Pierre Boulez
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Pierre Boulez was a French composer, conductor, and writer who lived from 1925 to 2016 and became one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century classical music. He matters because he shaped how modern music is created and performed, and his work as both a composer and conductor left a lasting impact on the classical music world.
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Pierre Boulez (26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor, prolific writer, and pianist. He was also the founder and former director of the Paris based Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM). In his early career, Boulez played a key role in the development of integral serialism, controlled chance and electronic music. This, coupled with his highly polemical views on the evolution of music, gained him the image of an enfant terrible. <a href="https
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Boulez in 1968 Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez ( French: [pjɛʁ lwi ʒozεf bulɛz]; 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.
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1925 births2016 deaths20th-century French classical composers20th-century French conductors (music)20th-century French male composers21st-century French classical composers21st-century French male composersAcademic staff of the Collège de FranceAvant-garde composersBartók scholarsBerlioz scholarsChief conductors of the BBC Symphony Orchestra