Pierre Boulez: The Soul of a New Machine

• Share

Pierre Boulez used to be the stormy petrel of contemporary music. As a youthful radical, he booed Stravinsky for what he viewed as a failure of nerve; he has called for the demolition of the world's opera houses and denounced institutions like Lincoln Center as cultural supermarkets. Later, as conductor of both the New York Philharmonic and London's BBC Symphony Orchestra, he discomfited audiences by aggressively championing difficult new music. Ten years ago he stood the staid Wagner shrine of Bayreuth on its ear with a daring production of The Ring of the Nibelung.

In 1976 he took over officially as head of an experimental music laboratory at the Pompidou Center in Paris known acronymically as IRCAM. He has kept a low profile since, shunning most conducting invitations in order to compose in his electronic studio. Has the former enfant terrible, now 60, mellowed? Or does his modernist flame burn as brightly as ever?

American listeners have a chance to judge for themselves. Last week in Los Angeles, Boulez and his crack new-music group, the Ensemble InterContemporain, began a five-city U.S. tour, bringing with them a visionary 45-minute marriage of live performers and computers called Repons (response). It is the first major work by Boulez since 1974, and Repons has propelled him back where he belongs: at the center of music's creative storm.

Once a dedicated foe of the French cultural establishment, Boulez has become his country's unofficial musical czar. Such is his clout that the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique commands a disproportionate share of the money that the French government spends on music. Boulez has influenced the design of the flexibly configured concert hall at the Cite de la Musique, La Villette, which will become the new site of the Paris Conservatory of Music in 1989. He is also vice president of the board of the new Opera Bastille, which will become the home of the Paris Opera the same year. There will be two theaters in the complex, a 2,700-seat facility for grand opera and a variable 600-to-1,300-seat theater for early operas and experimental works. Boulez's presence is likely to ensure a place for contemporary music on the Opera's roster, but he is quick to deny any further ambitions. "I am simply helping this new institution to be born," he says.

In other words, Boulez is a pragmatist. At the Philharmonic, he gradually broadened his repertoire to include a variety of musical styles; in opera the would-be dynamiter turned out to be an effective Wagnerian. At his brainchild, IRCAM, Boulez's fellow composers have great stylistic latitude. "I cannot make my personal taste the main criterion," he says. "I am more tolerant than my reputation."