Pierre Boulez's Little Bed

O day of joy! It's March 26, 2025: Pierre Boulez would have been 100 years old today. Here I am in the small hall of the Philharmonie in Paris. I'm attending a workshop devoted to an early work by the composer, entitled Polyphonie X. It's a lecture followed by a concert.

It is about the scandal caused by the creation of the work, in 1951 (it was later disowned by the master). Of its fascinating genesis: the original score would be a sort of "Rosetta Stone". And of so many complicated things because, as Boulez said, "the devil is in a labyrinth" . A labyrinth in which I also find myself, as the musicological explanations provided remain little accessible to the layman.

How can one remain dignified in such a situation? There is the path of sarcasm, which would be appallingly easy and banal, and that of complex (at the same time, I'm not coming to his birthday to be insulted).

It will be neither one nor the other because, I must confess, I have a secret and unstoppable weapon, an extraordinary toy. When I encounter a problem with Boulez's music, I imagine him sleeping in a small single bed. This immediately melts my heart, opens wide my sensitivity, frees my emotions and allows me to love everything he composed more and more each day.

A purist would probably be shocked by this pathetic artifice. So much triviality when it comes to a man whose private life has remained almost completely secret...

And yet, this clever stratagem, this powerful viaticum, is not gratuitous. It comes to me from reading the biography Pierre Boulez (Fayard, 2019), written by Christian Merlin: "As for the room occupied by the chef in the Frankel house [a family of industrialists and patrons from Cleveland], Boulez asked that the twin bed be removed, just as he requested a small bed in the hotels where he stayed."

You might be surprised that this tiny notation, taken from a 600-page book, has such an effect on me. You might find the detail trivial. And yet, it's all there, in the devilish detail of the labyrinth. We know Boulez's anger, his rigor, his intransigence. But he wasn't just that. He is also the man in this anecdote with the little bed.

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