Pierre Boulez

French composer, conductor and writer (1925–2016)

AI overview

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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Film & TV

Montbrison, Loire, France

Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (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…

Known for

Die Macht des Rings — Self - conductor2026
Pierre Boulez - Der Weg ins Unbekannte — Lui-même2025
Zappa — Self (archive footage)2020
Pierre Boulez at the BBC: Master and Maverick — Self (archive footage)2016
Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words — Self (archive footage)2016
Maurizio Pollini: De main de maître — Self2014
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn / Adagio from Symphony No. 10 — Conductor2011
Liszt Piano Concertos - Daniel Barenboim / Pierre Boulez - Staatskapelle Berlin — Self - Conductor2011
Bartok: Concerto for Violin - Gidon Kremer, Pierre Boulez — Self - conductor2010
Knots and Fields — Self2010

via TMDB

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Pierre
Gender: male
Citizenship: France
Place of birth: Montbrison
Place of death: Baden-Baden
Occupation: writer
Educated at: Conservatoire de Paris
Employer: Collège de France
Languages spoken: German
Notable work: Le marteau sans maître
Student of: Olivier Messiaen
Field of work: music
Genre: classical music
Movement: 20th-century classical music
Instrument: piano
Record label: Sony Classical
Image: Pierre Boulez (1968).jpg

Show 10 more facts

list of works: list of compositions by Pierre Boulez
Commons category: Pierre Boulez
date of birth: 1925-03-26
date of death: 2016-01-05
name in native language: Pierre Boulez
topic's main category: Category:Pierre Boulez
influenced by: Anton Webern
start of work period: 1945-00-00
birth name: Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez
P12674: Johann Natterer

Sources (7)

via Wikidata · CC0

Works in European collections

1 object attributed to Pierre Boulez, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

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Encyclopedic overview

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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Pierre Boulez” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.