Pierre Boulez was born on 26 March 1925, in Montbrison, a small town in the Loir

e district of east-central France, to Lon and Marcelle (ne Calabre) Boulez.[1] He

was the third of four children: an older sister, Jeanne (b.1922) and younger bro
ther, Roger (b.1936) were preceded by a first child, also called Pierre (b.1920)
, who died in infancy. Lon (1891-1969), an engineer and technical director of a s
teel factory, is described by biographers as an authoritarian figure, but with a
strong sense of fairness; Marcelle (1897-1985) as a sociable, good-humoured wom
an, who deferred to her husbands strict Catholic beliefs whilst not necessarily s
haring them. The family prospered, moving in 1929 from the apartment above a pha
rmacy at 29 rue Tupinerie, where Boulez was born, to a comfortable detached hous
e at 46 avenue d Alsace-Lorraine, where he spent most of his childhood.[2]
From the age of seven he attended school at the Institut Victor de Laprade, a Ca
tholic seminary where the daily worship and gruelling schedule instilled in him
an iron discipline which lasted all his life.[3] By the age of fifteen he was sc
eptical about religion:[4] "what struck me most was that it was so mechanical: t
here was a total absence of genuine conviction behind it". As a child he took pi
ano lessons, played chamber music with local amateurs and sang in the school cho
ir.[5]
After completing the first part of his baccalaureate a year early he spent the a
cademic year of 194041 at the Pensionnat St. Louis, a boarding school in nearby S
t. Etienne. The following year he took courses in advanced mathematics at the Un
iversity of Lyon which his father hoped would lead to a career in engineering.[6
] It was in Lyon that he first heard an orchestra and saw his first operas (Bori
s Godunov and Die Meistersinger von Nrnberg).[7]He also met the well-known sopran
o Ninon Vallin, who asked him to accompany her in arias from Aida and La Damnati
on de Faust. Impressed by his ability, she persuaded Lon to allow his son to appl
y to the Conservatoire in Lyon, but the selection board rejected him. Boulez rem
ained determined to pursue a career in music. The following year, with his siste
r s support in the face of opposition from his father, he studied piano and harm
ony privately with Lionel de Pachmann (son of the pianist Vladimir).[8] "Our par
ents were strong, but finally we were stronger than they," Boulez would later sa
y.[9] In fact, when he moved to Paris in the autumn of 1943, Lon accompanied him,
helped him find a room (at 14 rue Oudinot, near the Invalides) and subsidized h
im until he could earn a living.[10]
19431946: Musical education[edit]
Andre Vaurabourg
In late 1943 he entered the preparatory harmony class of Georges Dandelot at the
Paris Conservatoire.[11] There he was introduced to Andre Vaurabourg, wife of th
e composer Arthur Honegger, and between April 1944 and May 1946 he studied count
erpoint privately with her. He greatly enjoyed working with her and she remember
ed him as an exceptional student, using his exercises as models in advanced coun
terpoint until the end of her teaching career.[12] He also studied the piano pri
vately in the hope of entering Jean Doyen s class, but he was unsuccessful.[13]
In the autumn of 1944 he joined Olivier Messiaens advanced harmony class at the C
onservatoire and attended the private seminars which Messiaen gave to chosen stu
dents, where key works of the early twentieth-century, including Stravinskys Rite
of Spring, were subjected to intensive analysis.[14]
In January 1945 Boulez moved to two small garret rooms at 4 rue Beautreillis in
the Marais district of Paris, where he lived for the next fourteen years.[15] Th
e following month he attended a private performance of Schoenbergs Wind Quintet,
conducted by Ren Leibowitz, a follower of Schoenberg. The piece was a revelation
to him and he organised a group of fellow students to take private lessons with
Leibowitz. It was here that he first studied twelve-tone technique and discovere
d the music of Webern.[16] Around this time he was one of a number of Conservato
ire students (organised, it was said, by Leibowitz) who joined in sustained booi
ng at a performance of Stravinsky s Danses concertantes, a work whose neo-classi
cism represented the pre-war culture he was determined to reject.[17] Eventually
he also found Leibowitzs approach too doctrinaire and he broke violently with hi

m in 1946 when Leibowitz tried to criticise one of his early works.[18]

