Embracing the ‘Angry Lion’

Home > Opinion > Columns

Embracing the ‘Angry Lion’

Published: 04 Apr. 2025, 00:04

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Kim Ho-jung

The author is a reporter of classical music at the JoongAng Ilbo.

“Let’s burn down the opera houses.”

The composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (1925—2016) hurled verbal grenades with reckless frequency. He scorned concert halls that had become little more than museums, and he distrusted tradition. It was Boulez who famously declared, “Schoenberg is dead,” despite once being enthralled by the composer's groundbreaking techniques — which had revolutionized musical language on an Einsteinian scale. He offered scathing critiques of Ravel, Stravinsky and even American music. Boulez’s mentor, Olivier Messiaen, once recalled, “He was very gentle during our first lesson. But soon he was angry at the whole world. He was like a lion freshly caught in the wild.”

Pierre Boulez in 1953, at age 28. He is a leading figure in postwar contemporary music. Photo by Daniel Frasnay. [OFFICIAL BOULEZ WEBSITE]

March 26 marked what would have been Boulez’s 100th birthday, a centennial celebrated in many parts of the world. The Orchestre de Paris devoted March 26—28 to honoring Boulez, while London’s Barbican Center held a full-day tribute on the 30th. In Baden-Baden, the German city where he spent much of his life, commemorative events have been taking place across the city since late last year.

New York, where Boulez served as music director of the Philharmonic from 1971 to 1977, also held performances in his honor — though with an air of reluctant obligation given the frosty relationship the city had with him during his lifetime. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he remained conductor emeritus until his death, is leading the charge with earnest performances and archival projects. In Korea, the Tongyeong International Music Festival will feature Ensemble InterContemporain, founded by Boulez, in a performance of his works on April 5. Remarkably, he is being celebrated more actively in 2025 than Maurice Ravel, whose 150th birthday falls this year, or Dmitri Shostakovich, who died 50 years ago.

As a composer, Boulez challenged tradition with audacity. He believed that artistic integrity required uncompromising stances, and his music bristled with sharp, intellectual fury. He deconstructed the elements of music with surgical clarity, seeking a new rational order, and placed himself at the vanguard of 20th-century modernism. British critic Ivan Hewett described Boulez’s music as “the eternal urge of humanity to venture into new worlds.”

Boulez was a genius, a singular figure — but hardly a warm companion. There are countless stories of him conducting rehearsals of dense contemporary works with computerlike recall, correcting performers regarding even the slightest deviation from a breath mark. The Guardian once warned: “Weak players risk injury when working with Boulez.” His sonic sensitivity was extraordinary. Conductor Antonio Pappano once declared that Boulez possessed “the finest ears of any conductor alive.”

Pierre Boulez in 1970s. [OFFICIAL BOULEZ WEBSITE]

But how should we regard this lion in captivity, this irascible genius? Take, for example, Boulez’s 1970 interpretation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with the New Philharmonia Orchestra. A work beloved for its dramatic sense of fate, Boulez’s reading was so unorthodox that it stirred considerable controversy. The first movement alone is strikingly slow, as if dissected under magnetic resonance imaging rather than an X-ray — every bar, every note made startlingly audible. Many listeners hated it. In New York, critics derisively labeled him a “clever orchestral technician.”

Boulez’s own compositions are no easier. As a postwar modernist, his music is unapologetically dense. Conductor-composer Matthias Pintscher told The New York Times that Boulez’s works demand one “buckle up, roll up their sleeves, and study.” To engage with Boulez, both musicians and audiences must put in the work. But, Pintscher added, once the logic of his rigorous structures is understood, it all gives way to an experience of pure energy and flow — offering a new kind of rapture.

So how can we make sense of the warm global embrace of this difficult music by a famously prickly man? The Guardian suggests we live in a time that no longer encourages “bold exploration of new worlds” in the way Boulez did. Artists who hurl grenades — whether through words or works — are a thing of the past. There’s a quiet nostalgia now for the defiant modernism Boulez once embodied, for his credo: “I make rules only to break them.”

As the world honors the centenary of this fiery, singular artist, one question echoes through the celebration: How willing are today’s audiences to accept the brave, combative genius of someone like Pierre Boulez?

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.