Pierre Boulez in Conversation with Claude Samuel

Pierre Boulez in Conversation with Claude Samuel IRCAM Paris, October 2011

Claude Samuel The collection of recordings in this set corresponds to your career. This career is made up of stages, naturally, and we go back to the earliest works. But, for you, what does the notion of “early works” signify? Because I imagine that, before the first work inscribed in your catalogue, you had already composed?

And are there youthful works that you perhaps did not want to acknowledge?

Pierre Boulez No! I think that early works, or the first work that I retain is Notations. I even hesitated again because I find it very simple, very simplistic even, compared with what I’ve done since. But I find that, in its simplicity, it denotes exactly what I was at that time and therefore it’s thoroughly valid as a document.

In addition, I was preoccupied with transposing these Notations, much later on, into an orchestral version. And what can be ­interesting for the listener is precisely to compare the piano ­version of 1945 with the orchestral version that dates from ­approximately thirty years later.

CS But before the Notations for piano, didn’t you save many manuscripts of works that were, for you, sketches, preparatory work that perhaps you don’t want to turn over to the public today?

But all that does at least exist?

PB Yes, it exists. They are documents, of course, but only documents, and I consider them interesting documents for me, interesting

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for someone who wants to follow what I’ve done since the outset, but no more than that. But it certainly helped me to find my personality and, in particular, as soon as I arrived in Paris, in the years 1943–45, I had a transformation that was very fast because, as long as I was in the provinces, my evolution was rather slow, ­because we didn’t hear much contemporary music. In Paris, ­curiously, there was more during that period and, in particular, the discovery of Messiaen was a sort of bomb in my universe, which allowed me discover many things. In particular when I studied with Messiaen at the time, i.e., the following year, in 1944–45, then I really discovered what composition was. So ­everything before that is only sketches that were still very primitive.

And so I quite simply have no interest in seeing them published.

CS So not published, I agree. But possibly played from the manuscripts? For example, if, in ten, fifteen, thirty or fifty years, there are people wo want to have a more complete view of your career and who find these scores, is that, retrospectively, something that might bother you?

PB It would not bother me in any event. But I find it quite simply useless because those are beginnings, it is quite simply not yet personality. It is still imitated from something else, and the personality is not there.

CS But let’s take the case of a composer you know well, whose work you know well—Wagner for example. It’s obvious that Wagner’s early works, which, moreover, are not admitted at Bayreuth, also explain many things about the Wagner to come.

PB But we can also do without them. I mean it’s not because you listen to Rienzi that you are really going to comprehend Tannhäuser. On the contrary, there is a revolution in him that is so strong that we can relate certain works, especially the earliest, which are basically French-style operas, only with difficulty. To relate that to Siegfried, you really have to be quite imaginative!

And I think precisely that Wagner himself—it’s he who decided —was right not to keep these pieces in the theater at Bayreuth…

CS At the time, even Der fliegende Holländer wasn’t performed at Bayreuth…

PB That, Der fliegende Holländer, is, on the contrary, probably his first personal work. I find that it is still quite interesting. Of course, there are bravura pieces—it’s still a “numbers” opera, if we might say so—, but one can already feel in many passages a desire to do something else. And then, he already knew quite

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well how to write music by that time. When he broadened his style and found his personality, it can be said that, at that moment, he knew how to write, not only write music, I mean write the text himself, but he also knew how to orchestrate, how to write for the orchestra. I recently conducted the Faust Overture several times. It’s a youthful work—well “youthful,” he was 25 or 30—, and we see that there is, in fact, still the influence of Beethoven, still the influence of Weber, but it is already quite personal. I’m not a partisan of making a boundary between what is going to remain and what is not going to remain—it’s not us who decide; it will be the descendants who will decide…

CS Yes, but you have decided a bit yourself. If you don’t want certain pieces to appear in this complete recording that we are putting together, it still is you who have made the decision.

PB Yes, it is I who made the decision and I stick to it, believe me.

Because I find it justified, in terms of the writing itself, by the text, as well as by the influences that are revealed in it.

CS So of course there are youthful works. Moreover, we say “youthful” … Can you situate approximately the period when you began to write music?

PB Yes, about the age of 16–17. But it was still imitations.

CS You were under what influence at the time?

PB The influence of the “Classics.” And even so, I had a piano teacher who was very advanced for the time, a woman who helped me discover Debussy, for example, Debussy and Ravel.

