Pierre Boulez

Álvaro Sílvio Teixeira - I've taken some little notes... Talking to you is talking to the history and its protagonist...

(laughs)

It is a great pleasure to be here with you. You are a great conductor. You are a very important figure for the second half of the twentieth century, which is now coming into focus.

Three weeks ago, you performed a work by Bartok with this orchestra (Wiener Philharmoniker). Today, Bartok again... and once again, many rhythmic problems...

Pierre Boulez - Yes, there are problems because Bartok is very difficult. But you should know that it's not exactly the same group that played in Salzburg. About thirty percent of the musicians, perhaps forty percent, who were not in the Salzburg formation are in this formation. So we have to start from the beginning, simply.

AT - Yes, but this orchestra is for many people the best in the world! And I've seen that they have problems of rhythm...

PB - But there are always problems with any of the best orchestras in the world. And even with the best soloists in the world there can be problems when the music is difficult and when you haven't played that often.

So, these rhythmic problems are problems that you simply encounter everywhere. We have to solve them collectively. That's what's difficult.

AT - One could say that it is perhaps due to the complexity of your music you have a more refined rhythmic perception than the majority of musicians...

PB - No, I think... Yes. I am very sensitive to rhythm. I'm sensitive to other things too, but to rhythm in particular. I find that, as long as you haven't resolved this rhythmic thing, the music is not clear. Especially in two composers, it is extremely important: Bartok and Stravinsky.

AT - I knew you would talk about Stravinsky...

PB - Of course. They introduced a rhythmic vocabulary and a way of speaking, as far as rhythmic is concerned, different from the tradition, quite simply. Especially from the Austro-german tradition where you don't find this kind of rhythmic vocabulary. You find it sometimes in Mussorgsky or even in Rimsky-Korsakov, who uses this kind of five-beat measure, irregular measure, even seven-beat measure, and so on. But never in the way that Stravinsky did in his time and Bartok did in his time. So these are problems that are always there, probably because education doesn't put enough emphasis on it. I think that if education put more emphasis on the sense of rhythm, not only the accuracy but the sense of rhythm, we would get there more, faster.

AT- First of all, when you did the Bruckner rehearsal, it was all of a sudden...

PB - That's in their blood. It's more me taking the meaning from them than giving it to them. It's a music that has a fairly regular flow where there are no rhythmic symmetries, but what's important is the suppleness, the "rubatto" and the suppleness of the diction.

AT - The crescendos...

PB - That's it, all the flexibility of the diction, the things that are repeated but are repeated while transforming themselves, that's very characteristic of Bruckner and is not "rubatto" as in Debussy, for example, where the "rubatto" is much more subtle, much more difficult to reach because nothing is indicated in such a precise way. So you have to feel it much more than execute it according to instructions.

AT - I agree but, for example, the crescendos of this orchestra are extraordinary, but they are also due to you!

PB - Of course. It's obvious that if you don't indicate anything, they will still do it, but perhaps with less intensity. We have to understand each other. I understand their intentions and they understand me too.

AT - I saw that they understand you well. The first time you made impressive crescendos...

PB - It comes naturally. I told you: it's in their blood. It's in their blood. It's in their upbringing, right from the start. It's a music they feel perfectly.

AT - Is it a pleasure for you to work with this orchestra?

PB - Yes, it's a great pleasure because they work very well. I told you, when we give indications... You have noticed on the rhythm, but, when we give indications, things are done afterwards. They forget three weeks later, it's obvious, but when you put things in order, they stay in order and are well fixed for the concert.

AT - I remember that you recorded Debussy's "La Mer" with an American orchestra...

PB - Cleveland.

AT - And this record continues to be a reference...

PB - Yes.

AT - Other great conductors have done this, but yours continues, for me, to be the great reference. This is mainly due to the dynamic and rhythmic aspect...

PB - The "rubatto"... The freedom with the text, which is not a gratuitous freedom, but a freedom conceived according to the text. With an orchestra like the Cleveland Orchestra, with whom I also get on very well and I already got on very well at that time, we were really together for the interpretation of this piece.

AT - On the other hand, and this is recent, you did a brilliant interpretation of Mahler's Second, with this orchestra (WienerPhilharmoniker).

