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WP_113/ 2007
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Paintings 2 | | Medium: | acrylic on paper | | Size (inches): | 25.6 x 17.9 | | Size (mm): | 650 x 455 | | Catalog #: | WP_0113 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
In 1971, composer and conductor Pierre Boulez wrote -
"all art of the past must be destroyed."
-www.ronsen.org/boulez/
"[A]ny musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch." - Pierre Boulez (1952).
Pierre Boulez (b. March 26, 1925) is a French composer of contemporary classical music and conductor.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Boulez
Pierre Boulez in conversation with Joshua Cody -
Few would have imagined upon hearing the premiere of Pierre Boulez's 1956 work Le Marteau sans maître, a stunningly violent setting of poetry by René Char, that this most iconoclastic of European avant-garde composers would one day be conducting the great orchestras of the world. It is this tension between two personae—on the one hand, the most revolutionary aesthetician since Schoenberg; on the other, a reconciler, the bourgeois apologist for the extremes of the avant-garde—that have made him the most important figure in postwar classical music; more, even, than his exquisite, reticent music, and more than his gifts as a conductor, which ultimately demonstrate as individual and extreme approach to the art of music as Gould or Furtwangler. Joshua Cody, artistic director of the Ensemble Sospeso, spoke with Mr. Boulez in Chicago in 1993.
>>>If you don't mind, I'd like to start by talking a bit about literature, rather than about music for the moment. Michel Foucault once attributed what he called his “first great cultural jolt” to French serialism, and especially to you and Barraqué. Did you and Foucault influence each other?
I met Foucault very early, as a matter of fact, in 1951; but for a while I did not see him, because I was out of France. And he was out of France, also. Then, when we met again, that was very late in life—I mean, not terribly late, but it was not until I came back to France, especially in 1976, that I saw him quite frequently. But I knew his books, certainly. I think we are of the same generation. Therefore the way of thinking was very close, even without speaking about it. This kind of proximity of thinking, of looking at things, does not necessarily imply that thinkers are speaking together every day. When you compare us… For instance, look at the trajectory of Webern and the trajectory of Mondrian: here are two people who never saw each other, who never spoke to each other, who were completely ignorant of the other's work. But you can see a very, very strong parallelism between the two trajectories. And I think that with Foucault the case is similar. At a certain time we met, and then for a certain period we did not meet at all; we were informed about each other, but that was all. Afterwards, when real meetings took place much more often, there was finally the opportunity of talking to each other.
>>>Some composers look upon the compositional activity of the 1950s with envy; it appears as lively but as distant as the Renaissance. It's a perception that I think is somewhat false; nevertheless, they feel that, in comparing that time with this time, the environment of today is depressing. They could cite a lack of faith in further aesthetic progress; the impossibility of individual creative volition; a feeling of entrapment, in which there are no truly original musical gestures left, only transparent references to past historical periods. They also have the conviction that the present historical position is absolutely unique and without precedent. So these composers sometimes find recourse in a sort of “neo-romanticism,” or a kind of historical collage sometimes called “post-modern.” Are these feelings, and these solutions, justified to any extent?
Well, each generation has to solve its problems. I cannot solve the problems of a generation which is forty years younger than me, certainly not. I say always, every period is difficult. There is no easy period. You know, when you think of the fifties, you might think it was very easy, whereas it was not easy at all. There was always the question of whether this new discipline was not completely absurd; there were many questions. Certainly, when I look, for instance, only at Paris, I see that practically all the composers of my generation have disappeared. They made the wrong choices, or they were not courageous enough, or they were not lucid enough; there are many reasons. Or, perhaps they were politically involved, and that political involvement brought them to solutions which were very trivial; this type of thing. So, no, it was not easy! No period is really easy.
As for historical monuments as things from which one steals a bit and places them in another context: that's not a solution at all. You must find your own solution: I think that's the main problem. If you are only quoting in your compositions, you are quoting! And you are quoting out of context, so there is no justification and no logic. It's just like an antique shop, where you find a candle from the eighteenth century, you find anything from the nineteenth century; you can go all over the centuries, but you are left without a style. I think certain aspects of architecture have been going through the same problems exactly: “Well, it's not possible to simply follow Mies van der Rohe, to simply follow le Corbusier”—and so they discover the Greek column, which is not exactly a very great discovery, in my opinion. In this way, architecture has exactly the same problems as music; but these are simply problems to be solved. But collage: I am not tempted by that, at all. Therefore, I cannot understand, really… I don't simply want to be “original,” I want to take out of myself what is myself, and not only what I am looking at.