I’m talking about 1936–37. Ravel was not yet dead. So she helped me discover this literature, and I am still grateful to her because she shaped me considerably. I remember that, in particular, she introduced me not only to Debussy’s Arabesques, which are not his most audacious work, but the Préludes. She had brought them back to me from a trip to Paris and told me “You should work on that.” Of course, I worked on the easy things, like Des pas sur la neige or Les Collines d’Anacapri, but things that made me full aware of Debussy’s modernity. But that, I imitated very poorly at the outset, because I had no idea of writing. You know, when you’re a child, you are taught to write, you are taught spelling and writing: subject, verb, complement, etc. You see: the whole grammatical side. I didn’t have this grammatical side at all. I had it by simple imitation but didn’t know why I was doing it. I was doing that because I had heard it that way and so I learned, when I was at the Conservatoire, before Messiaen

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and in Messiaen’s class, I truly learned how to “write,” how to use the musical grammar. And that is something that is useful when you write a thing, even if from a personality that is not yet clearly defined, but you know how to write, grammatically speaking, and that is essential.

CS That means that, when you arrived in Paris, you were not yet twenty but almost…

PB Eighteen!

CS You had not yet taken a composition course, for example?

PB No, not at all. And it’s for that reason that I was composing like an amateur. Not that I’m an enemy of amateurism, but…

CS A bit, all the same…

PB Yes, even very much, I must admit. But I am the enemy, saying that others can do amateur works, like painters and amateur painters. How many people have imitated Monet? OK, fine: that allows them to pass the time and perhaps understand painting better than if they did not do this kind of amateur painting. For music, it’s the same thing: I imagine that someone, even though it be more difficult, who composes as an amateur can succeed in better understanding the works he tackles. It’s a sort of “channel” that exists, but I wanted to get out of that or enter, as you wish, a firmer, much more defined, landscape, quite simply.

CS Which means that if we look a bit at the dates of composition of the works, we notice that, in the final analysis, the first work recognized as such, the 12 Notations for piano, were written after your arrival in Messiaen’s class?

PB Yes, it dates from 1945 to be exact. Messiaen’s class was 1944–45.

I entered Messiaen’s class in September 1944, if you want precise dates, and I left in June 1945.

CS That’s very little time…

PB I stayed there for very little time. I had my prix in harmony quite quickly because, in fact, the contact with Messiaen was electrifying. And everything that I did slowly before, and in a problematical way, was suddenly quite clear and rapid.

CS Yes, Messiaen was astonished, as he said on several occasions.

You already knew everything immediately and you were very, very fast!

PB Yes, I was quite fast. But no, I didn’t know everything immediately.

I learned a great deal from him precisely. But I indeed learned quite quickly. And if I compare with the counterpoint class that followed, there, on the contrary, I made no progress, and I

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You have to both be capable of a critical spirit—by that I mean seeing what will be of use to you and what will not be of use, a thing that is quite general or, on the contrary, quite particular, and in that case, this critical view of predecessors is essential: it is what helps you find yourself.

worked by myself. The counterpoint class was, for me, a negative abyss after what had been very positive with Messiaen.

CS Does that mean that had you not gone into Messiaen’s class, Notations would not have been exactly what it is?

PB It would not even have existed at all. If I chose Messiaen as a professor, it was because I wanted him as a professor: you don’t make gratuitous gestures, even when you’re young. And this ­gesture of going towards him and wanting to go to him, question him to know if he wanted to take me on as a student, it’s nonetheless that which decided. In a recent biography of Messiaen that I read, a highly detailed biography, the trace of his notebooks, which Yvonne Loriod had kept, was found again.

CS Yes, those notebooks still exist.

PB So, there was a note in June 1944: “Boulez wants to see me, work with me. Likes modern music.” I really like the “Likes modern music” concerning me. It’s a remark that must have struck him, for the declarations that I made him, certainly. And so I wanted to work with him; that was part of an overall decision.

CS Let’s talk about Notations. Piano pieces, you then worked on them to transform them, if I dare say so, to expand them by ­orchestrating them, but did you modify the piano piece as such, or has it remained as is?

PB No, not at all. I left it precisely as testimony to the time. ­Testimony, because there was also a charge in these 12 Notations.

They were 12 initially, like the 12 notes; they were beginning a series of 12 notes, always by the following note, i.e., there was also a rather harsh review of the academism of 12-note technique that was beginning to…

CS Already?

