Булез

[Дмитрий Ларош]

A towering figure whose words remain as forceful as his work
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 5/18/2003

AMBRIDGE -- ''Tradition,'' says Pierre Boulez, eyes twinkling, ''is merely mannerism transmitted.''

Clearly the eminent composer and conductor, now 78, has no more use for tradition than he did as a young firebrand declaring Schoenberg dead, booing the latest work of Stravinsky, calling for the destruction of opera houses, and proclaiming that all art of the past must be destroyed in order to create something new.

Boulez was at Harvard University on May 9 for a day of public seminars and interviews and private meetings with students. It was in an afternoon seminar about French Modernism that he described tradition as like the children's gossip game in which you whisper something like ''my handkerchief is not in my pocket'' in the next person's ear, and by the time it has gone around the room, it comes out as nonsense like, ''The cat has eaten some chocolate.''

Boulez has been one of the towering figures in the musical world since the 1950s, and he is still going strong. He likes to draw a distinction between artists who define their time and those who transcend it; he has done both. At Harvard he talked for eight to 10 hours, pausing only to listen to the next question, and there was never a dull moment -- Boulez is fiercely intelligent, opinionated, and far more charming than his intimidating reputation would suggest.

Throughout the day, Boulez focused on the three principal dimensions of his activity: as composer, conductor, and architect of musical institutions. Boulez composed one of the most significant works of the second half of the 20th century, ''Le Marteau sans Maitre,'' in 1954-55. Among other things, it was a brilliant reconciliation of the two conflicting currents in music represented by Stravinsky and Schoenberg -- and a mediation between the poles of total chaos (''boring, because you are losing touch with everything'') and total organization (''also boring'').

Since then, Boulez has primarily been concerned with a relatively small catalog of works that are in a constant state of revision and development. ''I do not want to compare myself too high, but I compose in the way that Proust composed his novel, `Remembrance of Things Past.' He began by putting things side-by-side that wound up separated by volumes; episodes involving one character he finally assigned to another. I do not compose chronologically and do not always know where an idea is going to go.

''Why do I revise my works? Because I am not happy. Sometimes the work is not technically good enough, or too difficult for no reason. Sometimes the proportion is not there; sometimes the effect is not at all what you wanted. Sometimes the ideas are not sophisticated enough; sometimes the development does not correspond to the importance of the ideas.''

At various points during the day, Boulez spoke of the influences that fed into his music -- teachers such as Olivier Messiaen and Rene Leibowitz, who taught him how to analyze music; his contact with John Cage; his interest in African, Japanese, Chinese, and Tibetan music; his friendships with other leading composers of his generation (Gyorgy Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono) and others like Elliott Carter and Harrison Birtwistle; all his wide reading in several languages and his knowledge of painting, architecture, and other arts; and his experiences as a conductor.

''I like music that is professionally composed,'' he says decisively, ''where the composer had a very precise idea of how the music would sound, where the composer controlled the sound because he had intensely heard what he was writing.''

Boulez takes a dim view of pop music, though not for the reason you might think. The waste of talent makes him sad. ''There are gifted people working in this field, but they lack the tools of composition; they even think they don't need technique,'' he says. ''A musical talent is something genuine and natural, and it is a pity when it is not developed. Without training, a composer is a dilettante, and I am not fond of that.''

One of Boulez's unexpected enthusiasms was for the work of Frank Zappa; he conducted a recording of Zappa's ''The Perfect Stranger.'' Asked about Zappa, Boulez says, ''He was aware of the existence of another side of music. He wanted to invent something of his own, away from the road of commercial rock music, and I believe he would have had a very interesting artistic development.''


Finding new ways

Boulez began conducting in the 1950s with the concerts of the militantly modernist Domaine Musicale in Paris. He also conducted his own works because no one else wanted to -- or could have. Later he developed into one of the most compelling interpreters of the parts of the standard repertoire that interest him.

''I am conducting always as a composer; I am interested in how the music works. But one performance is only one performance, and not the score; it is the experience of one individual reading the score.''

Boulez had to develop his own formidable and original conducting technique. ''I needed to learn how to conduct my own music, to create the gesture that would correspond to what I wanted to hear,'' he says. ''Often I went too fast, creating the wrong kind of excitement; I went fast because I was eager to get past the problems, to get rid of them. I need to perform a piece in order to know it. The more you know, the more intuitive you become; the less you know, the less intuitive you can be.''

Over the years Boulez has built a formidable library of recordings, which he says he never listens to. ''My recordings are photographs of what I did at this one time. I am not one of those people who are hypnotized by photos of themselves when they were younger.''

Boulez has rarely conducted the Boston Symphony, and it is not because the orchestra hasn't repeatedly tried to engage him. He prefers to continue relationships with other orchestras he has worked with for decades. He knows what to expect of them, and they know to expect the unexpected from him. He says he needs to be careful about his own phenomenal memory; he doesn't want to re-create his old methods and solutions.

