-- John K. Taber
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/international/europe/07BOUL.html
December 7, 2001 Police Raid Boulez, but Not for His Music, Exactly By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, Dec. 6 — The avant- garde music of Pierre Boulez has often upset traditionalists. But the French composer and conductor never imagined that he could become a terrorism suspect until the Swiss police entered his room in a five-star hotel in Basel last month and confiscated his passport.
True, back in the 1960's, Mr. Boulez once suggested that it would not be a bad thing for contemporary music if all opera houses were blown up. Still, he was not being literal, and that was not what prompted three Swiss policemen to wake him the morning after he conducted at Basel's 2001 Month of European Music.
The local police, who routinely check hotel guest lists against their computer files, had found Mr. Boulez's name among those posing a potential threat. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, a predawn raid was called for. The police, who had never heard of the maestro, seized his passport and train ticket and began to investigate.
The problem, it seems, stemmed more from musical taste than terrorism.
Astride Schirmer, Mr. Boulez's spokeswoman in Paris, said that in 1995, a Swiss music critic who had written a scathing review of a concert by Mr. Boulez received a threatening telephone call that included references to bombs.
"The person who called may have said he was Mr. Boulez," Ms. Schirmer said. "It was evidently a joke in extremely bad taste, but the critic reported it to the police, and Mr. Boulez's name was entered into their files."
Two hours after the raid in early November, the police returned Mr. Boulez's passport amid profuse apologies. A letter from Basel's police chief apologized for "the force's excessively zealous behavior." After the incident became public this week, Mr. Boulez, 75, refused to discuss it further.
"I hope it won't stop him coming back here," a Basel police spokesman said. "I understand a lot of Swiss like his music."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company