PB - Yes, yes. but when we get along well and when we work together completely, when we want the same goal, the same result, it simply ends up happening. We don't need to explain, they understand what I do and they understand my gestures without having to explain much. You have seen: in a moment I give two or three explanations, how I want to hear things, then there are technical questions to be settled, but first the musical sense must be settled. If they don't understand why you demand that, why you ask that, people ask "what's in his head?" So if you explain what you want, the relaxed side, the joyful side of the music that is not tense, they know that you have to play at that moment more relaxed, more "legatto", more sustained, etc, etc.

AT - In fact you spoke too little and it came out an absolutely extraordinary Bruckner.

In retrospect, Pierre Boulez, the great conductor, what does he think of Pierre Boulez, in the past, as a composer?

PB - the conducting career ate up my time. Also when I administered institutions, when I was musical director of the BBC and New York, and afterwards when I started to create the Ensemble Intercontemporain. These are tasks that require a lot of time, at least in the beginning. And IRCAM also took up a lot of my time. But I'm happy to have done these things because they are unique institutions in the world itself, so they work very well and they help contemporary music to live and to convince people of the need for it, and of the quality of new productions.

AT - And what do you think of contemporary music today?

PB - It is very lively and very varied. I am never pessimistic. I always think that there are people who are very gifted, who will point out the musical paths of tomorrow.

AT - But, for example, your disciplines, the people who have followed your aesthetic lineage. Do you think they will have a place after you?

PB - But only me...

AT - You have to understand history... we know history... and after you, who are, of course, in history, also as a composer, do you think that all these people who continue to write a bit like you, do you think that they will have a place?

PB - Those who imitate me are certainly not very interesting. Those who literally imitate me...

AT - They do small variations... of course...

PB - The ones who have a personality and develop the music in a different direction than I did... You can't make many predictions, you can't judge people of twenty-five and as if they were eighty...

AT - I'm not talking about those...

PB - You have to give them time to develop, quite simply.

AT - I'm not talking about those because people of twenty-five, probably, I don't know, but...

PB - They compose differently! The circumstances are different. Sixty years away they will surely not do the same thing.

AT - This period in the history of music, serialism and post-serialism, is an important period for music?

PB - It was a period that you had to go through before you could find something else. it was a disciplinary period. You have to get out of discipline, you can't constantly be hidden for discipline. So you have to find freedom of expression, but with a vocabulary that is not only logical, but above all coherent. It is this coherence that is difficult to find. So we find it by technical means at the start, and then we free ourselves from these technical means in a rather rigid way to find generous and much freer means of expression.

AT - You have just touched on an essential point, not only in music, but in all art. It is coherence...

PB - Yes, yes. This applies to all the arts and means of expression. Literature as well...

AT - You spoke of discipline... Why is it that the great conductors don't like working with French orchestras ? They always have problems...

PB - Yes, but it depends. I have worked with French orchestras, like the Orchestre de Paris, for example...

AT - Yes, yes. But you, you are an "institution"...

PB - Yes. Of course. At the beginning, when you are very young, they look at what you do and they don't automatically trust you. Whereas if you have a certain reputation, they look at what you do but they feel that there is already a whole knowledge and so the reports are different, of course.

AT - I have heard that in one case, the Minister of Culture had to apologise, in writing, to two very famous musicians: André Prévin and his wife, the violinist Anne Sophie-Mutter. They dropped the engagement and left without doing the concerts. Musicians in French orchestras are always making problems for everyone. Discipline is something that does not exist...

PB - If you establish discipline, discipline exists. If discipline doesn't exist there must be something in the institution and you have to know why. I know them when I conduct, and I don't have problems... I had problems in the past, but I would like to say that they were solved very quickly. At this point you have to say what you think and just work.

AT - What happened when you went to America and when the President of the Republic went to get you?

PB - No, no...

AT - That's what they say...

PB - Oh yes... No... Simply... yes, the President, it was Pampidou at the time, told me "we would like you to come back to France. You did all that abroad, why not here?" That's how he included me in the project of the centre that bears his name.

AT - And IRCAM?

PB - With an umbrella, certainly not...

AT - He offered you exceptional conditions...

PB - He simply said "this is what I do. Are you interested?". I said "yes, I'm interested", quite simply. He didn't create it for me. IRCAM did, I gave the indication afterwards. But the cultural centre that is now called Georges Pampidou, it was him who created it, not me. We have to finish it now.

AT - It's been a pleasure...

PB - I have a concert tonight...

(laughs)

The original interview in french, 2007