Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez (IPA: /pjɛʁ.buˈlɛz/) (born March 26, 1925) is a conductor and composer of classical music.

He was born in Montbrison, France. He initially studied mathematics at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conse

Pierre Boulez (IPA: /pjɛʁ.buˈlɛz/) (born March 26, 1925) is a conductor and composer of classical music.

He was born in Montbrison, France. He initially studied mathematics at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire under Olivier Messiaen and Andrée Vaurabourg (Arthur Honegger's wife). He studied twelve tone technique with René Leibowitz and went on to write atonal music in a post-Webernian serial style greatly influenced by Messiaen, serialising not only the pitches of notes, but also the durations, dynamics, accents, and so on. This technique became known as integral serialism. He became one of the philosophical leaders of the post-war movement in the arts towards greater abstraction and experimentation. Boulez and his colleages always stressed what they saw as the necessity of this direction. The Darmstadt composers were instrumental in creating a style that, for a time, existed as an antidote to music of nationalist fervor; an international, even cosmopolitan style, and also a style that could not be 'co-oped' as propaganda in the way that the Nazis used, for example, the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.