,
especially in New York in the 1950s. Musicians from the orchestra told me that more and more of the
audience left after each movement, whereas today everyone follows devoutly. One has to give Leonard
Bernstein credit for making Mahler popular in the United States thanks to the concerts he gave in New York
and his recordings. The interest then spread to Europe, and he came several times to conduct him in Paris.
I remember hearing only two works performed in Paris in the 1950s, the Fourth by Paul Kletzki and Das Lied
von der Erde by Bruno Walter, in a festival of 20th-century music. In those days there were no French
conductors tackling that repertoire. We in France were really backwards in our knowledge of the German
repertoire. It is only very recently, thanks to conductors like Daniel Barenboim and, now, Christoph
Eschenbach, that Bruckner’s have been played by the Orchestre de Paris.

Spatial Configurations

You made your debut at Bayreuth in 1966 with a performance of Parsifal, in a production by Wieland Wagner. This
summer, 38 years on, you are back in Bayreuth with the same Wagner opera, this time in a production by Christoph
Schlingensief…
When the idea of working with Christoph Schlingensief was put to me all I knew was his resume, so I wanted
to meet him before making my mind up. We spent about half a day together in Paris when I got back from
New York. Then, at Christmas, we spent a whole day together in Baden-Baden, where I have a house. I thank
that’s enough to get to know someone reasonably well. I liked him a lot as a person and, naturally, we talked
a great deal about staging operas. I found his theatrical conception of the work totally convincing. I should
add that in his youth he was quite a provocateur. And, more recently, for the Burgtheater in Vienna, he
directed Bambiland by Elfried Jelinek, a novelist and playwright who is pretty provocative herself!(3) She
really gets stuck in, she’s in the same kind of Austrian tradition as Thomas Bernhard. Of course, doing a text
by Jelinek and an opera by Wagner are two very different things, but I am there to help him work with
performers. Personally, I don’t have any particular conception of Parsifal. I watch what he does and I find his
theatrical inventions very convincing. Without wanting to give anything away, it’s based on a collage of news
images, a mix of old photos and contemporary portraits. In fact, it’s quite instructive and significant to watch
this confrontation of images. That’s exactly what I did when working with Patrice Chéreau on The Ring at
Bayreuth. He started out with some rather vague ideas, then got more information. A staging takes shape as
you are working on it. It’s like a tailor: you see the cloth, you choose it and then, when you try it on the
person, you have to bear in mind their build, take their measurements, see how the garment is worn, etc.
It’s true that the text of Parsifal isn’t as raw as some of Schlingensief’s texts. The libretto always reminded
me of Vatican I [laughter]. It has something of late 19th-century religiosity. Of course, there is no interest in
going back to that kind of aesthetic. That reminds me of the conductor Otto Klemperer, who was about eighty
when I first conducted Parsifal at Bayreuth. He came to see me at the end of the performance. We were all
dining together, quite naturally, when he asked me his question: “How can you conduct that absolutely
horrible Christian thing?” I replied that I didn’t worry about that, that it was simply a symbol of an inner
quest—which is essential if you are going to understand Parsifal. Parsifal is an utter stranger to himself, and
only after his ordeals—including the sexual one—does he find himself and his personality. In Parsifal you
have this ambiguous mixture of hieratic slowness and erotically charged excitement. You also find that in the
Tetralogy, in the relationship between Siegfried and Brünnhilde, in which the mother is at once lover and
mistress. It’s in Tannhäuser, too. It was one of Wagner’s obsessions, well before Freud: maternal love taken
for romantic love. There’s no need to make a porn film to prove the point, but the sexuality here is dubious.
The revelation in Parsifal, though, is that kiss that Kundry gives Parsifal in the name of the mother he has
lost, and that reveals sexuality to him. Parsifal shows the clash of civilizations, given that for an age like this
one the character of Klingsor—this all takes place in medieval Spain—symbolizes Muslim civilization, with
its secrets and its fight against Christianity. The Knights of the Grail are seen as religious sect, like today’s
Scientologists or Temple du Soleil. So the work is infinitely more complex than Vatican I!

