2023-06-03 19:15:07
Dhe man, of whom there are still rumors that he wanted to blow up the opera houses in 1967 (which he did not say so), but who actually fantasized about hiring Chinese Red Army soldiers to stir up the German cultural scene, has lived in since In 1959 a villa halfway above Baden-Baden.
Not far from the radio station, with whose music department and orchestra he significantly influenced the development of the musical avant-garde, not only in Germany (which is far away from Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden). Surrounded by 4000 square meters of park, four floors, 20 rooms, more than 500 square meters of living space.
The villa of the late composer Pierre Boulez in Baden-Baden
Source: dpa
Elegantly crowded and staged, one has to imagine the aristocratic town house from the late 19th century that has served as the center of life for Pierre Boulez, conductor, composer, cultural politician and intellectual one of the leading figures of post-war history, since 1959. He had left France in protest against André Malraux’s policy on Algeria and culture.
But not too far and not too far away. After Baden-Baden stop. Just over the border and directly into an incredibly inconspicuous-looking epicenter of contemporary music, without whose possibilities and whose musical openness the world career of the networker from Montbrison might have taken a different course.
Boulez died in Baden-Baden in 2016. He was 81 years old. There was no direct heir. The estate was largely unregulated. What should happen to the villa has long been a matter of debate in Baden. A musical meeting place would have been appropriate.
A memorial in the style of Richard Wagner’s Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth (not only because Boulez was one of the drivers of a new Wagner sound). However, the beneficiaries needed money for the French inheritance tax. And Baden-Württemberg was slightly oversupplied with memorial sites. That’s almost ten years ago.
Pierre Boulez’ „Piano Salon in Baden-Baden“
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Parts of Boulez’s art collection are now being auctioned off at the Artcurial auction house. One would have preferred to see what’s for sale in Paris on June 7 hanging in the villa on Kapuzinerstrasse (a cul-de-sac, by the way) and stroll past the shelves full of books and records. Because then everything would have fitted perfectly into a portrait of what is perhaps really the last great interdisciplinary figure in contemporary music, the realistic dreamer, the rationalistic fantast, for whom music kept opening up new spaces, connecting it with ever new networks with what is primarily literature and art in the 20th century to the late 70s.
Someone who practiced sound as spatial art, composition on the one hand (in the case of Boulez, the upper-class bourgeois terror, everything always has two sides that are dependent on each other, which rubbed off within him and perhaps ignited his creativity in the first place) made it intellectually controllable in all dimensions , but on the other hand kept open for the playful, the emotional expression.
Boulez’ almost lifelong engagement with Paul Klee (who was probably the most musical of all painters of the 20th century, like Boulez perhaps the most painterly composer, at least of the second half) is reflected not only in his collection and in the large Klee essay ” Le Pay fertile” (“The fruit field”), but above all in his own work, which is not at all extremely extensive.
You get a bit melancholic when leafing through, when scrolling through the catalogue. The title of the auction is the legacy of a life revolving around art – “A life in the rhythm of art”, which is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. “Compared to the visual arts,” Boulez once said, “we are ultimately at a disadvantage in that we cannot satisfy speculative interests. Nobody can go to a concert and hope that what they take away from there will be worth a lot more 20 years later. Then comes the time. If you don’t like a picture, move on to the next. You can’t do that at a concert. All you can do is go out and show your anger.”
Pierre Boulez in an overpainted photograph by Arnold Newman
Quelle: Arnold Newman
Objects that came to him at some point are now collected there, a few pieces of furniture (tables by Andrée Putman, each around 2000 to 3000 euros), an exquisite conductor’s baton (2000 to 3000 euros) – possibly a misunderstanding, Boulez rejected conductor’s batons as a symbol, as an instrument of power, he conducted with his bare hands, anyone who has just seen it during rehearsals will never forget it, understands how sound can be modeled as it develops. Paintings, drawings, photos (César’s almost serialistically pixelated Boulez portrait – 400 to 600 euros), posters.
Memories of colleagues that Boulez felt close to – Stravinsky drawings by Giacometti (40,000-50,000 euros) and Cocteau (4000-5000 euros), Tinguely’s set of twelve sketches for a Stravinsky fountain (25,000-35,000 euros). Cartier-Bresson’s photograph of René Char, on whose text Boulez’s masterpiece “Le Marteau Sans Maître” is based (1500 to 2500 euros). Nice things like Hockney’s postcard of a water glass on a Wagner photo (1500 to 2500 euros) and big ones like Bacon’s “Etude d’après Velasquez. Portrait du Pape Innocent X.” (15,000 to 20,000 euros).
Robert Strübin, „Pierre Boulez AI Structures, PG. 1-2, 11 Bars – 1961“
Which: Pierre Boulez Collection
Klee again and again – the new version of “Schaffendes Haupt” from 1917 (50,000 to 70,000 euros). The graphic transfer of Boulez’s “Structures” by the composing artist Robert Strübin (4000 to 5000 euros). And pictures of the Portuguese Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (an untitled painting from 1949: 30,000 to 40,000 euros).
You get melancholic with Browse through the catalogue but also because it is more than just a catalogue. A biography, an appreciation, a homage with essays and work analyzes that – Boulez has been dead for barely seven years – is already overdue. And because – there are not only pictures of his life interspersed, but also photos from the Baden-Baden villa that show where hung what is now being auctioned – the catalog documents what was lost in Kapuzinerstraße.
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