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PEOPLE & ARTS A29
Thursday 7 January 2016
Pierre Boulez, leading figure of classical music, dies at 90
In this December, 2011 photo, French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez conducts the Paris To say he had mellowed, lives.”
Orchestra at the Louvre museum in Paris. Boulez has died, Paris Philharmonic says Wednesday however, would be a step “All these years, I’ve been
Jan.6, 2016. He was 90. too far. In a 2010 interview trying to convince people
with Philip Clark for the that music is not there to
(AP Photo/Christophe Ena) classical music publica- please them; it’s there to
tion Gramophone, Boulez disturb them.”
couldn’t conceal his lack Born in Montbrison, France,
of interest in the more con- on March 26, 1925, Boulez
ventional music of Ameri- initially studied before turn-
can composer Aaron Co- ing to music.
pland, terming it “folklore He studied harmony at the
and dance.” He dismissed Paris Conservatory with
German composer Paul composer Olivier Messiaen
Hindemith by saying his and had lessons from Rene
music “is very well put to- Leibowitz in the dissonant
gether, yes” but “says noth- 20th-century style known as
ing to me.” twelve-tone composition.
“I may be wrong, but I His compositions include
equate music with cul- the Second Piano Sonata
ture,” he was quoted as from 1947-48 and “Le mar-
saying in the interview. “I teau sans maitre (The Ham-
don’t think music is an en- mer without a Master), a
tertainment product. It’s a setting of surrealist poetry
product of culture — not by Rene Char for six instru-
for marketing, but to enrich ments and voice.q
DAVID McHUGH 20th-century Polish com-
LORI HINNANT poser Karol Szymanovski.
Associated Press And he did a 1984 album
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) with another musician of
— Pierre Boulez had a repu- uncompromising tastes,
tation as a hardcore mod- Frank Zappa, including
ernist steeped in the dis- Zappa compositions such
sonances of 20th-Century as “The Girl in the Magne-
music. But that didn’t stop sium Dress.”
him from turning in brilliant While his own compositions
performances of decid- remained resolutely diffi-
edly Romantic composers cult — and a tough sell for
such as Mahler and Wag- most audiences — his skills
ner as he forged a career in imposing clarity on large-
as one of the leading fig- scale works by audience
ures in contemporary clas- favorites helped make him
sical music. a concert-hall star.
Boulez traveled a long Even performing something
path from avante-garde as turbulent as Stravinsky’s
composer to recording “Rite of Spring” or one of
star who won 26 Grammy Gustav Mahler’s sprawl-
awards. He started out as ing symphonies, Boulez re-
a rebel who once said any mained a cool and con-
composer who did not re- tained presence on the
alize the necessity of dis- podium, preferring a dark
sonant twelve-tone com- business suit and tie to tux-
position was “useless.” To edo and tails, his gestures
the end, he continued to communicating logic and
reject what he considered precision. He didn’t use a
easy ways of pleasing au- baton.
diences or music he found He turned more and more
uninteresting. from composition to con-
The French conductor and ducting during his career,
composer died peace- leading the New York Phil-
fully Tuesday at his home in harmonic, where he suc-
Baden-Baden, Germany, ceeded Leonard Bernstein,
said his assistant Marion and the BBC Symphony Or-
Thiem. chestra during the 1970s.
He was 90 and had been He conducted Wagner’s
unable to conduct recent- “Ring” cycle of operas at
ly due to eye trouble, she the Bayreuth Festival The-
said. ater and also worked with
Boulez ranged well beyond the Chicago Symphony,
the strict confines of mod- the Cleveland Orchestra,
ernism. For some of his last Orchestre de Paris and the
recordings he chose the London Symphony Orches-
lush, moody works of early tra.