As a composer, you have always steered clear of opera, although you have had various projects with Jean Genet
and Heiner Müller that never happened. Is the genre too strongly linked with the past?
What I would really like is a different relation between the stage, the pit and the public. I find this physical
relation which is frozen by the architecture very offputting. Speaking of which, I am sad that the modular
auditorium wasn’t built at Opéra Bastille, as originally planned, because that really was the central point of
a new opera. It’s logical to build a conventional theater for the repertoire, because there is more repertoire
than there are new works, but at the same time you should have a rehearsal studio, like a TV studio in fact,
which can be configured for every possible architecture and adapt to that specific relation between theater
and music. It didn’t happen. No house anywhere in the world has such a system— or maybe you need to
get away from the traditional auditorium and hire a hangar in order to have differing ways of “placing,” if I
can put it like that. It’s not easy, but when Patrice Chéreau put on [Racine’s] Phèdre and [Bernard Marie
Koltès’] Black Battles with Dogs and In the Solitude of Cotton Fields, we had two parallel stages and that
automatically made the spatial arrangements in the theater different. When Peter Stein put on Genet’s The
Blacks at the Schaubühne in Berlin, he organized the space differently. At the opera, the acoustic problem is
no small matter, either. When Joseph Losey directed Boris Godunov at the Opéra de Paris, he wanted to put
the emphasis on tragedy, so the orchestra pit was covered. The singers were at the front, and they could be
heard pretty well, but the thing is that this work has lots of choruses and the orchestra, now placed at the
back, in a kind of bandstand, virtually disappeared whenever the chorus weighed in. The conception was
different, but it didn’t come off because it didn’t work acoustically. I believe strongly that there should be a
place where you can try out different kinds of configuration, as we regularly do at the auditorium in the Cité
de la Musique, Paris.

When you conduct a performance that combines Stravinsky’s Renard with de Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro and
Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, in a staging by Michael Grüber, as you did at Aix in July 2003 and in Vienna in May, is
this not Boulez the composer giving us the key to his ideal lyric theater?
Chamber music offers a much easier solution, that’s obvious. But, to achieve a certain musical distance, you
need to have a certain number of performers. For example, you can’t put on a performance with just a dozen
people. This may seem anecdotal, but you do need a certain ratio between the duration and your numbers,
even when you make optimum use of the resources you have. Richard Strauss is the composer who most
fully achieved this relation in Ariadne auf Naxos. It’s admirably done, with a smaller orchestra—but not the
bare essentials! There are some fifty musicians in the pit, after all. When I put on that triptych at Aix what
interested me was the theatrical approach, yes […] Here you have three possible conceptions of theater. First
of all, for de Falla, with the musicians in the pit and the characters on stage, which is rather conventional.
But the characters play with puppets. The characters are very real, are identified, and sing their roles. But it
is the puppets that express the imagination, and are free of the singing. Secondly, with Stravinsky, the
musicians are still in the pit, but this time they are with the singers, who are part of the orchestra. The singers
are no longer identified with a character. On the stage we have masked mimes. The third piece is a shadow
play because Schönberg likes to evoke a situation, an impression. Each of the solutions put forward here is
very interesting. De Falla and Stravinsky were undoubtedly interested by French stagecraft—indeed, both
works were commissioned by the Princesse Polignac. Even so, de Falla takes his inspiration from Spain and
Stravinsky from Russia. In Schönberg you have a tradition which is mediated through late 19th-century
popular cabaret, as seen in Berlin, with his songs for the Uberbrettl cabaret, plus the Viennese musical
heritage. These are three paths taken around Paris, but with three different cultures. Bringing them together
you get a kind of summary, a powerful image of European culture. Yes, in a way, that prefigures what I would
like to do, but you would have to dedicate yourself to it, and do nothing else. I am thinking about this right
now and I may compose a choral work, because we have a fine choir in France, Accentus with Laurence
Equilbey.

How do you view the nature of musical work? Several of your scores—notably Répons (1981/84)—are works in
progress, after all.
I’d compare it to a spiral. By definition, this is an infinite architecture. You can stop it, but when you add an
element, the form continues. There is no end. It keeps going round. It is at once logical and totally illogical—
why this ending rather than another? I’ll soon be working at IRCAM again, so I am planning to redo certain
parts of Répons—some of them had been put aside—using the new technology. I started Répons twenty
years ago. Today, the technology is a lot more advanced, like in Anthèmes II, in 1997. There is a stopping point
in Répons, like a finishing block. It’s like a lock that closes, which I shift as I see fit.

