Pierre Boulez house for sale
mainBoulez, 89, is selling his place near Aix-en-Provence. Here’s the estate agent’s description:
Architect House – Alpes de Haute Provence
Built on a former quarry in the countryside, this architect home with a contemporary feel was owned by Pierre Boulez, famous composer and conductor and conveys this aspect through the white concrete forming the gesture of a leader directing an orchestra without a wand. The concrete blends perfectly with the vertical stones found on site that are assembled into specific modules. Light seeps between volumes. Approximately 230m² spread over four levels as well as a guest house and a garage, the ensemble set on 3,7 ha. Numerous terraces including one with exceptional panoramic views on the last floor. 1h from the TGV train station in Aix en Provence.
That home looks totally warm, inviting, and cozy!
Nothing much in the way of windows that would actually let in natural light. Don’t like dark houses. Anyway, not enough room for my CDs, lps, 78s, books and scores. Otherwise, I’d buy it.
That home looks as if assembled by a naughty kid.
Did he own this before he had his Baden Baden mansion ? Or did he have these two piles simultaneously ?
And I think he has an appartment in Paris as well.
Looks like the sort of house a good socialist would live in.
only socialists can afford things like this
So you two are saying that if one is successful as a composer and conductor, one must hold capitalistic world views? I don’t see any intelligent reason in this, but never mind. Just envious maybe?
Envy is the heart and soul of socialism.
Hmm, maybe. And greed is the heart and soul of capitalism. Sounds like the choice between pest or cholera to me.
Actually I see no rails, no support for the weak, on the stairs. Looks more like a neo-liberal approach to me.
Looks like it would be perfect for villain in a James Bond movie.
Ugh, why am I not surprised that this is where he lived?
I couldn’t have put it better Andrew.
@ M A Steinberger: LOL!
@ Cambridge: I suppose it is very “white heat of technology”.
What’s an “architect house”? Aren’t all houses designed by architects?
Also, if you go to the listing
http://www.emilegarcin.com/vente/Architect-House-Alpes-de-Haute-Provence/FD66BE33-06E6-47D1-B992-0F897C9E8BFA/MEN-6037-SA.html
and look at the 4th picture, there is a huge hole in the terrace above a steep vertical drop. What’s that for? To throw down unwanted guests? To pour hot oil on attacking armies?
It’s there to symbolize the black hole, where the time he saved by conducting super fast, disappeared into, disappeared into the big nothingness.
The hole is for discarded score pages.
Boulez never struck me as a conductor who generally leans towards faster than normal tempi. In some cases, he is actually slower than many other conductors, for instance, in the first movement of his recording of Beethoven 5. But overall, I would say his tempo choices are generally fairly unsurprising.
With Boulez, one gets the strong impression that not tempo, but clarity determines the speed of a work. But in Wagner he takes fast tempi, in an attempt to get rid of all the layers of pathos that he sees in the score, the ‘traditional dirt’ between the notes, as if they were childrens’ toes arriving from the beach. His recording of Debussy’s ‘Jeux’ is excruciatingly clear and therefore, stiff, without any Schwung that the music obviously needs.
Not around here. Most are slapped together by the thousands by builders with no training and no eye. You can get a good idea of it from the opening sequence of “Family Guy”. Yes, it’s parody, but very accurate.
Where is “around here”?
Je ne l’aime pas du tout. Je voudrais la detruire avec un marteau sans maitre
Mais la maison est une replication concrete de “pli selon pli.”