>>>Your enthusiasm for literature and the visual arts is one of the aspects of your personality that makes you a very appealing model for other composers. I don't know how closely you follow extremely current events in the other arts; but if you do, I was wondering if you could generalize whether or not this period seems to have relative cohesion, or is characterized rather by a particular disunity. Perhaps it's always impossible to judge.
Yes, that's very difficult to judge immediately, because we tend to relate value and style—especially when looking at the past. When you are in the present, that is not always the case, because some works that don't have an immense value nevertheless may have a kind of stylistic impulse which is necessary for this period. There are some works which are much better made, let's say, much better fabricated; and they are not interesting because they don't bring anything. So we are always too close to the fact, although you can have your personal judgement, of course; and I have my own judgements on things.
There are many ways of approaching the problems of music nowadays. But I think there are two things which I don't like. First, the explicit reference to the past; because I think that's useless. Second, oversimplistic solutions, which I find really useless. Sometimes when I read some manifestos—not manifestos, but declarations—of composers who want very simple styles, and so on, I think of what we have gone through historically in 1947, 1948, when you had the Stalinists saying that people should be happy… This kind of simplistic view is completely contradictory to the human being! The human being is not simple. The human being is really complex. When you have composers behind you like Wagner or Mahler, just to take two examples, who did find solutions which are challenging to you, you cannot say that they did not exist or were too complex, so let's do something simple. Sometimes these kinds of solutions remind me of fast-food restaurants: convenient but completely uninteresting.
>>>How important a role does popular commercial music play, in America—not only in America, I suppose, but in Europe as well?
Yes, in Europe as well… The good side to popular music is that there is a vitality that is going into it; also, that popular musicians have no repertoire, so they are free from that, practically, even if they revive songs of the Beatles, things like that; that is not repertoire. Also, what I find the most interesting—sometimes—is the sound aspect. The sound aspect is completely new; they don't use classical instruments, so they have to use electronic instruments, or electronically-manipulated instruments. So that is the interesting side. The side which I don't like at all concerns the stereotypes and clichés: this language is absurdly full of clichés, it's very simplistic, and after you have three minutes of it you have 33,000 minutes of it. But I like the vitality. I wish sometimes that the classical department would have as much vitality as one finds in the popular field.
>>>Does there remain a large difference between the place that contemporary music holds in Europe and the place it holds in America?
No. It's approximately the same. People are not really very different in the same type of culture and civilization. There is a small difference here and there, but globally it is approximately on the same level. Only, if I may say so, in the university… The danger here, in the States, is that the universities are sometimes like fortresses, and that there is not enough contact sometimes with the outside world. In England, it's very much the same situation. In France, we have no campuses, we have no universities which are closed upon themselves; the universities are in the cities. Thus the intellectual or artistic life is a unification of the university life and the life of the city. If I see any difference between the States and Europe, that's the difference: really, it's between France and Italy on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxon countries on the other. German countries also have universities which are very strong.
>>>Stravinsky warned against the university education. Would you?
No, not against the education, not at all; although I'm not really expert enough to have a judgement here. Only that if you could go outside more, if there were more ties with the city itself, I think it would be for the better. I spent only a semester teaching at Harvard, and I looked at the relationship between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Harvard—this was thirty years ago—and there was absolutely no connection. I find this detrimental for both sides, because you have a very high intellectual level on one side, a very high professional on the other side, and they would benefit from closer contact.
>>>Has your view on electronic music changed since you began IRCAM? Has the course of electronic music been surprising?
Well, What was surprising, what was quite unforeseen when I began IRCAM… I began the plans for IRCAM in 1969 or 1970, quite a long time ago. I had contacts in New York, and I must say that I had contacts with Max Matthews, who was at Bell Laboratories at this time, in New York. Although he never ordered me to do anything, through our conversations he made me aware that having a room for computers was very important. That's all that I knew, both intuitively and through speaking with him. But I was careful, because at the beginning one can't be sure; I was careful not to give everything to the computer. But progressively, and much more quickly than we had ever thought, the computer invaded everything, from the analysis to the synthesis of sound to the manipulation of instruments—everything. It's a tool which is very general and which can be used in very different ways. The evolution of IRCAM is thus closely tied to the evolution of computer technology.
The second thing, which was not surprising to me at all, because I had always pushed in this direction… I had had bad experiences myself in the 1950s with electronic technology. If you did something electronic [as a composer], you had something on tape. Then [as a performer] you had to follow the tape; you were absolutely squeezed into coincidence with the tape. It was completely detrimental to the performance. Therefore I pushed the research in IRCAM towards live electronics and live computer systems, so that the computer would be geared towards the concert situation, so that the computer would have an instant response to the performer.