In the spring of 1945 he gained the Conservatoires first prize in harmony. The fo
llowing academic year he studied fugue with Simone Pl-Caussade, whose lack of ima
gination so infuriated him that he boycotted the class and organized a petition
that Messiaen be given a full professorship in composition.[19] In the winter of
1945/46 he was introduced to Balinese and Japanese music and African drumming a
t the Muse Guimet in Paris:[20] I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist
because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time.[
21]
19461953: Early career in Paris[edit]
Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud in 1952 (photograph Carl Van Vechten)
Boulez earned money by giving maths lessons to his landlords son[22] and playing
the ondes Martenot (an early electronic instrument), occasionally deputising in
the pit orchestra of the Folies Bergre.[23] In early 1946 the theatre director Je
an-Louis Barrault needed someone to play the instrument for a production of Haml
et for the new company he and his wife, Madeleine Renaud, had formed. Honegger s
uggested Boulez.[24] He was soon appointed Music Director of the Compagnie Renau
d-Barrault, a post he held for nine years. He arranged and conducted incidental
music, mostly by composers with whom he had little affinity (such as Milhaud and
Tchaikovsky) but it gave him the chance to work with professional musicians and
left him time to compose during the day.[25]
This was a period of intense compositional activity for Boulez. Between 1947 and
1950 a series of major works received their first performances: the Sonatine po
ur flte et piano, the first two piano sonatas and initial versions of two cantata
s on texts by Ren Char, Le visage nuptial and Le soleil des eaux.[26] In 1951 a l
arge work for eighteen solo instruments, Polyphonie X, caused a scandal at its p
remire at the Donaueschingen Festival, some audience members disrupting the perfo
rmance with hisses and whistles.[27] He also experimented for the first time wit
h electronic music, producingDeux Etudes for magnetic tape for Pierre Schaeffers
Groupe Recherche de la Radiodiffusion Franaise but he was dissatisfied with the r
esults and withdrew them.[28]
Around this time he met two composers who were to be important influences: John
Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His friendship with Cage began in 1949 when Cage
was visiting Paris. Cage introduced him to publishers who agreed to take Boulez
s recent pieces; Boulez helped to arrange a private performance of Cages Sonatas
and Interludes for Prepared Piano.[29] When Cage returned to New York they bega
n an intense, six-year correspondence about the future of music. In 1952 Stockha
usen arrived in Paris to study with Messiaen.[30] Although Boulez knew no German
and Stockhausen no French, the rapport between them was instant: "A friend tran
slated [and] we gesticulated wildly ... We talked about music all the timein a wa
y I ve never talked about it with anyone else."[31]
Boulez quickly became one of the philosophical leaders of the post-war modernist
movement in the arts. As Alex Ross observed: "at all times he seemed absolutely
sure of what he was doing. Amid the confusion of postwar life, with so many tru
ths discredited, his certitude was reassuring."[32] Many composers of Boulez s g
eneration taught at the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt,
Germany, which Boulez attended for the first time in July 1952. As well as Stock
hausen, Boulez was in contact there with other composers who would become signif
icant figures in contemporary music, including Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, Bruno
Maderna, and Henri Pousseur. According to Scott Burnham, the so-called Darmstadt
School composers created a style that, for a time, existed as an antidote to mu
sic of nationalist fervor; an international style that could not be co-opted as
propaganda in the way that the Nazis had used, for example, the music of Beethov
en.[33]
In May 1952 Boulez gave the first public performance of Structure 1a for two pia
nos (with Olivier Messiaen). Towards the end of that year a tour with the Renaud
-Barrault company took him to New York for the first time, where he met Stravins
ky and Varse.[30] He stayed at Cage s apartment but their friendship was already

