Pierre Boulez Interview with Charlie Rosen (1999)

[@reidwhitton6248]

I miss Boulez. A great man and great artist!

[@josephhellweg3763]

That's Charlie Rose, the interviewer. Charles Rosen was a pianist, writer, and French scholar. The confusion is understandable and shows an awareness of the wider musical world.

[@doctormock1]

This is an okay interview, but I had decided to watch it because it clearly said Rosen. He wasn't just any pianist, but one who was very familiar with Boulez music having recorded the First Piano Sonata and several movements from the Third Sonata. Rosen discussing Boulez would probably have been much more helpful to understanding the music.

[@bevaconme]

yeah, right.

[@ilirllukaci5345]

Was an idol of mine since my teens.

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

Pierre was a guest lecturer at Harvard in Spring 1963. On his first day there it was I who greeted him on the steps of the Music Building. We later became good friends. I always liked him better than I liked his music. When he became director of the New York Philharmonic my wife and I were his New York family.

[@cadenzalien4554]

That's so cool!

[@eyuin5716]

That a pretty cool.

[@johnpcomposer]

He was a great conductor...seems to have been a great guy...I am not a fan of the music...you can understand the need to take music in a new direction.. new options, what possibility allowed beyond tonality, was not necessarily an attractive direction or even a warm and humane direction...however those of us composing on the other side of post-modernism really don't have much recourse in the way of doing something "new" except to let AI write our music for us..for now Boulez and all the experimental music from the last half of the 20th century is music of the past. There is no new because the leap into the abyss from 1923 through the 1980s...was a speeded up process of experimentation with a sudden splat at the end..which is what you would expect at the end of such a leap. If, as Sam Andreyev notes, we're in a lull and everybody is just imitating what's been done...I would suggest it's not really a lull...but that all the major avenues for novelty have been exhausted...the way forward must include a reconsideration of the past...also a consideration that tonality has not exhausted it's possibilities (there are in fact billions of melodies yet to be written) and in fact the last century of "new" music has revitalized tonality...As Robert Simpson noted, tonality is so ingrained that it is pointless to try to anesthetize the listener to it....People are going to come back to tonality, they always do (in the end even Penderecki came back to it) and it now has a much expanded arsenal to play with.

[@mikeklimczak9600]

Great interview. I had the pleasure of witnessing Boulez conduct Schoenberg and Janacek at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra before his health starting failing. He always had a soft spot for Stravinsky, particularly because he met him on numerous occasions, admired his work, and wanted it to be accessible to all audiences. I love how Boulez talks about how it's important to study and admire the past, but to build on it, emphasis on building instead of lagging behind. At about 4:24 in the interview, Boulez talks about the same musical menu being served to all audiences - I'm glad he brought that up. I, too, am tired of the same old concert works being scheduled year after year - beating them to a pulp without introducing any new works by composers living today, or even in the past 20-30 years. We need more contemporary musical works put into the repertoire to help advance music to the likes of how both architecture and fashion have evolved over time. I realize, however, that money is of the essence for these orchestras to simply function, but if no chances are taken, the musical repertoire remains stagnant and boring over time.

[@lilitussarabande6602]

Great moment in the history of television

[@rrickarr]

Wow! What a personality---nothing like I thought it would be! A very engaging man.

[@mustafakandan2103]

A very interesting man. As a composer I still haven't made up my mind whether he was a great composer like Messiaen, Debussy and Ravel. I have complete recordings of his works directed by him and attended a concert directed by him of his work Le Marteau sans maitre, which left me interested without full comprehension. I have enjoyed a performance of his more approachable Repons in Hamburg. I know I love Messiaen, but I am still unsure whether I will fully grasp Boulez.

[@psijicassassin7166]

I have built an AI that can churn out sound arrangements based on a tone row you feed it. People like Boulez are now unnecessary. Come to think of it, serial composers are just mechanical sound arrangers that eat, fart and poop.

[@UtsyoChakraborty]

Excellent interview!

[@f52_yeevy]

Beautiful interview!

[@srothbardt]

See New World Symphony, now under Stephane Deneve, formerly under MTT.

[@coreylapinas1000]

I think if he would have used his orchestration abilities in service of pieces with motivic development (you can get subtlest taste of this in about the first third of Repons), I would consider him perhaps the best orchestrator of all time. He still makes my top ten though for the dazzling effects he gets.

