"Who Wants Parsifal in the Morning?"

ONCE he was the enfant terrible of French music who did not scruple to assert the Paris Opera was full of dung. These days, Pierre Boulez is no less sure of his opinions. But he is somewhat more temperate in expressing them, for he has now joined the Establishment to wage the fight from within. His reign as the new music director of the New York Philharmonic begins this week. Over the coming year he will certainly shape the future of that orchestra. He may also, if he has his way, somewhat change the whole direction of American symphonic life.

In the nation's concert halls the sound of trouble--financial, artistic, moral, spiritual--is growing louder every day. The New York Philharmonic is not a conspicuous example. With a safe home in Manhattan's Lincoln Center and an endowment of $10 million, it is hardly in mortal peril. But its officers--President Carlos Moseley, Board Chairman Amyas Ames--have seen the need to face change and the future. Boulez is the result. A relative newcomer to the international conducting ranks, he is also largely untried in the familiar repertory of late 18th century and 19th century staples, so that his ascendancy poses a calculated risk. His predecessor, the universal Leonard Bernstein, coaxed the orchestra and its program well into the 20th century. If such progress is to continue, Boulez is definitely the man to lead the way.

He combines Gallic charm with acerbic wit. As a working musician, he practices remarkable exactness and discipline. As a bachelor of 46, he is free to rise at 5 each morning to compose, and he often holds work meetings in his apartment at 8, thereafter running through as many as three rehearsals during the day. Boulez's mastery of conducting the modern repertory--from Debussy and Stravinsky to Webern and Olivier Messiaen--is untouchable. Next week he will start taking small groups of instrumentalists to Greenwich Village to proselytize among the hip young (TIME, Feb. 22). He also intends to devote two series of programs to the music of Liszt and Berg, both of whom he feels are essential to the understanding of contemporary music. Beyond that, the new director will talk controversially on various subjects, as TIME Music Critic William Bender discovered in an interview last week:

WASHINGTON'S NEW KENNEDY CENTER. The tendency of people who have reached a certain level of culture is to preserve that level. But to spend $70 million to make such an old-fashioned building, this is for me really a great puzzle.

THE MUSICAL MASTERPIECE. I think it would be better if people worried less about masterpieces and more about new directions and what is actually going on. Too often they want to discover in one evening the work that will be recognized as a masterpiece in the 21st century. That never works. The masterpiece will always escape them.

HOW AND WHY HE CONDUCTS. I am trained as a composer, not as a conductor. For me composing is still the nucleus of everything. When I study another composer's score, or when I prepare one of my own for performance, what I read, I want to hear. I conduct because I thought that if I wanted to change something in the musical life, then I would have to be really serious about it. If you conduct a concert only once a year, then you don't change anything.

WHAT TO CHANGE. The most important thing to change is the musical life as it is now organized. We have too many specialized worlds that have no connection with each other. People who go to concerts never go to opera--they find it vulgar. People who go to chamber music recitals never go to the symphony because it isn't refined enough. Other people go only to Italian opera because they find German operas boring. They are like people who are collecting stamps only from France, or only from Tanzania. That must change.

RAVI SHANKAR AND WESTERNIZED RAGAS. The kind of junk he is doing now is not at all in the true Indian tradition. It's a kind of colonialism in reverse. He was a good musician. Now he's a Neapolitan mandolin player.

MUSICAL EVOLUTION. History is much like the guillotine. If a composer is not the one, if he is not moving in the right direction, he will be killed, metaphorically speaking. The evolution of music, and everything else for that matter, depends on people who are gifted enough to understand that change is an absolutely irreversible process. You cannot ignore the historical landmarks of music. Because if you ignore them, history will ignore you.

WHEN CIVILIZATIONS CRUMBLE. I think we are in danger of that, at least musically. When civilization is dying, everybody is walking on tiptoe, afraid to speak, as though they were in a sickroom. What I find healthy is when everybody is strong enough not to fear replacing the old with the new. The spirit of discovery is a main feature of a very strong civilization.

STRAVINSKY, DEBUSSY, WEBERN.

They were part of my education, my growing up, but there are certain problems in your life which never come twice. I have now reached the point where I don't need any fathers any more.

CONCERT AUDIENCES. People cough too much, but I don't mind the coughing itself as much as I mind what it means--a failure of communication on both sides, on their side and on mine. I don't want the concert to be a church. In no way am I in favor of being polite when you are not pleased. What I want is simply that the audience behave the way they would if somebody tells them something important. That and no more than that.

THE PLACE OF POP MUSIC. I am not terribly interested in it because it is a part of everyday life, like the automobile. It is not music of discovery, but music of entertainment, and I have nothing against that. After all, you cannot brush your teeth with genius. I mean, who wants to hear Parsifal in the morning?

OPERA. The only good that could come out of the world of opera today would be an extensive study of the relationship between pure speech and pure music. I have no objection to the opera as a museum--after all, museums have their place--but I don't see any future in it.

ON HIS PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY. I couldn't possibly live without the unknown in front of me.

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