cooling as he could not accept Cage s increasing commitment to compositional pro

cedures based on chance. On his return to France, he broke off contact with Cage
.[34]
19541959: The Domaine musical[edit]
The Salle Popesco in Paris, formerly the Petit Marigny
In 1954, with the financial backing of Barrault and Renaud, he started a concert
series at the Petit Marigny theatre, which became known as the Domaine musical.
The concerts focussed initially on three areas: pre-war classics still unfamili
ar in Paris (such as Bartok and Webern), works by the new generation (Stockhause
n, Nono) and neglected masters from the past (Machaut, Gesualdo)although for prac
tical reasons the last category fell away in subsequent seasons.[35] Boulez prov
ed an energetic and accomplished administrator, taking charge of everything from
managing subscriptions to putting out music stands. The theatre was small, the
wooden seats hard and the programmes inordinately long, yet the concerts were an
immediate success.[36] The composerFrancis Poulenc observed: "there is a touchi
ng atmosphere at the concerts. Crowds of young people cram in together for stand
ing room."[37] They attracted musicians, painters and writers, as well as fashio
nable society, but they proved so costly that Boulez had to turn to wealthy priv
ate patrons for support, in particular Suzanne Tzenas.[38]
At the ISCM Festival in Baden-Baden on 18 June 1955, after fifty rehearsals, Han
s Rosbaud conducted the first performance of Boulez s best-known work, Le martea
u sans matre. A nine-movement cycle for alto voice and instrumental ensemble base
d on poems by Ren Char,[1] it was an immediate, international success.[39] Willia
m Glock wrote: "even at a first hearing, though difficult to take in, it was so
utterly new in sound, texture and feeling that it seemed to possess a mythical q
uality like that of Schoenberg s Pierrot lunaire."[40] Stravinsky described it a
s one of the few significant works of the post-war period of exploration.[41]
In the early years of the Domaine musical Boulez left most of the conducting to
others, including Hermann Scherchen and Hans Rosbaud.[42] On 21 March 1956 he ga
ve his first full concert as a conductor in a Domaine programme which featured t
he French premire of Le marteau sans matre.[43] Other milestones in the Domaine s
history included a Webern festival (1955), the European premiere of Stravinskys A
gon (1957) and first performances of Messaiens Oiseaux exotiques (1955) and Sept
Haka (1963).[44] There were failures too, most famously the first Paris performanc
e of Stravinsky s Threni in 1958. Poorly planned by Boulez and nervously conduct
ed by Stravinsky, the performance broke down more than once. According to Glock,
who sat between Stravinsky and Boulez at dinner afterwards, "the atmosphere was
electric with discontent."[45] Later the concerts moved to the Salle Gaveau (19
56-1959), then to the Thtre de l Odon (1959-1968).[46] Boulez remained director of
the Domaine until 1967, when Gilbert Amy succeeded him.[47]
In Darmstadt in September 1957 Boulez played an early version of the Piano Sonat
a No.3.[48] In January 1958 the Improvisations sur Mallarm (I et II) appeared, for
ming the kernel of a work which would grow over the next four years into a vast,
five-movement "portrait of Mallarm", Pli selon pli. It received its premire in Do
naueschingen in October 1962.[49]
19591971: International conducting career[edit]
In 1959 Boulez left Paris and moved to Baden-Baden in Germany. Robert Piencikows
ki suggests a number of reasons for the move: excellent rehearsal conditions wit
h the orchestra of the Sdwestfunk, an electronic studio where he could work on a
new piece (Posie pour pouvoir), but also disenchantment with the political climat
e in France under de Gaulle at the time of the Algerian war.[50]
During this period he turned increasingly to conducting. His first engagement as
an orchestral conductor had been in 1956, when he conducted the Venezuelan Symp
hony Orchestra whilst on tour with the Renaud-Barrault company.[51] In Cologne h
e conducted his own Le visage nuptial in 1957 andwith Bruno Maderna and the compo
serthe first performances of Stockhausen s Gruppen in 1958. His breakthrough came
in 1959 when he replaced the ailing Hans Rosbaud at short notice in demanding p
rogrammes of 20th-century music at the Aix-en-Provence and Donaueschingen Festiv