That was my first push in this direction. The second was the attempt to make the language [of computer programming for composition] more intuitive for the composer. I remember that when I learned, or when I tried to learn, computer music, there were only figures, figures, figures, which don't speak at all to a musician. If you see a figure in Hertz, or in the number of decibels, or if you have to wait half an hour before you have a sound, you are discouraged completely. So for me, what was important was that you could at least make a sketch very rapidly. I wanted the ability to sketch with the sound first, to have sound instantly, even if you refine it later. Also I wanted the ability to use graphics as an instant notation, even if approximate. The musician's imagination is stimulated only by a language which speaks clearly to the intuition of a composer. So those were the two things that I felt—and still feel—responsible for.
>>>Two recent large pieces, Répons and …explosante-fixe…, make use of electronics. How are they related?
Originally, I did Répons with the technology of the early eighties, and I abandoned the piece because I wanted a newer technology, especially one that uses the new MIDI pianos which give so much more data than was possible in 1981 and 1984. Therefore, I left that; I will write, later, another part of Répons which will use some of this newer technology.
The central role of the flute in …explosante-fixe… is something that comes from a long time ago. When I was trying to do …explosante-fixe… first in 1972, the technology was so primitive, you can't imagine. You had still the connections with wires, and so on. It was clumsy and unreliable. I cannot explain the frustration we had. In the period that followed the first version of the piece, I thought always of that. Also, I was working with a flutist, who died in between the two versions of the piece, unfortunately, at a very young age. He was also very interested in connecting instruments to computers. He invented this kind of contact with the flute, in which the flute is registered with the computer immediately. The note you play is registered not only with the keys but acoustically, so you have the two aspects electronically controlled. Progressively, I pushed in the direction of a “score-follower:” this is the computer's capability to follow the score just as the flute plays it. With that, you can then trigger whatever you want: you can not only modify the sound of the flute—which was still interesting to me—but you can also link the flute and the instrumental score to a third part, an “artificial” score. Currently, I'm working further in this direction. I want the computer to read the data of the flutist's performance to simultaneously modify the artificial score; for instance, if the flutist decides to play very slowly, then the artificial score will be very slow. The idea is to achieve an interaction between the player and the machine.
>>>…explosante-fixe… has a complicated family tree, doesn't it? I'm trying to remember all the pieces that came from it: Originel, Rituel, Memoriale…
Rituel is different. It is based on just one chord, that's all, which I took from the others; so it's just the harmony. But yes, I did …explosante-fixe… first for seven instruments; and then I saw that that was too complicated, and the machinery was so terribly inefficient. But each part was written, so I have now a reservoir of possibilities which I will exploit progressively. I began with the flute. There was a violin part, as well, and I have begun to transcribe that part for a work for violin solo [this work became Anthèmes and was premiered in New York by the Ensemble Sospeso in 1998].
>>>A lot of your pieces are interrelated in this way.
Yes.
>>>Your compositional activity seems very coherent, very consistent.
Absolutely: it's a tree which gives another tree which is another tree. Therefore, the title Dérive. Dérive 1, for instance, is from Répons. Part of the material for Répons I did not use, actually, and that became the material for Dérive 1. And Dérive 2 is from studies I did for the part of Répons which is still not written. Dérive 3 is derived from another piece, Le Visage nuptial. You can never use all the material. But I like these kinds of relationships. As long as the material is not used fully, then I like to have some derivations.
>>>Do you wish that you could devote more time to composition?
Yes, I wish that. I've wished that for a long time, already. The concerts I give generally consist of contemporary music. Not always, but mainly. But if you do contemporary music, you have to do the repertoire; an orchestra cannot survive without the repertoire. Therefore, you have to make… not a compromise in the bad sense, but a good compromise. It has to do with the audience: when the audience is confident that you can conduct all the pieces, they will follow you more; because they are confident that what you do is not simply absurd.
>>>In the next few years, are you going to devote more time to composition?
Yes, to composition.
>>>Will you write an opera?
Yes—I am supposed to do so! The first thing I said to Daniel Barenboim [Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra] was that I don't want any deadline. I have conducted opera, not quite a lot, but sufficiently enough to be aware of the difficulties. And I want to do for the opera what I did with Répons: to not have only a conventional setting. Of course, conventions are existing not just because they are conventional, but because they are efficient, for instance acoustically. Once I saw in Paris a production of Boris Goudonov. Joseph Losey, the movie director, was doing it. He wanted direct contact between the singers and the audience members. They covered the [orchestra] pits completely and placed the orchestra behind the singers, like a band shell. The contact was terribly difficult, of course, because the conductor could not see the performers; so there were only monitors, everywhere, in front of the singers, in front of the conductor. The balance was completely off! When the chorus was at the front of the stage, you could barely hear a note of the orchestra. You heard the singers out of proportion. When a singer was in front, you heard the singer with a kind of background orchestra. So you cannot simply decide, “I will put the orchestra there, I will put the singer there.” You have to take into consideration the acoustical problems. I want to think about that, and to decide with the playwright how to use that. Music is much less flexible than theatre.