PB Ah, yes! I took these Leibowitz courses… It was the beginning of a sort of academism that, for me, was unbearable. And above all, a lack of imagination in relation to what precedes you. Not that one must be a negative critic, not at all. But if you have ­predecessors, why are they there? To do what you have not done, or to precede you in something you want to do. So you have to both be capable of a critical spirit—by that I mean seeing what will be of use to you and what will not be of use, a thing that is quite general or, on the contrary, quite particular, and in that case, this critical view of predecessors is essential: it is what helps you find yourself. But if you admit everything as absolutely as gospel, you have no critical spirit vis-à-vis what you see or

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hear. There, you’re wasting your time because you cannot be ­influenced, given that you have not absolutely penetrated the personality of he who precedes you.

CS But the critical sense is inherent in your personality: Moreover, you have practiced it constantly.

PB I have practiced it as much vis-à-vis myself, in fact: self-criticism.

It’s for that, people are sometimes amazed that I’ve made so many versions of a thing I had begun to work on, that I had ­taken so a successful conclusion but that I practically started over.

It is because of that, because I wasn’t satisfied with the work, of the situation I ended up at, and so, at that moment, you criticize yourself and see what does not work, not only the technical ­details and the—let us say—practical things, but above all the conception. It is the only way to advance, and the only way to advance without going back on what you have done. But on the contrary, by admitting what you have done.

CS At that time, were you already familiar with Schoenberg’s work, but especially Webern’s, or not yet?

PB No, not really, not yet. With Messiaen, we discovered Bartók and Stravinsky above all. A bit of Berg—the Lyric Suite, because he loved the Lyric Suite too, and a bit of Schoenberg, Pierrot ­lunaire, even though he did not say so openly, of course…

CS He did not much care for that?

PB He did not much care for that, certainly. And so his knowledge of the Viennese School itself was quite limited. And above all, I think what truly interested him was the rhythmic work in ­Stravinsky, as in Bartók. And that, he analysed very well, just as he analysed Debussy very well, naturally, and Ravel. That was his milieu: basically, he bore the trace of what he had received, as we probably all do. The instruction he had received was in the Thirties. But he had reacted against the Thirties—I mean against the music of the Thirties; he detested it.

CS Especially Le Bœuf sur le toit side of the Twenties?

PB Yes, Bœuf sur le toit, as well as all the Thirties: basically Martin, all the Neoclassicism of the Thirties. The Stravinsky of the ­Thirties, it’s he who taught us not to like it. Without really saying so, but putting the accents on Stravinsky’s revolutionary side, it must be said, he eliminated this whole reactionary period that followed and was the between-the-wars period.

CS He was with you the day you booed, at the end of a concert, a Neoclassical work by Stravinsky?

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PB No, I wasn’t at the performance, believe it or not. People have always implicated me, and it was in fact Messiaen’s students who had booed, I believe. But I was already employed by Barrault and so I hadn’t attended the concert. But had I been, I would have booed in any event. But I did boo another time, and we went to excuse ourselves to Dèsormiére who was conducting, saying: “It wasn’t against you that we booed, it was against the work!” We were polite, just the same. All the Neoclassicism, Messiaen couldn’t stand it. Moreover, the Jeune France group that, in the final analysis, amounted to two people, Jolivet and him, was a reaction to this Neoclassicism, a reaction that lasted beyond the war, when he came back and had this class at the Conservatoire: all the Thirties and all the animosity against the Thirties remained intact.

CS But Stravinsky did not hold a grudge against you. Afterwards, on the contrary, he spoke quite a bit about you.

PB Yes. But it’s curious: he understood the reaction I had and ­simply told me once: “You’ll see: later on, you’ll change your mind.” But… CS Not yet?

PB No, not yet. I’ll have to live to a hundred, perhaps, before I change my mind. I don’t know. But in any case, no, I haven’t changed my mind at all. I find that Stravinsky’s great works are those of the Russian period, when he truly reformed the western style. I mean: before him, there had been an effort with Debussy and Ravel, in considerable refinement, but the rhythmic aspect had remained a bit to one side. Whereas with Stravinsky, and ­besides, Bartók, too, it was the intrusion of Eastern Europe and of the rhythmic life of Eastern Europe. That was an intrusion that remained very strong and completely changed the point of view of composers who were touched by this revolution.

CS If I take up your catalogue again, I see that there are also other pieces from that period that we do not know at all. What are these Variations pour piano main gauche?

PB That was at the time when I did Notations. They were variations, quite simply, because I had listened to Ravel, the Concerto for the Left Hand, and I had looked at works for the left hand a bit.

And I said to myself, why not try? Something like a challenge.

CS And the work was withdrawn from the catalogue?

PB It wasn’t withdrawn—it was never in it.

CS And there is another work that is noted “withdrawn from the catalogue,” too: it is this Quartet for ondes Martenot?

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PB Yes, there too…

CS Was it Messiaen who had inspired you to write for ondes ­Martenot?