als, culminating in a performance of Bartok s Miraculous Mandarin which Boulez r

emembered as "explosive."[52] This led to debuts with the Amsterdam Concertgebou
w, Bavarian Radio Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras.[53] In 1963 he co
nducted the Orchestre National de France in the 50th anniversary performance of
Stravinsky s Le Sacre du Printemps at the Thtre des Champs-lyses in Paris, where the
piece had had its riotous premire.[1]
Pierre Boulez conducting at Blossom Music Center in 1969. Photo by Peter Hasting
s. Courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra Archives.
He made his orchestral debut in the United States in March 1965 with the Clevela
nd Orchestra, an orchestra with which he had a particular affinity because of it
s virtuosity and tonal refinement.[54]He became the orchestras Principal Guest Co
nductor in February 1969, a post he held until the end of 1971.[55] After the de
ath of George Szell in July 1970, he took on the role of Music Adviser for two y
ears, but the title was largely honorary owing to his commitments in London and
New York.[56] In the 196869 season he also made guest appearances in Boston, Chic
ago and Los Angeles.[57]
In 1963 Boulez conducted his first opera, Bergs Wozzeck at the Opra National de Pa
ris, directed by Jean-Louis Barrault with designs by Andr Masson. He enjoyed exce
ptional conditions, with thirty orchestral rehearsals instead of the usual three
or four and the critical response was unanimously favourable.[58] He conducted
Wozzeck again in April 1966 at the Frankfurt Opera in a new production by Wielan
d Wagner.[59] Wieland had already invited him to join the Bayreuth Festival s ro
ster for Parsifal later in the seasonafter Hans Knappertsbusch diedand he returned
to conduct revivals in 1967, 1968 and 1970.[60] He also conducted performances
of Wagner s Tristan und Isolde by the Bayreuth company at the Osaka Festival in
Japan in 1967, but the lack of adequate rehearsal made it an experience he later
said he "would rather forget".[61] By contrast, hIs conducting of the new produ
ction (by Vclav Kalk) of Debussy s Pellas et Mlisande at Covent Garden in 1969 was pr
aised for its combination of "delicacy and sumptuousness".[62]
Apart from Pli selon pli, the only substantial new work to emerge in the first h
alf of the 1960s was the final version of book 2 of his Structures for two piano
s. Boulez and Yvonne Loriod gave the premiere at the Donaueschinger Musiktage in
October 1961.[63] Midway through the decade, however, Boulez appeared to find h
is voice again. clat, a short and brilliant piece for small ensemble, had its fir
st performance in Los Angeles in March 1965 and by 1970 it had grown into a subs
tantial half-hour work, clat/Multiples.[64] In 1968 the final version of Figures,
Doubles, Prismes for large orchestra, a version of two movements from Livre pou
r quatuor for string orchestra (entitled Livre pour codes) and the two versions
of Domaines (clarinet solo / clarinet and ensemble) all received first performan
ces.[65]
19711977: London and New York[edit]
Boulez first conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in February 1964, in an unlike
ly placethe seaside resort of Worthingand in some unlikely repertoire, accompanyin
g Vladimir Ashkenazy in a Chopin piano concerto ("It was terrible, I felt like a
waiter who keeps dropping the plates").[66] His appearances with the orchestra
over the next five years included his dbuts at the Proms and at Carnegie Hall (19
65), and a tour to Prague, Berlin, Moscow and Leningrad (1967). In January 1969
William Glock, Controller of Music at the BBC, announced his appointment as Chie
f Conductor.[67]
Programme for NYPO Rug Concert 17 June 1973
Two months later Boulez conducted the New York Philharmonic for the first time.[
68] His performances so impressed both orchestra and management that he was offe
red the chief conductorship in succession to Leonard Bernstein. Glock was dismay
ed and tried to persuade him that accepting the New York position would detract
from his work in London and his ability to compose but Boulez could not resist t
he opportunity (as Glock put it) "to reform the music-making of both these world

cities" and in June the New York appointment was confirmed.[69][70]

