Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (French pronunciation:[pjɛʁlwiʒozεfbulɛz]; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music.
Born in Montbrison, in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism in the 1950s, controlled chance music in the 1960s and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time from the 1970s onwards. His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces considered landmarks of twentieth-century music, such as Le Marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli and Répons. His uncompromising commitment to modernism and the trenchant, polemical tone in which he expressed his views on music led some to criticise him as a dogmatist.
Boulez was also one of the most prominent conductors of his generation. In a career lasting more than sixty years, he was music director of the New York Philharmonic, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. He made frequent appearances with many other orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. He was known for his performances of the music of the first half of the twentieth century—including Debussy and Ravel, Stravinsky and Bartók, and the Second Viennese School—as well as that of his contemporaries, such as Ligeti, Berio and Carter. His work in the opera house included the production of Wagner's Ring cycle for the centenary of the Bayreuth Festival, and the world premiere of the three-act version of Berg's opera Lulu. His recorded legacy is extensive.
He also founded several musical institutions. In Paris he set up the Domaine musical in the 1950s to promote new music; in the 1970s he established the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM), to foster research and innovation in music, and the Ensemble intercontemporain, a chamber orchestra specialising in contemporary music. Later he co-founded the Cité de la musique, a concert hall, museum and library dedicated to music in the Parc de la Villette in Paris and, in Switzerland, the Lucerne Festival Academy, an international orchestra of young musicians, with which he gave first performances of many new works.
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ lwi ʒozεf bulɛz]; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer,...
A list of works by the French composer PierreBoulez. Douze Notations for piano (1945). Sonatine for flute et piano (1946; revised 1949). Piano Sonata...
Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, PierreBoulez, Luigi Nono, Milton Babbitt, Elisabeth Lutyens, Henri Pousseur, Charles...
(1900–2004), French architect Pierre Bézier, engineer and mathematician known for his work with Bézier curves PierreBoulez (1925–2016), French classical...
post World War II modernist musicians such as that of Luciano Berio or PierreBoulez, as well as younger performers and composers. Musical spectralism such...
world as well as many prominent conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, PierreBoulez, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle. He is especially...
composers. Adherents of serialism such as PierreBoulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen dismissed indeterminate music; Boulez, who was once on friendly terms with...
distinguished pupils included Iannis Xenakis, George Benjamin, Alexander Goehr, PierreBoulez, Jacques Hétu, Tristan Murail, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág...
influenced composers like Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Béla Bartók, and PierreBoulez, all of whom "felt impelled to face the challenges set by [The Rite...
humanities in Berlin. It opened its doors on 8 December 2016. In 2017, the PierreBoulez Saal opened as the public face of the academy. The elliptical shaped...
chief conductors in the 1960s and 1970s – Antal Doráti, Colin Davis, PierreBoulez and Gennady Rozhdestvensky – the BBC SO remained underfunded. However...
among others. He championed works by contemporary composers, including PierreBoulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, Roberto Carnevale, Gianluca...
techniques. After he had been exposed to the works of French composer PierreBoulez, he incorporated serial techniques into his Piano Quartet (1950), Piano...
(1863–1909) Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) PierreBoulez (1925–2016) Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de St George (1745–1799) Louis-Albert...
six cellos by PierreBoulez. In 1976, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich commissioned twelve composers (Conrad Beck, Luciano Berio, Boulez, Benjamin Britten...
recently, in the middle of the 20th century, Maurice Ohana, Pierre Schaeffer and PierreBoulez contributed to the evolution of contemporary classical music...
Sir Georg Solti 31 3 Quincy Jones 28 4 Alison Krauss 27 Chick Corea 6 PierreBoulez 26 John Williams 8 Vladimir Horowitz 25 Stevie Wonder David Frost 11...
by Jeffrey Tate. Her recording of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with PierreBoulez won another Gramophone Award. Uchida is further noted for her recordings...
Sur Incises (1996/1998) are two related works of the French composer PierreBoulez. The pitches of the row used in Incises and Sur Incises are based on...
aleatory and aleatoric, is a term popularised by the musical composer PierreBoulez,[not verified in body] but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti...
Santa Cecilia in 1947. A critical edition of the score, prepared by PierreBoulez and Myriam Chimènes, was published in 1988. There are about sixty different...
(Fold by fold) is a piece of classical music by the French composer PierreBoulez. It carries the subtitle Portrait de Mallarmé (Portrait of Mallarmé)...
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