PB I had taught myself how to play the ondes Martenot. I wanted to write for it—I thought it was an instrument that had future —I’m talking about 1945. Then I saw that the instrument… But I used it in my first version of Visage nuptial, the chamber version with two ondes Martenot, piano and percussion. But I detached myself from it quite quickly. What had interested me in the ondes Martenot was the possibility of making micro-intervals because, in fact, you can make very precise micro-intervals. You put the keyboard out of tune, since you can play on the keyboard, and I did experiments in perception at that time with classmates from the Conservatoire. Indeed: if, over two or three octaves, you reduce by a semitone, you no longer know in what universe you are. You don’t know if you are going up or down. As it ­happens, it is interesting. And I used that much later, in Répons for example, and even in the Troisième Improvisation sur Mallarmé, to disorientate the universe of 24 semitones.

CS But you did not continue to practice—as a composer, I mean— the ondes Martenot. We do not see many ondes Martenot in your works.

PB No, it was finished after that. I listened, of course, at the very time it had been premiered, to Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies and also the Turangalila symphony, and I have to say that he did not convince me so I don’t see why I would use it. But retrospectively, if one plays these works, one can use those period instruments because it was really thought out for that, the sonority was there, and the use that Messiaen made of it is, if not urgent, logical.

CS Coherent?

PB Coherent.

CS Naturally, we are not going to look at all the works, but I would still like to stop, since we are in the 1945–46 period, on a work that has several particularities: it is the Sonatina for Flute and Piano. The first particularity is that this is a work that, finally, you did not retouch? It is doubtless the first work that was noticed by the contemporaries. I saw, for example, a rave article by Virgil Thomson when it was given in New York for the first time, 1946 or 47. And it is also a work that is now in the repertoire of most flautists.

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PB It’s a work that was inspired by Schoenberg, curiously, because I had been quite struck by the way Schoenberg, in the Kammersymphonie Op. 9 had condensed the four movements of a ­symphony into a single movement and how he had arranged the work’s thematic material precisely by matching this modified form. And so I wanted to do the same thing a bit, but starting from something other than the set themes, the classic set of themes in any case such as Schoenberg had used. What interested me was to have movements of “athematic” transitions, i.e. ­without a thematic cell, but solely rhythmic cells. Then, on the contrary, having thematic cells with pitches, patterns for the other moments. So that—I don’t want to give a composition class here—it seems to me that I succeeded in also modifying the course of a symphonic form at the same time that I gave it a raison d’être by condensing its different movements.

CS I was going to say, but I don’t think that one can declare it was clearly, that the chamber or solo works posed fewer problems for you in terms of revisions and new versions, even though the Third Sonata… since we never knew when it had truly been fully completed?

PB The Third Sonata is a work whose ending is not necessary, i.e. these are movements but movements that are more or less independent, which form a sort of universe. I can quite well end this universe now but also not end it, and what remains of it is valid one by one. I can say that this is not a whole, that the one depends on the four, or the four depends on the one, but the one is ­independent of the four, the two is independent of the one, etc.

These are things independent of one another. It is for that reason that each movement has its very precise character, and it is a character that is independent, quite simply. I used this comparison a bit later in relation to the work, but if you look at a spiral, for example, geometrically the spiral is a form that is constantly finished and unfinished: you stop it, it is a perfect form. You add two turns, it is a form no less perfect—it is just larger, that’s all.

But you cannot make the distinction between finished and ­unfinished. For me, what is essential in a work of this type, a work that you improvise as you read it, precisely what is interesting is not confusion, but a sort of very vague landscape between ­finished and unfinished. So the danger is that, to show that you have improvised and that you are not listening to exactly the same

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I mean that the responsibility of a composer is a responsibility that exists.

If you simply spend your time playing “heads or tails” to write a note, I say no.

Because there’s no grammar, there’s no style, no form, there’s ­nothing!

thing, you have to do a demonstration, and a demonstration completely ruins the idea of improvisation. So you have a ­contradiction in terms that is the finished work that results from an unfinished thing. Voilà, that’s how I conceive this period when I tried to make forms that were not finished.

CS Yes, but is it you who decides, not the performer?

PB I let the performer choose. There are parentheses. The parentheses, he can play them or not, it’s up to him. He has an itinerary, all the things are written, but it’s as if you have a city map at your disposal: to go from one point to another, you have so many streets that go there—you can choose one street rather than ­other. There, it’s a bit the same thing: someone gives you a map of the city, and you choose how you want to arrive from one point to another.

