Today I ran across a box of audio cassettes that has been misplaced for years. Among many treasures are my interviews with Boulez, Yoko Ono, Trimpin, Ashley, Branca, Mikel Rouse, and a few others, plus about ten cassettes’ worth of Nancarrow. I thought the Boulez interview might be of particular interest. It took place in a hotel room in Chicago on October 27, 1987, when Boulez had come to perform Repons and conduct the Chicago Symphony in his Notations and other works. This was back when I’d only been at the Voice a few months, and I was interviewing him for the Chicago Reader, where I’d been free-lancing for five years. The whole interview is 67 minutes, and some of it is a little dated, talking about the impending possibility of classical music’s dying, which of course 22 years later we know is apparently not going to happen. But I’ll put up the most interesting snippets, totaling almost half, from the interview here:
Boulez on Music 22 Years Ago
On Repons and serialism in general (10:08)
On minimalism and Nancarrow (7:31) (Why haven’t French and German music shown any minimalist influence? “If I wanted to be nasty, I would say it’s because we have culture.”)
What Boulez says here he’s doubtless said elsewhere; nevertheless, here’s an interview that’s never been made public before. Perhaps some of you will find it sufficiently amazing that he and I were ever in the same room. The third voice that sometimes chimes in is my old composer friend Frank Abbinanti, whom I brought with me. Boulez was on his best behavior, the minimalism comment notwithstanding, and so was I. He was absolutely charming, happy to autograph my copy of On Music Today. The best quote I remember, however, seems to have occurred off-mike. Thinking of Boulez’s scandalous article “Schoenberg est Mort,” I asked him if someone would someday have to write an article titled “Boulez est Mort.” He laughed generously, and replied, “Maybe I should write it myself.”Â