His tenure in New York lasted between 1971 and 1977 and was not an unqualified s
uccess. The dependence on a subscription audience limited his programming. He in
troduced more classics from the first half of the twentieth-century. With earlie
r repertoire he shifted the focus away from familiar staples towards less well-k
nown works: in the 197273 season, for example, he conducted Schtz s Fili mi, Absol
om, Haydn s L incontro improvviso and Prokofiev s Suite from Chout.[71] Performa
nces of new works were relatively rare. The players admired his musicianship but
came to regard him as dry and unemotional by comparison with his predecessor, a
lthough it was widely accepted that he improved the standard of playing.[72] He
returned on only three occasions to the orchestra in later years.[73]
His time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was altogether happier. With the resour
ces of the BBC behind him he could be more uncompromising in his choice of reper
toire.[72] There were occasional forays into the nineteenth century, particularl
y at the Proms (Beethoven s Missa Solemnis in 1972; the Brahms German Requiem in
1973), but for the most part he worked intensively with the orchestra on the mu
sic of the twentieth-century. He conducted works by leading British composers su
ch as Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Daviesalthough Britten and Tippett we
re absent from his programmes.[74] His relations with the musicians were general
ly excellent.[75] He was Chief Conductor between 1971 and 1975, continuing as Ch
ief Guest Conductor until 1977. Thereafter he returned to the orchestra frequent
ly until his last appearance at a Prom in August 2008, when he conducted a conce
rt of the music of Leo Janek, including his Glagolitic Mass.[76] In January 2016 BB
C Four broadcast the hour-long documentary Pierre Boulez at the BBC: Master and
Maverick.[77]
In both cities he sought out venues where music could be presented more informal
ly: in New York he began a series of "Rug Concerts"when the seats in Avery Fisher
Hall were taken out and the audience sat on the floorand a series called "Prospe
ctive Encounters" in Greenwich Village.[78] In London he presented concerts at t
he Roundhouse, a former railway turntable shed which Peter Brook had also used f
or radical theatre productions. His aim was "to create a feeling that we are all
, audience, players and myself, taking part in an act of exploration."[79]
In 1972 Wolfgang Wagner, who had succeeded his brother Wieland as Director of th
e Bayreuth Festival, invited Boulez to conduct the 1976 centenary production of
Richard Wagner s Der Ring des Nibelungen.[80] The director was Patrice Chreau. Hi
ghly controversial in its first year, by its final year in 1980 it was praised a
s one of the great Wagner productions. It was televised around the world.[81]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, few new works emerged during this period: Cummings ist d
er Dichter was first performed in Stuttgart in September 1970. In April 1975 Rit
uel in memoriam Bruno Maderna received its premiere in London andMessagesquisse,
a short piece for eight cellos in July 1977 in La Rochelle.[82]
19771992: IRCAM[edit]
The IRCAM building at the Centre Pompidou
In 1970 Boulez was asked by President Pompidou to return to France and to set up
an institute specializing in musical research and creation at the arts complex
(now known as the Centre Georges Pompidou), which was planned for the Beaubourg
district of Paris. The Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musiqu
e (IRCAM) opened in 1977.
Boulez had in mind as a model the Bauhaus, which had provided a meeting place fo
r artists and scientists of all disciplines.[83] IRCAM s aims would include rese
arch into acoustics, instrumental design and the use of computers in composition
.[1] The original building was constructed underground, partly to isolate it aco
ustically and partly so as not to obstruct the view of the Saint-Merri church (a
n above-ground extension was added later).[84] The institution was criticised fo
r absorbing too much state subsidy, Boulez for wielding too much power.[1] At th
e same time Boulez founded the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a virtuoso ensemble w
hich specialised in the performance of twentieth-century music and the creation
of new works.[85]