And he will conduct only music that interests him -- there is a lot of music that doesn't. He rarely conducts Beethoven or Brahms; he can be witheringly dismissive of pieces such as Stravinsky's neo-classical works (''Who wants to listen to `Apollo'?'' he asks. ''It is useless for me'').

Boulez has only contempt for much in the world of contemporary opera (''I do not think of exciting staging and bad music as a form of evolution; using the old recipes for new operas is not interesting''). Of all music, he asks the same question: ''Can I escape it or not? If I don't need a confrontation with this music, then it is not important.''

In 1977, Boulez was invited to create IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), a center for advanced musical research in Paris, and its resident state-of-the-art new-music group, the Ensemble InterContemporain. Later he was involved in the planning of the Cite de la Musique, also in Paris, a project that began in 1981-82, opened its first stages in 1995, and is ongoing. The large concert hall is still undesigned and unbuilt.

''It should be historically oriented but also oriented towards the future,'' he says. ''And the environment is as important as the hall itself -- the environment should teach audiences in a modern way, the way the museums do. The Tate Modern in London is a great success because it is so well organized; people can spend the whole day there teaching themselves without realizing that is what they are doing. Without this kind of environment, a hall is only another hall, and maybe a bad one. You have to know what you want and be willing to fight for it. I like utopias, but reality is also important.''

[A-Lex]

Дмитрий et Les Autres,

А Вы читали последнюю книгу Булеза-Клод Самуэля "Eclats 2002"? Книга "раздулась" ("эклатировала") из ряда прошлых бесед, уже изданных 15 лет назад. Но это новая книга - много свежих фактов, слов и мыслей. Кроме того, "концепция" новой книги по-Булезовски оригинальна: это скорее Forum, нежели Chat. Ибо,

... книга разбита на тематические главы, и в начале каждой из глав приводятся "чужие" тексты: для запевки - "знаменитые" (Мессиан, Патрис Шеро, Бежар, Бодлер Жан-Жак Руссо, Шёнберг, Малларме, Кафка, Пауль Клее), сразу за ними следуют размышления на заданную тему интеллектуалов из круга Булеза. Далее же идут собственно Булезовские вариации на услышанное и написанное, да и на ещё никем не высказанное.

Интересы Булеза и сo-компании обширны. Темы там вот какие – L’experience pedagogique (о первых встречах с Мессианом), La reflexion creatrice (задана Бодлером; Булез расказывает об импульсах и принципах работы над своими Eclat, …Explosante-Fixe… ), La technique asservie, L’etincelle marginale, La novation dramaturgique (в основном о Вагнере), Danser la musique (зачинатель Бежар), La partition transmise (о дирижёрах и дирижировании в том числе), Les mesaventures de l’amateur (о Руссо-музыкантах; Шёнбергах-живописцах; Вагнерах-драматургах), L’espace social (создание IRCAM , скандалы с министрами и "исход" из Франции), Musiques d’ici et d’ailleurs (Индия, Тибет, Бали и прочие иные горизонты), La reference litteraire (Малларме, Рене Шар, Пруст, Джойс, Кафка...), L’Oeil musical (замечания по поводу потрясающе "музыкальной" статьи Клее), La verite violente (О Шёнберге и не только), La paternite contestee, Signes (вчера, сегодня, завтра).

Не скажу что все без исключения мысли Булеза столь же оригинальны, как и форма книги, но многие из них весьма и весьма любопытны, ожидаемо-скандальны и недвусмысленно-точны.

Бессмысленно надёргивать цитаты отсюда и оттуда, но от некоторых заимствований не удержусь:

“Je ne crois pas a la pedagogie. Je crois au hasard. Je crois a quelqu’un qui declenche quelque chose en vous. Moi, j’ai eu la chance de rencontrer Messiaen… Mais, je n’ai pas travaille avec Debussy… Le mystere genetique des transmissions est inexplicable ».

« Je dirai que Moussorgski est l’exemple le plus eclatant d’un genie marginal, car on rencontre a la fois chez lui le genie de l’expression et les maladresses de l’amateur »

И далее, отвечая на вопрос не возникало ли у него желания продирижировать Борисом: “Oui, j’ai eu envie de diriger Boris, mai il faudrait trois vies pour tout faire…”

« Satie ? Non, pour moi, ce n’est rien ! C’est un bonhomme curieux que j’ai toujours compare a un petit inventeur du Concours Lepine. Pas davantage… »

О Рамо. « Helas, l’amour-propre des Fran&ais dut-il en patir, l’œuvre de Rameau n’est pas comparable a celle de Bach… Toujours au theatre, je le remarque en passant…En outre, on rencontre chez Rameau le peche veniel des Fran&ais, un language presque exclusivement harmonique… Mais qui peut ecouter plus de dix secondes : « Zephyrs, accourez, bercez de vos palmes le front de lal gentille Danae » ? Les conventions du XVIII’e sont insupportables… Lisez-vous encore la poesie de Voltaire ? Non, eh bien, c’est la meme chose… »

