At age 66, Pierre Boulez has been part of the internationalclassical music scene long enough and has been outspoken enough sothat his reputation always precedes him.
There's Boulez the composer, creator of rigorously atonal workssuch as the cantata "Le visage nuptial" and chamber pieces such as"Repons" that mixed a digital processor with acoustic instruments.Since 1977, as director of the Institute for Acoustical-MusicalResearch and Coordination at the Pompidieu Centre in Paris, he hasworked with engineers, musicians and composers to push therelationship between computers and music into uncharted territory.
There's also Boulez the conductor, the man who provoked the ireof New York Philharmonic subscribers by giving them more than theminimal amount of 20th century music during his years as thesymphony's music director between 1971 and 1977.
And let's not forget Boulez the intellectual and musictheoretician, who as a young radical booed an all-Stravinsky concertas insufficiently adventuresome. The young Boulez also declared thatany composer who failed to employ the Arnold Schoenberg serial,atonal method of composition was "of no use."
The reputation is formidable, but during an interview a fewhours before the concert opening his four-week residency with theChicago Symphony Orchestra, the man was not. Relaxed after arehearsal that had gone well, sipping some mineral water, Boulezhappily talked about a wide range of subjects.
One of the most fascinating is his continuing work withtechnology and standard orchestral instruments.
"I don't like technology alone," Boulez said. `If you put thingson tape or on machinery that works by itself, you have no contact(with people). It's interesting under other circumstances. If youdo an exhibition or put it in an environment, it's OK. For aconcert, it is not OK."
Audiences who have endured the most rigorous kinds of electronicconcerts doubtless will agree. Few things are more disconcertingthat watching a set of speakers on an otherwise empty stage and notbeing sure whether the odd sounds you're hearing are sound checks,ventilation systems that have gone awry or the music itself.
"Not only do you need the eye to be involved," said Boulez, "butalso, what's interesting in music is the last-minute involvement ofthe performer. That provides something quite different (fromtechnology). You cannot have any technology doing that."
Boulez sees technology as the ultimate expression of therational in music. Training in both music and mathematics as ateenager, he has always had a special devotion to rationality sincehis earliest days as a conductor and composer. His own music has afierce underlying logic that may or may not be obvious on firsthearing. His conducting has a crystalline edge that typically shinesnew light on orchestral textures and layers.
"I like the rational side," said Boulez, "the rational sideamplified, expanded by technology. It gives sound sources, arelationship to the space, which is quite different (from) thatgiven by the performers). The musicians, in a way, disturb thetechnology. There is a confrontation that is interesting."
Applying computer technology to music has made huge stridessince Boulez started working with it decades ago. Early computerswere approximately as musician-friendly as the badly designedsoftware packages of some of today's personal computers.
"Before, technology was rather clumsy and limited," Boulezadmitted. "Today, the relationship between musicians and technologyis much easier. It speaks much more to their imagination becausethey have more direct contact with the results. The talk between themachine and musician is more musicians' talk now, not mathematicians'talk."
It will be some time, however, before such interaction occursregularly at orchestral concerts. "It probably will develop," Boulezsaid. "But you have two kinds of reaction. You have people who havea quick reaction to technology, and others who don't have a mind forit at all. They have to have an assistant. Among young people, thetransition will be easier. For people of my generation, it's a newthing to learn."
And given the complex sound makeup of the average symphonyorchestra, adding computers may simply muddy the musical waters."You cannot have complexity and complexity," Boulez said. "It's toomuch. It becomes messy. You could expand some soloists, forexample, but you cannot really do that with the whole sound of theorchestra."
Boulez will be conducting what he considers classics of the 20thcentury through Dec. 22 with the CSO. A close friend and colleagueof Daniel Barenboim, the CSO's new music director, Boulez will bemaking annual conducting visits to Chicago in coming seasons.
Most of his work these days is with his Ensemble Contemporainat IRCAM, which gives approximately 80 concerts a year. His"Notations 4-8," reworkings of short piano pieces done in the 1940s,was supposed to have its world premiere here with the CSO underBarenboim's baton this March. Boulez was ill earlier in the fall,and the work is still unfinished. The premiere has been postponeduntil the 1992-93 season.
Boulez has a strong reputation as a conductor. His work at theWagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, including "Parsifal" and thecomplete cycle of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" directed by PatriceChereau in 1976, were highly acclaimed. He limits his orchestralconducting now.
"I just do guest conducting from time to time in places that areinteresting to me," Boulez said. "For me to work with a musicdirector, like Daniel, who is really competent and imaginative,that's interesting. And the orchestra here," Boulez added, shakinghis head with pleasure, "such players, such discipline."
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