Music: Who Wants Parsifal in the Morning?

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ONCE he was the enfant terrible of French music who did not scruple to assert the Paris Opera was full of dung. These days, Pierre Boulez is no less sure of his opinions. But he is somewhat more temperate in expressing them, for he has now joined the Establishment to wage the fight from within. His reign as the new music director of the New York Philharmonic begins this week. Over the coming year he will certainly shape the future of that orchestra. He may also, if he has his way, somewhat change the whole direction of American symphonic life.

In the nation's concert halls the sound of trouble—financial, artistic, moral, spiritual—is growing louder every day. The New York Philharmonic is not a conspicuous example. With a safe home in Manhattan's Lincoln Center and an endowment of $10 million, it is hardly in mortal peril. But its officers—President Carlos Moseley, Board Chairman Amyas Ames—have seen the need to face change and the future. Boulez is the result. A relative newcomer to the international conducting ranks, he is also largely untried in the familiar repertory of late 18th century and 19th century staples, so that his ascendancy poses a calculated risk. His predecessor, the universal Leonard Bernstein, coaxed the orchestra and its program well into the 20th century. If such progress is to continue, Boulez is definitely the man to lead the way.

He combines Gallic charm with acerbic wit. As a working musician, he practices remarkable exactness and discipline. As a bachelor of 46, he is free to rise at 5 each morning to compose, and he often holds work meetings in his apartment at 8, thereafter running through as many as three rehearsals during the day. Boulez's mastery of conducting the modern repertory—from Debussy and Stravinsky to Webern and Olivier Messiaen—is untouchable. Next week he will start taking small groups of instrumentalists to Greenwich Village to proselytize among the hip young (TIME, Feb. 22). He also intends to devote two series of programs to the music of Liszt and Berg, both of whom he feels are essential to the understanding of contemporary music. Beyond that, the new director will talk controversially on various subjects, as TIME Music Critic William Bender discovered in an interview last week:

WASHINGTON'S NEW KENNEDY CENTER. The tendency of people who have reached a certain level of culture is to preserve that level. But to spend $70 million to make such an old-fashioned building, this is for me really a great puzzle.

THE MUSICAL MASTERPIECE. I think it would be better if people worried less about masterpieces and more about new directions and what is actually going on. Too often they want to discover in one evening the work that will be recognized as a masterpiece in the 21st century. That never works. The masterpiece will always escape them.

HOW AND WHY HE CONDUCTS. I am trained as a composer, not as a conductor. For me composing is still the nucleus of everything. When I study another composer's score, or when I prepare one of my own for performance, what I read, I want to hear. I conduct because I thought that if I wanted to change something in the musical life, then I would have to be really serious about it. If you conduct a concert only once a year, then you don't change anything.