« Pelleas est un opera tres feutre, qui derange les amateurs d’opera, que leur gout entraine vers des dessins plus contrastes. Parsifal, non plus, ne represente pas l’ideal de ce public, qui est plus a l’aise avec une œuvre comme Tosca !
- Ou avec Carmen. Que vous n’avez jamais eu envie de diriger…
Ah, non ! Vraiment pas ! Il y a quelques annees, quand j’ai trouve par hasard dans ma loge une partition de Carmen… Et bien, cette relecture m’a confirme dans mon opinion : Carmen est une operette, rien d’autre ! »

« Meme en Allemagne, Wagner est moins populaire que Verdi et Puccini… Parce que Wagner provoque davantage la reflexion. Voir Tristan, c’est davantage un acte culturel ; voir Aida, c’est davantage un divertissement »

« Il y une part de snobisme dans le fanatisme de ces gens [автентисты] qui croient detenir la verite. Ils me font penser a ces melomanes qui croient comprendre Wagner parce qu’ils n’applaudissent pas a la fin du premier acte de Parsifal. C’est le genre de reactions stupides, qui prouvent justement qu’on ne comprend rien…. Comment voulez-vous tenir pour authentique quelque chose qu’on n’ait jamais entendu ?… On nous dit qu’a l’epoque on ne vibrait pas. Qui peut le prouver ? Dans quinze ans, on dira : « On ne vibre pas, sauf sur les accents » Et tout le monde vibrera sur les accents »

« Vous avez enfin ces soi-disant amateurs qui ont sans cesse a la bouche « l’age d’or ». ..Mais si vous ecoutez aujourd’hui certaines interpretations de 1920, vous vous dites que c’etait un age d’or accompagne de fausse notes, de decalage et de justesses approximatives. Je pense de nouveau a cet enregistrement des Nocturnes de Debussy, dont le tempo est aberrant et dont le chef etait… Toscanini ! Pas la moindre idee de phrase et de rubato ! Toscanini devait etre dans un mauvais jour… »

« On parle de democratisation de la culture, e je sais tres bien ce que cela signifie : ine espece de populisme bon marche… C’est comme si, au lieu d’inviter des gens dans un resaurant de qualite, on leur donnait deux Macdo, et tout serait parfait »

« Des toutes les plus grandes œuvres litteraires fraincaises, celle de Proust est la plus directement wagnerienne.. Je sais que Proust avait egalement une petite predilection pour Reynaldo Hahn, mais … « a chacun son mauvais gout » [замечательное выражение !]… Savez-vous qu’Alban Berg, a propos des leitmotive wagneriens, parlait des Erinnerungsmotive, les « motifs du souvenir », formule qui renvoie d’emblee a Proust… »

« Je ne recupere pas Bruckner. On peut apprecier certains mouvements de ses symphonies, mais on voit trop clairement les defauts des autres, que l’extase ne parvient pas a masquer. C’est une musique si repetitive et si peu organique. Comment supporter ces scherzos ou il repete la meme cellule cent soixante-dix-sept fois ?

О минималистах « Malheureusement, le vocabulaire est reduit a des dimensions tellement sommaires qu’il m’est difficile d’ecouter plus de deux ou trois minutes de ces musiques. Des que vous avez compris le systeme, l’interet est epuise…
- John Adams est joue partout et vend des quantites de disques, cela ne vous ebranle-t-il pas ?
Non, parce que Menotti etait jouer partout il y quarante ans, et vous voyez ou il en est maintenant…

Собственно, пора остановиться. В книге ещё 500 страниц подобных "уроков французского". Лучше её листать самому, как говорится "офф". Не могу поверить, что Дмитрий Ларош её не имеет. Но если всё-таки нет, то куда высылать мой личный экземпляр?

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Lieben A-Lex,

я вторые сутки плачу с Бордо от радости Вашего возвращения. Хоть весьма заманчивым было бы предаться размышлениям о Die ewige Wiederkunft...

С Книгой все непросто, у меня был ноль на карточке у Парижских букинистов, стоял и выбирал между Отблесками и нотами Notations 1945, в результате выбрал последнее...

Книги нет, алчу.

[vertov]

интересно что Boulez ныне воспринимается больше как дирижер (восхитительный дирижер) нежели как композитор... (при всей моей любви к нему)

[tyticom]

Мне просто интересно, правильно ли произносить БулеЗ. Он француз с соответствующей фамилией, а значит и произносить надо Пьер Буле.

[8u8]

на имена собственные правила чтения не всегда распространяются. так, концевые согласные чаще всего читаются.

а то можно было б еще проспрягать: boule, boulons, boules, boulez, boule, boulent etc.
je boulerais, mais... (я бы покатился, но...)