Music and Movement

Collaboration is an important part of the creative process for you. I am thinking of your associations with Patrice
Chéreau, Peter Stein, Michael Grüber, Bartabas and, now, Christoph Schlingensief…
I started with Jean-Louis Barrault’s [theater] company in 1946. It was bit of coincidence—he needed someone
for the stage music, and Arthur Honegger had recommended me. I stayed ten years and could observe the
relation between public, director, actors and others. And they just happened to be the best: Pierre Brasseur,
Pierre Renoir, Edwige Feuillère—all of them. It was interesting to see these people at work and I think that,
unconsciously, it influenced me. I took it all in over the years and, a few years later, when I started
conducting, I thought: “Hey, this bit should be done like this.” It helped me psychologically, to find the right
attitude, etc. The theater taught me a lot and now when I see a play I appreciate not only the value of the text
but also the director’s work. In the opera I like it that I’m asked to direct and then asked to choose a
collaborator. I don’t try to dominate, I just feel I have a responsibility to the work. When the staging of an
opera is weak, you can immediately sense that the music is isolated, that it’s not supported by a theatrical
solution.

In the early 1950s, were you influenced by American painters like Pollock and de Kooning?
In fact, first of all I was lucky enough to meet John Cage, who spent the summer of ’49 in Paris. When I was
on tour with Jean-Louis Barrault, Cage introduced me to the New York scene, where there was also Philip
Guston and the architect Frederick J. Kiesler. Cage also introduced me to the writings of E. E. Cummings,
which all gave me a great window onto American civilization, because in Paris the people we knew were
mainly Faulkner, Hemingway, Dos Passos, etc. American painting came much later, because of course we
had that huge “bloc”: Picasso, Matisse, Braque. We couldn’t get access to that great breath of fresh air from
American civilization. My eyes were opened to something I had no inkling of. That’s bound to be beneficial,
because you’re entering unknown territories. Recently I was in Los Angeles where, unlike Paris, they have a
new auditorium, for which Frank Gehry has been asked to do the architecture. We’ve known each other for
about twenty years now, and I like him a lot. I loved the museum in Bilbao. Anyway, last June, when the
auditorium was almost finished, he showed me round and then I went back in November to conduct three
concerts with the Los Angeles [Philharmonic] Orchestra. From the outside, the theater is an absolute
masterpiece. In terms of ideas, I like to discuss technical questions with him. In fact, this summer we are
going to take part in two dialogues on architecture and music, not only about the realistic issues about
building a theater, but also about the parallel development of ideas in architecture and music. There is a very
close relation between the two, as I have realized from talking to Renzo Piano, one of the two architects of
the Pompidou Center, and Christian de Portzamparc, who did the Cité de la Musique.
Poetry and Power

As a composer and conductor, where do you stand in relation to the 20th century’s fragmentation of styles?
At the turn of the century there was already gulfs between Debussy, Stravinsky, Strauss, Satie and Widor…
Our period is not as clear-cut as things were in 1945. That said, who do we remember in France from the
1940s, apart from Messiaen and Jolivet? Cultures are fairly segmented, after all. What both helped and
hindered my generation was that we had to fight against an “establishment” that rejected us. When I started
my musical series, in 1953, it was impossible to get a radio broadcast. It just wasn’t on. Nowadays you have
several bodies that do contemporary music and composers are welcomed with open arms—whereas my
generation was welcomed with closed arms! [Laughter] We defined ourselves in relation to a force that
refused us. If there’s nothing against you, then you’re not so strong. Thanks to IRCAM, after 1976 young
composers such as Philippe Manoury and Marc-André Dalbavie were able to emerge. They were aged
around twenty and today we are seeing younger people appear while still following these “elders” who are
very much representative of their generation. Composers like Tristan Murail, from an intermediary
generation, have also been hosted by IRCAM. He was able to work on acoustics there. Contrary to our
reputation, because of numerous “Robespierres,” a lot of people have come to IRCAM. In fact, I refused to
allow amateurs. It’s a kind of reflex I have. Sadly, in the field of technology, and of electronics in particular,
you come across lots of people with zero musical culture, zero accomplishment. But if they do have that
cultural hinterland, then they’re free to invent what they want. I support them!

For about twenty years now you’ve been fighting to get the public authorities to give you a concert hall worthy of
the name, suited to a symphony orchestra. Where do things stand?
It’s discouraging. I’ve fought hard and nothing has changed. I’ve been saying the same things for twenty
years. The first project for a big hall dates back to 1982. With Jack Lang. That hasn’t moved an inch. There is
no desire to solve the problem. Not in the municipality, regionally or at state level. A total void. It doesn’t
win you any votes in elections. The musicians’ vote counts for nothing. The only time they have looked at
the situation is because of the “intermittents du spectacle.”(4) They made such a furor that the State just had
to talk to them. This is a problem that has to be solved. For the first time, a category of artists and technicians
said “Enough!” The problem hasn’t been solved and it could well break out again this summer. Imagine if
musicians went on strike. Nobody would care! But if the garbage men stopped collecting the trash, everyone
would be up in arms. The only artistic concern of people in power is with museums, because they’re visible,
if only because consumption of museums is greater than of music. Or there’s the construction of the Zéniths
[rock and popular music venues]—and I’ve nothing against them—because they touch a bigger slice of the
population. Remember that this promise to build a big hall at La Villette was in the presidential manifestoes
of both Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac. And the result? Nothing. The only thing that’s happened is that
Laurent Bayle [former director of IRCAM, now head of the Cité de la Musique in Paris] has been asked to
think about a new way of managing the Salle Pleyel, so that it can house all the orchestras, including the
Orchestre de Paris.

