Pierre Boulez was one of the most prominent names in French classical music throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Known for his pioneering compositions, conducting of many of the world’s great orchestras and as founder of Ensemble Intercontemporain and IRCAM—the acoustic research centre underneath Centre Pompidou in Paris—Boulez left an irreplaceable mark on the contemporary music world. To celebrate 100 years since his birth in 1925, we sat down with French conductor Maxime Pascal who worked closely with Boulez in his later years, to talk about his impressions of the great composer.
Maxime Pascal, meet Pierre Boulez
Maxime Pascal first met Pierre Boulez in 2008 when his ensemble, Le Balcon, performed at a tribute concert organized to introduce them to the legendary composer. Boulez attended the performance but remained reserved during the formal interaction. However, the next morning, Pascal received an unexpected call from Boulez’s secretary: Boulez had requested to hear them again. At their second concert at Église Saint-Méry, Pascal, to his surprise, was greeted by a different Boulez—warm, enthusiastic, and deeply engaged. During the intermission, he animatedly discussed the music with Pascal and the musicians of Le Balcon and after the performance he personally greeted each musician and shared a remark that left a lasting impression on Pascal: “What interests me most in what you’re doing is that you’re not yet an institution.”
From that moment, Boulez became a regular presence at Le Balcon’s concerts, rehearsing with them, offering insights, and even leading a commentated concert of his own works. Pascal recognizes this relationship with the aging composer as an immense influence on him as a conductor and shared with us some of his experience of his work as a composer, conductor and mentor.
Pierre Boulez the composer
Pierre Boulez was a defining figure in contemporary classical music, being among the first composers to integrate electronic music into his composition. Boulez wrote, in Maxime Pascal’s eyes, one of the most “first great works of electronic music in the classical world” referring to Boulez’ groundbreaking work Répons. His dedication to innovation in his composition was eternalised in the creation of the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) where he produced some of his most experimental works notably including electronics.
Among the great composers of his generation such as Pierre Henry and Stockhausen, there are some who were great pioneers of electronic music. But Boulez was already in the vanguard of research and writing on this music, since he created IRCAM and wrote Répons[…], one of the first great works of electronic music in the world of classical music.
During this period compositional innovation was moving towards serialism, atonality, and electronic music and Boulez was specifically interested in an exploration of conceptual time. Talking about Boulez’s work Messagesquisse for solo cello and six cellos Pasal says: “In Boulez’s work, we often find the principle of duality, of objects that are two things at once… We’re going to totally eliminate the rhythmic aspect by having one very fast rhythmic pulse on both sides and we’ll punctuate it with accents that will create a kind of meta-phrase.”
Daniel Barenboim and West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: Pierre Boulez’s Messagesquisse
Pascal emphasizes this duality present in Boulez’s work—something that is present in music composition in general but is particularly important in understanding the vast contrasts within Boulez’s works. Pascal also talks about Répons, Boulez’s 1981 work for four soloists, orchestra and electronics as another of his seminal works demonstrating the striking duality present in his works.
When asked about his process when conducting works by Boulez, Pascal talks about how clear the scores are: “It is also extremely dense and this density of information creates a musical fabric. It creates a color, it creates a very particular light. It’s a very strong sensation when you’re conducting because when you listen, you hear the timbre, but when you conduct, you have this relationship between what you see written in the score and what you hear.” He also speaks about the palpable impact of his works to a live audience, particularly in the case of his anniversary concerts where he reflected on the unusually young and animated audience.
Pierre Boulez the conductor
Pierre Boulez became well known later in his career as a conductor, leading orchestras internationally, most notably the New York Philharmonic. His dedication to performing works from the first half of the 21st century and beyond produced some of the most important recordings of this repertoire and promoted the performance of modern music. Pierre Boulez worked with Maxime Pascal as both a composer and conducting mentor and Pascal has an immense respect for his ability to lead and direct an ensemble. Pascal describes Boulez the conductor as a great humanist and “someone who listened with a rare intensity to each sound, each instrument, each chord, each instrumentalist.”
I remember when I worked with him, he used to say to me “Ah! Laisse! Give him time to play. Let him play.” It’s not just listening to the sound or the instrument. It’s listening to the person. When you listen to the orchestra conducted by Boulez, the sound is extremely free. There’s a kind of infinity in the sound, also in the precision of the sound, because the sound spreads out. The Sound is free.
According to Pascal, the best illustration of Boulez’s conducting legacy is a recording of Boulez conducting Bruckner’s 8th Symphony at the Church of Saint Florian.
“Pierre Boulez’s constant quest was to find the right balance between analysis and emotion. And here, in Bruckner’s 8th symphony, we feel Pierre Boulez walking this tightrope between the Brucknerian symphonic cathedral and this very touching emotion, this strong emotion that we feel, the sensory experiences of the music, but also the emotion that is palpable in him, the emotion that is palpable in the orchestra.”
“Pierre Boulez’s constant quest was to find the right balance between analysis and emotion. It’s as if he could be sucked in, carried away by one or the other all the time.”
Boulez’s lasting impact
Boulez was renowned in his early years for his fiery character and quick judgements, from which many a young composer suffered, says Pascal. He criticized conservatoires and orchestras of stifling innovation and accused his contemporaries of recreating the status quo. However, his disgust with the musical institutions which he found stifled the creation of new music did not prevent him from becoming a fundamental force in the creation of some of the greatest contemporary music institutes in France. He created the IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain and is still an omnipresent influence in composing schools. Even before their fateful meeting with Le Balcon in 2013, Pascal explains that Boulez was a major presence in his first years in Paris in 2005.
“At that time, Pierre Boulez was still very much around and I used to go to all the concerts of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and I used to listen to his rehearsals.”
“I had a lot of musical discussions with my friends, with other students at the Conservatoire. There wasn’t a serious musical discussion where Pierre Boulez wasn’t mentioned at one point or another. Pierre Boulez burst into every one of our musical conversations. Systematically. Whether it was to talk about him as a golden conductor, whether it was to admire him, whether it was to criticize him, sometimes very harshly, or whether it was to talk about his role in institutions.”
The picture that Maxime Pascal paints is of a great man in his late age that took great pleasure in exchanging with the new generation of composers and musicians. When asked about the first words that come to mind, Pascal’s reaction is surprising: “If I answer sincerely, the first thing that comes to mind is a mixture of admiration and tenderness. We were two generations apart when we met. I think he was exactly the same age as my grandfather. He was caring and very, very curious about the young people in front of him. I found the kind of benevolence you can find with the generations of your grandparents, which is a very special relationship.”
Maxime Pascal continues to draw inspiration from his time with Pierre Boulez and regularly conducts his works with orchestras all around Europe. Though Pierre Boulez passed away in 2016, his influence remains deeply embedded in our musical landscape—whether it be through the performance of his works, the study of his conducting technique or the programmation of new works, all of which Boulez championed with humility and unwavering dedication.