CS You still have a certain mistrust vis-à-vis this approach? At a time when one spoke only of “open” works, when there were itineraries that were not even suggested, or barely—I’m thinking of certain works by Cage, for example—, you were thoroughly hostile to that?

PB But I’m still hostile to that! I mean that the responsibility of a composer is a responsibility that exists. If you simply spend your time playing “heads or tails” to write a note, I say no. Because there, there’s no grammar, there’s no style, no form, there’s ­nothing! There is simply pure chance. Remember the Mallarmé verse—that’s enough of an argument to refute all that.

CS You talked about this with Cage, and you were obviously not of the same opinion.

PB No, I wasn’t of the same opinion, and I told him so frankly, ­because there was no reason that I should hide from telling him.

As close as I was to Cage when he came through Paris in 1949, it interested me to see the passion he had for sound, created with very home-made means such as the prepared piano. As much as this way of organizing sound interested me, this kind of disorganization, of chaos, was of little interest to me.

CS If there is someone of your generation who was closer, perhaps not exactly to chaos but to the opening of forms, is it Stockhausen?

PB Yes, but I didn’t follow him in that either. Besides, he didn’t follow himself there either because he dropped all that after a certain time, quite quickly. I think he realized that led to nothing and that in the final analysis—he was even much more autocratic than me—, he realized that he no longer controlled anything. It’s

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all very nice to give instructions for playing or meditation, but if you give no instruction much more precise than that, what do you have? I heard his group once: you have people who simply imitate what Stockhausen wrote earlier. All the same, it’s not ­terribly convincing.

CS Was it not, finally, a reaction to the overly rigid application of dodecaphony?

PB Yes, certainly, it was a reaction to the excess of discipline and an excess of formalism that simply led to chaos. For an excess of formalism leads to chaos, just as an excess of chaos leads to chaos.

CS You have always been reproached for being overly formalistic.

How can it be explained that, in fact, you refute formalism?

PB I was one of the first to refute it, on top of all that. People are always a bit behind in relation to what you are doing. My articles against twelve-note formalism go back to 1955. That is to say that when I was still being judged in 1975 or in 1980 on that subject, I would say “read the articles from 1955 and you’ll see.”

But that’s not important—it’s just stale polemics.

CS Let’s look a bit at the fate of important works that have had, I’d say, a rather hectic life: I’m thinking of Visage nuptial, for example, that you wrote on the text by René Char. You have a first ­version, in 1946–47, then a second version in 1951–52, and a third version. What is the approach from one version to another?

Is it an expansion or a correction?

PB No, it’s not a correction, it is truly an enlargement or expansion.

First of all, the initial version, as I’ve said, was for two ondes Martenot, piano, percussion and a solo soprano: it was a chamber version. Once composed, it stayed in my head, and what struck me was that the poem had greater scope than that and had to be enlarged with a much bigger sound body. So I thought about the orchestration, quite simply, and also about correcting certain “youthful errors” of style that no longer pleased me. So, in 1951–52, I carried out the orchestration but I still had relatively little ­practical experience in writing for orchestra. When I finished that version, which was played, I remember, at the Cologne ­radio, I noticed flaws that it presented from the practical point of view and from the point of view of orchestral writing, flaws that were obvious to me at that moment. I told myself: “It needs another version.” So I decided on a third version that dates from the 1970s, I don’t remember exactly anymore…

CS Ah no, it is much later: 1985–89.

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PB Yes, that’s it. There, on the contrary, I had more experience as a conductor so I corrected all that and removed the quartertones.

I had put quartertones in the second version, and I saw, from ­experience, that people often had no idea of what they were ­doing. They slurred, and you had no exactitude in the quartertones. So I found, through writing means, to do uncertain things, but intentionally uncertain. That’s part of the final version, and I won’t touch it again.

CS Hadn’t you said that before?

PB No. Before, I left it like that, outstanding, but I was sure it would need a third version. There: I don’t get up one morning telling myself “I’m going to change the world.” No, I simply tell myself, “I have to resolve these problems” and so I resolve them.

CS Do these problems arise from the moment you hear a performance, for example? Do you hear—because you are conducting, or not, moreover—do you hear one of your works and, leaving the concert, say to yourself “That does not work very well”?

PB Yes, absolutely. And that’s the advantage of being a performer.

First of all, I trust myself as a conductor, because I believe I have enough practical experience that if it doesn’t work there’s something in the piece that doesn’t work. I am the closest critic of this work and I’m going to discover very quickly what does not work if I begin to study it.

CS Does that means that today—I’ll take as an example Le Visage nuptial—it makes no sense to play the first or second versions?