The entrance to the Paris National Conservatory of Music has been closed for ten years now for work. Construction
faults in the Opéra Bastille mean that there are those ugly nets, put up a few years ago to hold back the glass in
case it falls. What kind of image is this, and for what kind of culture?
It’s a joke. Politicians couldn’t care less. If the Louvre was in the same state, they’d all be waving their arms.
How often do you see politicians at concerts? At exhibitions of painting, yes, it’s very prestigious. The only
concert [the current prime minister] Jean-Pierre Raffarin has been to is the sixtieth birthday concert of
Johnny Hallyday. That says it all. If there had been something else in the meantime, one could understand.
But that’s the only concert he’s been to in a year and a half. That’s the man for you, desperately mediocre.
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg!

For you, there are no strong personalities at the Culture Ministry?

No, the last two were Michel Guy and Jack Lang.

Translation, C. Penwarden

(1) Ravel, Shéhérazade - Le Tombeau de Couperin - Pavane pour une Infante défunte - Menuet Antique; Debussy, Danses - Le Jet
d’eau - Trois Ballades de François Villon. Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano), Alison Hagley (soprano), The Cleveland Orchestra,
con. Pierre Boulez. 1 CD DG-Universal, April 2004.
(2) Mahler, Symphony no. 4. Julia Banse (soprano), The Cleveland Orchestra, con. Pierre Boulez. 1 SACD DG-Universal, March
2004.
(3) Bambiland by Elfried Jelinek, directed by Christoph Schlingensief, was put on at the Burgtheater in Vienna (Austria) from
December 12 to 17 last year.
(4) Proposed reforms to their employment entitlements sparked a nationwide campaign by freelance performers and technicians,
leading to the cancellation of many arts festivals.—Trans.

Franck Mallet is a journalist and music critic for Le Monde de la musique, Les Inrockuptibles and art press.

Pierre Boulez is playing in Paris on June 2, IRCAM- Pompidou Center (program: Berio, Chemin IV - O King - Kol Od (Chemin VI) -
Points on the Curve to Find - Calmo. Ensemble Court-Circuit). He will be conducting Parsifal at Bayreuth on July 3 and August 3,
6, 18 and 26. (See French notes for cast details.)
In September Boulez is giving conducting classes (9 through 11) and concerts (11, 14 and 16:9- at the Lucerne Académie-Festival
de Lucerne (Switzerland). (Works by Hanspeter Kyburz, Anton Webern, Franco Donatoni, György Ligeti, Elliott Carter, George
Benjamin, Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez and Arnold Schönberg).
Recordings of Boulez compositions (all conducted by P.B):
Sur Incises - Messagesquisse - Anthème 2. Jean-Guihen Queyras, Hae-Sun Kang, Andrew Gerzso, Intercontemporain, Violoncelles
de Paris. DGG-Universal, 2000. Répons - Dialogue de l’ombre double. Alain Damiens, Intercontemporain, DGG-Universal, 1998.
Notations - Structures for Two Pianos, Book II - …explosante-fixe… Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Florent Boffard, Sophie Cherrier,
Emmanuelle Ophèle, Pierre-André Valade, Andrew Gerzso, Intercontemporain, DGG-Universal, 1995. Le Visage Nuptial - Le Soleil
des eaux - Figure, Doubles, Prismes. Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Elizabeth Laurence, BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Erato-
Warner, 1990. Rituel in Memorian Bruno Maderna - Éclat - Multiples. Intercontemporain, Sony Classical, 1982 (Reissue 1990).
Books by Boulez in English:
Orientations: Collected Writings (Harvard, 1990). Conversations with Boulez: Thoughts on Conducting (Hal Leonard, 1996).
Dialogues with Boulez by Rocco di Pietro (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). The Boulez-Cage Correspondence (Cambridge, 1993).
Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship (Oxford 1991).