[@jeffryphillipsburns]

Boulez is delightful, but notice that none of the questions were actually about music. The obvious explanation is that Charlie Rose knows nothing about music. Ideally Boulez could be interviewed by a musical authority, but even someone like Dick Cavett would be infinitely preferable to Rose. Look up Cavett’s interview with Oscar Peterson: Cavett, of course, is nowhere near an export, but, unlike Rose, he’s not completely devoid of culture.

[@HenriDucrocq]

Rose at least didn't sound too ridiculous this time, but he and many interviewers are so out of their depth on serious topics, and try so hard to hide it. Cringe.

[@neilmurphy7554]

Are you kidding!!!! Charlie Rose IMHO is the most important interviewer of cultural icons of the last 60 years. Cavett was unable to follow a conversation he wasn't directing... he was awful. Rose has an intellect and understands and indulges it in others. Cavett was a light weight in comparison.

[@plekkchand]

@@neilmurphy7554 I hope you're the one that's kidding. Rose? Intellect? (I'll pass over the oxymoronic construction "important interviewer").

[@stephenjablonsky1941]

Boulez was interviewed by Dick Cavett. I know because I drove Pierre to the TV studio.

[@tonywilliams7147]

I think this is a good interview showing Boulez’ personality well.

[@yakirarbib1670]

Wonderful and compassionate interview!

[@BrianJosephMorgan]

Bravo, Boulez.

[@bult15]

The name is Charlie ROSE not Rosen. Boulez is a musical giant but I miss Charlie too...

[@nout1972]

2:27 Benny's Burritos? Or Bubby's Burritos?

[@barney6888]

I said it before and will say it again. The NYP are bums, BUMS I tell you!

[@dbadagna]

Charlie Rosen → Charlie Rose

[@QuietGuyCO]

The interviewer is Charlie Rose

[@reidwhitton6248]

Would have been a more interesting conversation if it was Charles Rosen talking with Boulez.

[@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist]

very persuasive interview.

[@jean-francoisbrunet2031]

Boulez has many times voiced his puzzlement why contemporary visual arts are more readily broadcast, published, exhibited, presented than contemporary music, and never finds the answer (only vague accusations of the rigidity of the musical institutions, which only pushes back the question: why specifically the musical institutions?). The answer is that in front of a painting or sculpture you spend the time you want, a few seconds to an hour, which makes the experience much easier to adapt to one's interests and tastes. With music, you are trapped. And when you are trapped for an hour with Répons, Notations or Le Marteau Sans maître, you can be in hell. Whereas you can leisurely stroll past equally opaque works of contemporary art.

[@lerippletoe6893]

Music is also the foremost of all arts in part because anything "off" can be sniffed out ruthlessly. It has more variables, more information processing. People don't get offended by visual arts the same.

[@redwithblackstripes]

@@lerippletoe6893 Music unlike architecture or visual arts are perceived through the details first and the form last, to a point where most people never perceive it. The psychoacoustic phaenomenon is such that emotional responses to Euphony and Cacophony supercede everthing else by a massive factor.People like Boulez (composers) are fascinated by musical form because it brings personal logical meaning to emotion. Where most people are content with enjoying the emotional reactions of Euphonics composers also want to grasp the meaning of that emotion for self actualization purposes (they would not be composers otherwise) which can lead them to develop musical tastes where form is the predominant way to enjoy a content 99.99% of the planet can't even begin to understand.

[@lerippletoe6893]

That is true, and language is another one where people have agreed what words and even letters are. If a poetry format didn't just violate rhythm and coin a few words but it devolved into visual cues and new letters and things in which the premises have evolved far past what people accepted, they would reject it before contemplating the form as well. However with sound people still have a more visceral reaction which is to pause the playback or leave. Looking at something, well people can just look away. If you consider cuisine an art form and then challenge consumers with unpleasant experiences for the art and novelty of it, which I saw one super fancy restaurant did, that's maybe the only thing that goes over worse than music.

[@CaradhrasAiguo49]

3:47 Rose (the interviewer) is obnoxious, right when Boulez says "why should institutions like the [New York] Philharmonic stay behind the times", Rose interrupts. I'd really like to know Boulez's opinion of how the NYPhil of the late 1990s "stayed behind the times", not be interrupted by Rose's observation, which could be made by anyone NOT living under a rock

[@Thatsgay123]

Rosen, hehe based

[@francinesicard464]

Fortunately, it takes all sorts. He might have been a highly interesting personality but I never understood his contemporary music. As a lover of medieval and renaissance music, for my ears, it's cacophony.

[@karlkinono]

So boring

[@ntodd4110]

Yes...yes you are.