PB Oh no, absolutely not. As documentary, if someone wants to do so, yes. Aside from that, no. Similarly for Le Soleil des eaux: there are two versions, and the second version is the better one.

CS More than two versions even: the first in 1948, the second 1950, the third 1958 and the fourth version, from 1965, is the last.

PB Yes, that’s the one that should be played.

CS Basically, your approach is the opposite of Messiaen’s. Messiaen said: “When the work is finished”—and he really wrote the word “fin” on the last page—“it’s finished.”

PB No. I had a discussion once with Stockhausen on this subject.

He told me: “I can’t go back. Even if I have the impression that it’s a disaster, it’s finished. I prefer beginning another work rather than touching up the previous one.” Me, it’s the opposite: I can’t stand leaving something in which I don’t have confidence. So I start over, or partially start over.

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CS So there are many works that have several versions. In the final analysis, it’s fairly clear with you: it’s indicated, and the performers know where to go.

PB Yes, yes absolutely!

CS Even so there are works that were not revised, that are, if I dare say, intangible monuments. For example among the most famous works, Le Marteau sans maître?

PB Yes, it’s never been revised because there was no need, quite simply. I touched up certain instrumental things but they were quite easy to do, like you erase something with a rubber. Other pieces have never been retouched either, such as the Second ­Improvisation sur Mallarmé; it has always been in exactly that form.

There are things at which you arrive immediately—you have to accept it—, and others at which you arrive via labyrinths, mazes, and you have to accept that, too.

CS You are nonetheless a very particular case in the history of music: there are not many composers who, for large works, have given several successive versions that annul the previous ones.

PB Yes. But if that is my specificity, I have to accept it, too.

CS You have another specificity: you drew up, or someone drew up, a catalogue of your works, and for certain works you said, “No, no, this is not in the catalogue.” I’m not necessarily thinking of the earliest works; I’m thinking of Poésie pour pouvoir, for tape and orchestra. You wrote this work, which dates from 1958 and was first performed by Hans Rosbaud with the Südwestfunk of Baden-Baden, then after hearing it you said it was not satisfying.

PB No, it wasn’t satisfying because the electronic part was thoroughly insufficient and did not correspond at all to the level of the [orchestral] part. At home, I have a few photocopies of things that bother me from time to time, and I look at that: is it worth redoing or not? Well, for the moment, as concerns Poésie pour pouvoir, each time, the answer is no, it’s not worth the trouble. So if I deem that it’s not worth it, I don’t do it. But if I decide the contrary, as for Éclat-multiples, which is midway, that I will redo and develop because it’s twice as big as what I am currently playing.

CS Yes, but Éclat-multiples exists?

PB Éclat-multiples exists.

CS So there is a version that can be played, and there will perhaps be other versions, but for the moment there is one, in any case.

But I take a piece like Polyphonie X for 18 instruments?

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PB It’s unsalvageable! It was suggested, on the anniversary of Donaueschingen, that the piece be reworked, but I looked at it and said “No, it’s not possible.” I cannot enter that chamber where I was at the time; it’s impossible. I’d be asphyxiated immediately. And it doesn’t interest me.

CS There’s a somewhat mythical piece, because we waited for it a long time, and it was long awaited by its performers, and which was Marges, for Les Percussions de Strasbourg. God knows that Les Percussions de Strasbourg, in their first—shall we say “historic”— formation, were saying, “We’re waiting for a piece by Pierre Boulez. It’s already called Marges!” And we never had Marges…

PB Yes, the title had been found; that’s already something. I was saturated by percussion fairly early on, because I found that ­percussion alone is incapable of sustaining a discourse for very long. It is for that reason that percussion pieces are always very short… or a disaster, in general, either one or the other. There is a hierarchy that remains present the whole time. I mean: when you have a piano or a violin, you play a D. This D has no existence in itself if you don’t give it a function. So the D has a function, it’s an important D, which is much more important than the E flat that is going to follow, and so much more important perhaps than the B natural that preceded it. Very well. But for percussion, if you have cymbals, or things like that, you always have the same scale. Five cymbals, you can have ten, it’s always the same thing.

So you have a scale that’s completely frozen, and cymbal no. 3, if you hear it, is always going to be cymbal no. 3, independent of cymbal no. 5. It’s as if you play on a keyboard with five notes: in the final analysis, it would not communicate very much. So I am very wary of percussion. I’ve used it myself, but I often use ­percussion with pitches—xylophone, vibraphone—because there, precisely, they are instruments that integrate. They have no personality in themselves, but personality depends on the context.

So long as the personality depends on the context, it’s interesting.

