French - Composer | March 26, 1925 - January 5, 2016
My parents were so far from the music world that they couldn't conceive how you could make a living. But for me, it was the only solution for the rest of my life.
Pierre Boulez
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The most difficult problem in conducting is intonation. You must know what is wrong and how to correct it.
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I always think the relationship between a teacher and a student should be short and maybe violent. You don't need to spend years together. All you need is an explosion: you are the material to explode; the teacher is the detonator.
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I wanted contemporary music to be treated the same as the traditional repertoire - performed regularly by people who knew each other and the music. That is the way you convince an audience.
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I said if I ever conducted, I would always give myself the best chance to succeed - though sometimes, despite everything, you still fail.
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Certainly I was a bully. I'm not ashamed of it at all. The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society.
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I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time.
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People see me as a theoretician, but my music is also seductive, even spiritual.
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The first time I came to New York in 1952, I was busy with music. I made the acquaintance at this period with John Cage, and also the acquaintance of Varese for the first time. We were very good friends. He gave me some scores, and we recorded them a little later.
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I discovered 'Rite of Spring' when I was 21. As a matter of fact, not with orchestra first, because it was still a work which was not often performed. Don't forget that I was 19 in 1944, still the Occupation time. So it was performed slightly after the end of the war, in 1945.
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'Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta' is a kind of expansion of chamber music.
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Webern was a kind of 'Kamchatka of music,' an unknown country of music. That's true; for me and people of my generation, he was a radical - you couldn't be more radical than he was.
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