Editing Pierre Boulez (section)

==Character and personal life==
As a young man Boulez was an explosive, often confrontational figure. Jean-Louis Barrault, who knew him in his twenties, caught the contradictions in his personality: "his powerful aggressiveness was a sign of creative passion, a particular blend of intransigence and humour, the way his moods of affection and insolence succeeded one another, all these had drawn us near to him".<ref>Barrault, 205.</ref> Messiaen said later: "He was in revolt against everything."<ref>Samuel (1976), 111.</ref> At one point Boulez turned against Messiaen, describing his ''[[Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine]]'' as "brothel music" and saying that the ''[[Turangalîla-Symphonie]]'' made him vomit.<ref name=TelegraphObituary/> It was five years before relations were restored.<ref name=Poet>{{cite news|last=Benjamin|first=George|date=20 March 2015|title=George Benjamin on Pierre Boulez: 'He was simply a poet'|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/20/george-benjamin-in-praise-of-pierre-boulez-at-90|newspaper=The Guardian|access-date=9 April 2016|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160408092027/http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/20/george-benjamin-in-praise-of-pierre-boulez-at-90|archive-date=8 April 2016}}</ref>

In a 2000 article in ''[[The New Yorker]]'', [[Alex Ross (music critic)|Alex Ross]] described Boulez as a bully.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Ross|first=Alex|author-link=Alex Ross (music critic)|date=10 April 2000|title=The Godfather|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/04/10/the-godfather|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=5 August 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170806060925/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/04/10/the-godfather|archive-date=6 August 2017}}</ref> Boulez did not disagree: "Certainly I was a bully. I'm not ashamed of it at all. The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society."<ref name=Bully/> One of the most notorious instances of this is Boulez's declaration in 1952 that "any musician who has not experienced‍—‌I do not say understood, but truly experienced‍—‌the necessity of [[Twelve-tone technique|dodecaphonic music]] is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch."<ref>Boulez (1991), 113.</ref>{{refn|An article published shortly after Boulez's death in ''The Guardian'' quotes many of Boulez's more provocative statements.<ref>{{cite news |last=Kohda |first=Claire |date=26 March 2015 |title=Boulez in his own words |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/26/boulez-in-his-own-words |newspaper=The Guardian |access-date=20 December 2023 |archive-date=20 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231220120759/https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/26/boulez-in-his-own-words |url-status=live }}</ref>|group=n}}

Those who knew Boulez well often referred to his loyalty, both to individuals and to organisations.<ref name="Barbedette, 15">Barbedette, 15.</ref> When his mentor, the conductor [[Roger Désormière]], was paralysed by a stroke in 1952 Boulez sent scripts to French Radio in Désormière's name so that the older man could collect the fee.<ref>Peyser (1976), 116.</ref> The writer Jean Vermeil, who observed Boulez in the 1990s in the company of Jean Batigne (founder of the Percussions de Strasbourg), discovered "a Boulez asking about the health of a musician in the Strasbourg orchestra, about another player's children, a Boulez who knew everyone by name and who reacted to each person's news with sadness or with joy".<ref>Vermeil, 18.</ref> In later life, he was known for his charm and personal warmth.<ref name=Nichols6Jan/> Of his humour, Gerard McBurney wrote that it "depended on his twinkling eyes, his perfect timing, his infectious schoolboy giggle, and his reckless compulsion always to say what the other person would not expect".<ref>{{cite news|last=McBurney|first=Gerard|date=12 January 2016|title=Pierre Boulez: 'He was one of the naughtiest of great artists'|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/12/pierre-boulez-gerard-mcburney-a-pierre-dream|newspaper=The Guardian|access-date=25 May 2016|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160425061912/http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/12/pierre-boulez-gerard-mcburney-a-pierre-dream|archive-date=25 April 2016}}</ref>

[[File:Paul Klee, 1922, Senecio, oil on gauze, 40.3 × 37.4 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel.jpg|alt=refer to caption|thumb|''Senecio, Head of a Man'' (1922) by Paul Klee]]

Boulez read widely and identified [[Marcel Proust|Proust]], [[James Joyce|Joyce]] and [[Franz Kafka|Kafka]] as particular influences.<ref>Archimbaud, 152–153.</ref> He had a lifelong interest in the visual arts. He wrote extensively about the painter [[Paul Klee]] and owned works by [[Joan Miró]], [[Francis Bacon (artist)|Francis Bacon]], [[Nicolas de Staël]] and [[Maria Helena Vieira da Silva]], all of whom he knew personally.<ref>Barbedette, 149–151, 34–35, 117, 153, 222.</ref> He also had close links with three of the leading philosophers of the time: [[Gilles Deleuze]], [[Michel Foucault]] and [[Roland Barthes]].<ref>Barbedette, 54–55.</ref>

He was a keen walker and, when he was at home in Baden-Baden, spent the late afternoons and much of the weekends walking in the [[Black Forest]].<ref>Peyser (1976), 171.</ref> He owned an old farmhouse in the [[Alpes-de-Haute-Provence]] department of France and built another, modern home on the same land in the late 1970s.<ref>Boulez 2017, 117.</ref>

In its obituary, ''The New York Times'' reported that "about his private life he remained tightly guarded".<ref name=Griffiths6Jan>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html|title=Pierre Boulez, French Composer, Dies at 90|work=The New York Times|date=6 January 2016|access-date=6 January 2016|first=Paul|last=Griffiths|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160106185318/http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html|archive-date=6 January 2016}}</ref> Boulez acknowledged to [[Joan Peyser]] that there was a passionate affair in 1946, described as "intense and tormented" and which Peyser suggested was the trigger for the "wild, courageous works" of that period.<ref>Peyser (1976), 33–34 and 113.</ref> After Boulez's death, his sister Jeanne told the biographer Christian Merlin that the affair was with the actress [[María Casares]], but Merlin concludes that there is little evidence to support this.<ref>Merlin, 42–44.</ref> Merlin acknowledges the speculation that Boulez was gay. He writes that in 1972 Boulez engaged a young German, Hans Messner, as his personal assistant to look after the practicalities of his life. Messner, who called Boulez 'Monsieur' and whom Boulez sometimes introduced as his valet, lived in the Baden-Baden house until the end of Boulez's life and usually accompanied him when he travelled abroad. Although Merlin observes that in later years it was sometimes difficult to tell whether Messner was looking after Boulez or the other way round, his view is that there is no evidence that they were ever life partners. Towards the end of Boulez's life, Messner blocked Boulez's sister Jeanne from visiting the house. He was with Boulez when he died.<ref>Merlin, 320–321 and 545–553</ref> 

In his portrait for ''The New Yorker'', published shortly after Boulez's death under the title ''The Magus'', Alex Ross described Boulez as "affable, implacable, unknowable".<ref name="The Magus">[[Alex Ross (music critic)|Ross, Alex]] (25 January 2016). [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/the-magus-musical-events-alex-ross "The Magus"] ({{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160323180040/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/the-magus-musical-events-alex-ross |date=23 March 2016 }}). ''[[The New Yorker]]''. Retrieved 26 March 2016.</ref>