Boulez is DeadMusic is not math -- or bare technology. When technology becomes the focus, then art is at best a by-product. Technology is a tool, but it is a tool often undefined.
Perhaps at base we must ask the most necessary of questions. Ad hominem attacks aside for this is truly relevant to the discussion, the question remains: in extreme matters of taste, style, elegance and refinement, can we trust a man with a comb-over to preach to us of élan? No, I think not, though his image is perfect as front-man for the hard-core Modernists. I defy anyone to name one with comb-over of indisputable refinement... it is impossible by sheer presence of the comb-over itself. Images of Edgar Allen Poe perhaps come to mind for his rather smallish comb-over, but this should much more be considered in terms of an all-over scruffiness, not a personal dissembling of appearance, not outright if rather poor deception. On the other hand, the noble bald is to be believed: Gandhi, Shakespeare, Churchill, Toscanini, Yul Brynner, Patrick Stewart, Isaac Hayes, even everyman Telly Savalas. Clearly Boulez is not of this class.
Copyright © 26 March 2000 Jeff Talman, New York City, USA
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The artist
finds definition: but never at the expense of art, it is rather the other way 'round. The serialists/atonalists wrapped themselves in quasi-mathematical systems at the expense of the subjective, though they insisted that the works were meant to be expressive. Surely they were, but expression is buried under their he-man cloud of reason. Most of that generation became locked into a lifestyle that fed their formalist dogma: one could not expose emotion except with embarrassed restraint -- like Archie Bunker, the WWII tough guy unable to emote except with the most painful, wincing difficulty. That Boulez never confronted this is obvious, his music is a very weak form of theory, of amateur systems building, old technology... wheezing, outdated, replaced before the premiere. Now, in a technological era this becomes especially apparent. His pseudo-science is exposed as the weak old babbling of a would-be alchemist who dared promote the idea that people would accept the mind without the heart. Pierre, you may write for the next twenty years, even beyond your hundredth birthday. You may be feted continually, the laurel wreath of the establishment thrust upon your brow. Remember that this is the way of the world, to celebrate the dead...
Boulez helped open the doors to mid-century musical chaos, then walked away to do his star-turn on the runway of the orchestral conductor. Regarding music and technology he is responsible as no more than a bean counter, one who as a 'leader' showed only self-interest and negligible, retractable innovation. Boulez's old wine/new skins charges aimed at Schoenberg perfectly fit Boulez himself and his use of technology. Fascist control, lies, hypocrisy, petty alarms, bombast, insecurity, ego, defensiveness... it is what you have brought to music Pierre, beyond your transparent conducting of the old. Rest assured that someday the world will lurch past your modernist manifestoes and self-serving blindness though the future of the symphony orchestra that you and the academy leave behind is uncertain. Our best birthday wishes to you: may the new century quickly witness your infamous pronouncement, but applied only to your own legacy, 'All the art of the past must be destroyed.' Then we will know with no aching doubts: Boulez is dead.