As soon as it is independent, it’s no longer interesting. How many times do you hear a tam-tam? If you hear a tam-tam- twice, that’s the maximum. Three times, it’s already saturated, and four times, you say to yourself “That’s enough!” Why? Because, in fact, although the sonority can be quite beautiful, quite broad, you may very well use it once for this specificity of sound, but if

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you use it several times, the tam-tam doesn’t budge. And so it pulls your text elsewhere. It’s for that reason that percussion, for me, has its charms but very limited charms.

CS You said one day that percussion, used as it often was in the 1960s and 70s, was a cache-misère, for hiding unsightly things!

PB Yes, it’s true. I say it again and I still think so. All those works that were written for percussion have been swallowed up, simply because they could not survive, given the problem that that ­poses.

CS We’re not going to go into detail on the problem of each piece, because I see in your catalogue many things that can call for comments but, for example, this piece for twelve voices, Oubli signal lapidé—you always have extraordinary titles, it must be said—, it’s a poetic title that you had found.

PB “Soleil cou coupé.” That’s after Césaire.

CS There, too, you had found the title, in any case…

PB It’s a writer named Armand Gatti who had found the title, based on Césaire.

CS The work was nonetheless given in Cologne, on 3 October 1952 by Marcel Couraud’s ensemble, but this work, we’re supposed to forget it anyway?

PB Yes, yes, do forget it! It’s in a corner, like that. Perhaps it will be able to serve again as material sometime, I don’t know. In any case, there’s no rush.

CS Thanks to this set of discs, we make a choice in your oeuvre, and a choice of the definitive versions. But there’s another piece of information in these recordings: it’s the problem of interpretation.

Because when one looks at you catalogue of recordings, one ­notices that it is rich and, for certain works, even very, very rich?

For example, there are many different versions of Le Marteau sans maître, several of them by you moreover. I believe you recorded it three times?

PB Yes, three times.

CS To speak of these three versions—I don’t know if you remember each detail of these versions—do you think the changes came from thinking or from better practice of instrumentation?

PB Both. And, at least as concerns me, the fact that I quite simply knew how to conduct better. Because, at the outset, as you know, my professional future was not turned towards conducting.

I had no desire at all to be a conductor, and my training was not that of a conductor, it was composer training. With Barrault I

conducted, yes, but pieces of music that were not really difficult to conduct, to tell the truth. That trained me for a certain part of the trade, but what trained me was Domaine Musical and the concerts I had founded, when I had to conduct the works myself quite simply because we didn’t have a conductor handy. And ­besides, I find that a generation must defend itself; that’s also a principal for me. But between the three versions of Le Marteau sans maître, the first is a concert version. It was the first time I conducted, it was at the Domaine Musical, still at the Petit ­Marigny [Theatre], and it was the first time for everyone! So for me, too, and I can tell you we were quite happy to get to the end of a piece without catastrophe. We were terribly awkward.

CS Tense?

PB Tense, yes, of course, the tension comes from awkwardness ­because we weren’t free. And also for the keyboards, for example —vibraphone, xylophone—it was a repertoire that absolutely did not exist. The sole repertoire that previously existed was Messiaen’s Les Oiseaux exotiques, that’s all. Otherwise, there was no solo ­xylophone part. All that, we had to learn at the same time. So I would say that that first disc is testimony to an apprenticeship.

The second disc was much later—some fifteen years if I remember correctly—and there, there was already a specialization, Les ­Percussions de Strasbourg, in particular the two keyboards, Ricou and van Gucht, who played vibraphone and xylophone respectively, but they were still playing with two sticks; today’s practice with four sticks, two in each hand, didn’t exist. When I see the television film of Le Marteau from that era—it goes back to 1968, isn’t that antediluvian? When I saw that they were playing with two sticks, I was completely staggered because I would have thought they were already playing with four sticks. Then there were people of great quality, such as Aurèle Nicolet, the great team of the period, truly. And then we played it many times, we rehearsed a great deal, we were used to the text. Then when I founded the Ensemble Intercontemporain…

CS It was easier?

PB Everything became much easier—it’s something they learn at the same time as the instrument. So first the instrumental technique is perfected extremely quickly, and secondly, the instrument technique, I mean the relationship with the instrument, is completely different. The playing itself, the conductor’s beat.

Myself, I conduct better than thirty years ago, much better even.

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CS To stay with Le Marteau sans maître, in the set is first recording you made, with the Domaine Musical, and then the last version.

Of course there is the technique of the disc; to the ear, it will surely not be the same thing on the acoustic level, but in terms of interpretation, do you think a listener who is not terribly well informed, who does not have the score before his eyes, can detect big differences between the two?