>>>You enjoy the theater. Do you go to the cinema?
Rarely. I look at movies when I am lazy; when I am tired, I look at movies on television. They appear on television one year late; and most of the movies can wait a year, I suppose.
>>>But traditionally France has held the cinema in high regard, more seriously than in the United States, maybe.
Yes, in a way: there is a conception that is tied much more directly to the author, to an individual. But not always for the better, either. It reminds me sometimes of theatre at the beginning of this century, at the end of the nineteenth century, with these kinds of psychological and family situations which are not terribly exciting. In film, in France, you have nobody the size of Beckett, for instance.
>>>Ever?
Now, I mean. You had [Robert] Bresson, for instance, who made very good films; but the best film I saw recently, not now but a few years ago, was a Russian one, by [Sergei] Paradzhanov. It was called Sayat Nova [The Colour of Pomegranates, 1969]. It lasted for only eight days in the theatre; but it was extraordinary.
>>>Tonight you'll perform Ligeti's Piano Concerto. One of the differences between your music and Ligeti's is the presence of the past.
Yes: you must think of his origins. He was born in Hungary and cut off from the world for a long time. Before 1956, he had heard almost nothing new, because everything was banned in Hungary. So he discovered things when he was already 33 or 34. At 33, you are already an adult, really; so he kept this kind of traditional education for a long time. He was also very much influenced by Bartók, as a matter of fact. There is still quite a bit of Bartók there, much more than the influence of the Viennese school. When he approached my group in 1956, I was already 31. So there is always this difference between my music, let's say, or Stockhausen's, and his music. He is attached to another education, to another tradition; and then he chose… Of course, now his vocabulary is much richer than the one with which he began. But I think that he has kept this kind of tie with folklore tradition, and many times I find in a Ligeti work the rhythm to a Romanian or a Bulgarian dance that one finds also in Bartók. But if I may say so, Ligeti's music is nancarrowized, because he was also strongly influenced by Nancarrow. But in general, this notion of tradition is the big difference between my music and his.
>>>But in your music, the past is there, and it resonates; just in a different way, in a less specific way.
I think I… absorb the past, much more. Maybe that's to exaggerate. I don't like to write something that could have been written by somebody else. That's really maybe the death of me! If I write something, I want that to be exclusively mine. There is influence, yes, but the influence has been so absorbed that you cannot specify it, really. I can see it, because I know the source; and if I tell someone, then they can see a relationship, vaguely. But if I don't say a word, nobody will see it. That's the main thing.
>>>You have remarked that you have strong affinities—spiritual affinities, I saw written once—with several visual artists and writers. Are there any specific figures in art that you feel work particularly closely to the way you work?
Yes; but I don't want to be any of these figures! I want to be myself, that's all. I have had contact, really, with some of the best writers in France, especially; but I don't want to be them. I want to be me. But I recognize their influence, especially when I was younger; they had a very strong influence on me. Either René Char, or Michaux, or even people I did not know at all, like Proust, for instance. Or Beckett, whom I never met. But Genet I met quite often.
>>>When we started talking, you mentioned problems with orchestras and funding. It appears over the last few years to have been getting worse and worse; and a lot of people are afraid that it could seriously damage the orchestra system and, on top of that, the encouragement of young people to become involved in music and composition. Is this a serious problem?
I think that there are problems with funding, that's absolutely true. But I think that's the bill of listening to music; and the desire to compose music, and the desire to live in a world where art does exist, is really very strong. I will tell you one thing: because I was born in 1925, part of my youth was spent between 1940 and 1944, when times were very bleak, let's say. You had only one thing to look at, that was culture, the theatre, music. And I have never seen concert halls more full than in this period. This vision makes me optimistic, under all circumstances—and we are far from these circumstances. But certainly, barbarian conditions can kill. If you look at Sarajevo right now… I don't know if you heard about the experiences of Susan Sontag. She was in Sarajevo in September, I think it was, and she directed En Attendant Godot, by Beckett, to give some hope to these people; and I thought it was really an extraordinary gesture.
You know, I remember having seen—it was very striking—a piano recital given in a hall in Paris, maybe ten or eight days before the liberation of Paris. So the atmosphere was really tense, and you never knew what could happen; we could have been bombed… Because there was almost no transportation, everyone had to bicycle or walk: there was really a lot of inconvenience… but the hall was full.
Sospeso Ltd. © 2002 Joshua Cody.
-www.sospeso.com/contents/articles/boulez_p1.html
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