Boulez est mort

Pierre Boulez, who died last week at the age of 90, would have been the last person, one hopes, to want a unanimous chorus of praise to surge from the media, to an extent that has not been seen at the death of any other classical musician — certainly not at Stravinsky’s, to mention one far greater figure. His fellow musicians have been among the most fulsome: ‘He taught us how to listen, he gave us new ears,’ said Sir Simon Rattle, and on the many specially devised programmes others have made similar claims, if less succinctly.

They really ought to know better. That kind of remark shows the same ignorance of and contempt for history as Boulez himself delighted in. They fail, too, to distinguish the enfant terrible from the grand old man, a progress that Boulez managed with remarkable speed, thanks to his transcendent gifts as networker and sloganiser, and his appealingly dictatorial qualities. Famously witty, urbane, charming, when he wasn’t demolishing monuments of one kind and another, or even when he was, and developing into a teacher of remarkable patience and insight, he became the guru of successive generations, as composer, conductor, educator, organiser of grand projects, of which IRCAM is the most celebrated. Probably there has been no such spectacular career since that of Wagner, with whom Boulez shared many features — and his relationship to Wagner can serve as an indication of his character.

In an interview with Daniel Barenboim in Cologne in 2000 (available on DVD), Boulez points out that his teacher Olivier Messiaen was a passionate Wagner-lover ‘but like all Frenchmen, of Tristan and Meistersinger. And I am the same.’ Actually, Boulez never conducted Meistersinger — the sheer thought is bizarre — and Tristan only once, which is strange considering its nature and status.