PB I think he will detect the flexibility, in any case. There is more variety in the sound, flexibility in the rhythm. There is more ­coherence in the group, that’s it. I don’t think anyone will miss that.

CS As concerns Le Marteau—and, moreover, it’s true of many of your works—, with time, we have gained a notion of greater freedom.

PB Yes, of course. But what made us avoid freedom was to avoid catastrophes. If you went a bit astray, if you had too much flexibility, people got lost. They didn’t have yet that flexibility and were, on the contrary, rigidified by rhythmic excess. This rhythmic precision is preserved, but now it has become more flexible.

CS Are you quite tolerant vis-à-vis very different interpretations, I would say? Because for some of your works, there are other ­conductors who have tackled them and who have been able to have visions—I’m not speaking about the quality or the way they conduct, but about the conception. Do you accept, for some of your works, that there be different “photos”?

PB Oh, yes! If it’s well done, yes. I am somewhat in the position of the “backseat driver,” as English speakers say. That is, he who lends his car and is seated next to the driver. One says, “Hey, I would have braked sooner,” or “flashed the lights a bit earlier,” but in the final analysis, after a certain time, when you see that it works, you no longer react. At the beginning, you always have an apprehension, you say, “Look, I wouldn’t have done that.” But it’s egotistical as a reaction. However, if a gesture that appears ­excessive at the outset is accompanied by another gesture that compensates, you see the result and you tell yourself “Yes, I ­understand why he does this rather than that.” Myself, not that I do very different things, if I rehearsed a work a certain number of times, sometimes I try to do differently, to see…

CS For you own works?

PB For my own works, as well as for other works I conduct, yes, and which are not by me. I adapt, I try to adapt, because I find

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that when there is too much rigidity vis-à-vis what one also does oneself, one does not arrive at a good result.

CS One is prisoner?

PB Prisoner, yes. But I do not consider my recordings as examples ad vitam aeternam. There was at a given moment in the realm of the disc, this obsession with saying “There, I make my discs, and that must be the model for all that is going to follow!” That was Stravinsky.

CS And God knows, he did not conduct very well.

PB Ah no, it is for that that one cannot freeze. And even when I hear the discs of Bartók who, however, was a good pianist… Pianists who play his works today practice those works constantly, even work physically on those works. And so they play them better than he did. Because for him, this was not his center of action: his center of action was composing, of going on harvesting trips, if I might say so, from the point of view of folklore. That was his center. And if today you hear a pianist, yes, you can say he plays better than Bartók, which doesn’t mean that Bartók played badly.

Bartók, his center was like that. You respect it, but you can find something else. Vis-à-vis what is done in relation to me, it’s ­justified, I am absolutely in agreement. I even find that you do not make a work for yourself, you make a work for others. So it is the others who take hold of it, and fortunately they take hold of it.

CS Might one say—and we shall end with this subject—that, for you, recording is a plus and a minus? A plus because it is a testimony, a minus because that can be a sort of unavoidable reference: it’s like this and must not be done otherwise!

PB What annoys me is when one distributes points. In the past, no longer nowadays, I listened to radio broadcasts that always wanted to make comparisons, wanted to award No. 1, No. 2, No. 3…

There is nothing more artificial than that because one performer can have very good sides and be completely off base elsewhere in relation to the original text; another recording will perhaps be less brilliant but closer to what the composer wanted to say. It depends on how you listen to the thing, too. What do you want to hear in a work? Do you want to hear what you yourself think, and it does not always coincide with what you hear? That does not prove that you are right, nor does it prove that the performer is wrong. It simply means that that you do not coincide with this way of interpreting, full stop. That is why I do not admit

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comparisons of this type, starting from a certain level, of course.

But when you have a top-notch level, rankings are absurd.

CS I have one final question: What do you expect od the listener?

You have an enlightened music lover who has this set of discs in hand; what approach do you advise, what do you expect of him?

PB First of all, to rid himself of prejudices if he has any. And that he listens with an open mind, quite simply. That he begin with the simplest things and end with the most complex. In someone’s oeuvre, there are always simpler works. Even in Beethoven, if you listen to the early string quartets, it’s very easy to swallow. If you listen to the last, it takes much more concentrated attention.

There, they know—it’s a share of culture. They have to acquire this culture in modernity. Let them first acquire it by patience, because it is not always easy, so it is necessary to listen again, and especially listen again saying to oneself, no, I’m not wrong, but I can bed wrong. For me, that is the true attitude.

With kind permission by Deutsche Grammophon