Boulez wrote a series of pieces which used the potential developed at IRCAM elec
tronically to transform sound in real time. The first of these were Rpons (198184)
, a large-scale work for soloists and ensemble, and Dialogue de l ombre double (
1985), a more intimate work for clarinet and electronics. The desire to expand u
nrealized possibilities also led him to revise earlier works. HIs cantata on poe
ms by Ren Char, Le visage nuptial (1946) was radically re-worked, reaching its fi
nal form in 1989. The twelve miniatures for piano, Notations (1945), were, from
the 1970s onwards, in the process of being transformed into a cycle for large or
chestra. The first four movements (I-IV) were performed by Daniel Barenboim and
the Orchestre de Paris in 1980.[86]
In 1979 he embarked with Patrice Chreau on an operatic project scarcely less grou
ndbreaking than the Ring: the first performances of the three-act version of Alb
an Berg s Lulu at the Paris Opera in the completion by Friedrich Cerha.[87] Othe
rwise Boulez scaled back his conducting commitments to concentrate on IRCAM. The
majority of his appearances during this period were with his own Ensemble Inter
contemporainincluding tours to the United States (1986), Australia (1988), the So
viet Union (1990) and Canada (1991)although he also renewed his links in the 1980
s with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.[88]
From 1976 to 1995, he held the Chair in Invention, technique et langage en musiq
ue at the Collge de France.[89]
19922006: Return to conducting[edit]
Boulez at a conference at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, in 2004
In 1992 Boulez gave up the directorship of IRCAM to concentrate on composing and
conducting. He was succeeded by Laurent Bayle.[90]
The previous year he began a series of annual residencies with the Cleveland Orc
hestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1995 he was named Principal Guest
Conductor in Chicago, only the third conductor to hold that position in the orch
estra s history. He held the post until 2005, when he became Conductor Emeritus.
[91] His 70th birthday in 1995 was marked by a six-month retrospective tour with
the London Symphony Orchestra, taking in Paris, Vienna and New York, which culm
inated in a residency in Tokyo, where he was joined by the Ensemble Intercontemp
orain and the CSO.[92] In 2001 Boulez conducted a major Bartok cycle with the Or
chestre de Paris.[90]
This period also marked a return to the opera house. He worked with Peter Stein
on two productions: Debussys Pellas et Mlisande (1992, Welsh National Opera[93] and
Thtre du Chtelet, Paris); and Arnold Schoenberg s Moses und Aron (1995, Netherland
s Opera[94] and Salzburg Festival). At the Aix-en-Provence Festival he conducted
Bartk s Bluebeard s Castle (1998, directed byPina Bausch)[95] and a triple bill
of music-theatre pieces: Falla s El retablo de maese Pedro, Stravinsky s Renard
and Schoenberg s Pierrot lunaire with Anja Silja (2003, directed by Klaus Michae
l Gruber).[96] In 2000 he conducted Stravinsky s Le sacre du printemps and Symph
ony of Psalms for the Zingaro equestrian theatre in an exhibition centre near Ch
arles de Gaulle Airport.[97] In 2004 and 2005 he returned to Bayreuth to conduct
a controversial new production of Parsifal directed by Christoph Schlingensief.
[98]
Boulez wrote two further pieces using the resources of IRCAM: ...explosante-fixe
... (1993), which had its origins in 1972 as a tribute to Stravinsky; and Anthmes
II (1997) for solo violin and electronics. In 1998 he completed work on a large
piece for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists, Sur Incises, for
which he was awarded the 2001 Grawemeyer Prize for composition,[99] and he contr
ibuted a short piece for six instruments (Petite driveen cho) to a 90th birthday tr
ibute to Elliott Carter in the British journal Tempo.[100] In 1999 the orchestra
l version of Notation VII was given its first performance in Chicago.[90]
He continued to involve himself closely in institutional organisation. He co-fou
nded the Cit de la Musique, which opened in La Villette on the outskirts of Paris
in 1995.[22] Consisting of a modular concert hall, museum and mediathequewith th
e Paris Conservatoire on an adjacent siteit became the home to the Ensemble Inter
contemporain and attracted a diverse audience.[101] In 2004, he co-founded the L

ucerne Festival Academy, an orchestral institute for young musicians, dedicated

to music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.[102] For the next ten year
s he spent the last three weeks of summer working with young composers and condu
cting programmes with the Academy s orchestra.[103]
20062016: Last years[edit]
Pierre Boulez at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2008 with the SWR Sinfonieorcheste
r Baden-Baden und Freiburg
Boulez s last completed work was Drive 2 (2006) a 50-minute work for eleven instr
uments, developed from a piece first heard in 1988. He left a number of major co
mpositional projects unfinished, including the remaining Notations for orchestra
.
He remained active as a conductor over the next six years. In 2007 he was re-uni
ted with Chreau for a production of Leo Janek s From the House of the Dead, (Theater
an der Wien, Amsterdam and Aix).[104] In April of the same year, as part of the
Festtage in Berlin, Boulez and Daniel Barenboim presented a cycle of the Mahler
symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin (Boulez conducted numbers 2, 3, 4, 6 a
nd 8), repeating it over twelve days at Carnegie Hall in 2009.[105] In late 2007
the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble Intercontemporain presented a major ret
rospective of Boulez s music.[106]
His appearances became more infrequent after an eye operation in 2010 left him w
ith severely impaired sight. Other health problems included a shoulder injury re
sulting from a fall.[107] In late 2011, when he was already quite frail,[108] he
led the combined Ensemble Intercontemporain and Lucerne Festival Academy, with
the soprano Barbara Hannigan, in a tour of six European cities of his ownPli sel
on pli.[109] His final appearance as a conductor was in Salzburg on 28 January 2
012 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Mitsuko Uchida in a programme of
Schoenberg (Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene and the Piano Concerto), Mozar
t (Piano Concerto No.19 in F major K459) and Stravinsky (Pulcinella Suite).[110]
Thereafter he cancelled all conducting engagements.
Later in 2012 he worked with the Diotima Quartet, making final revisions to his
only string quartet, Livre pour quatuor, begun in 1948.[111] In May 2013, to mar
k the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Le sacre du printemps, he ga
ve a public interview with Robert Piencikowski at the Thtre des Champs-lyses in Pari
s about his encounters with Stravinsky.[112] The same year he oversaw the releas
e on Deutsche Grammophon of Pierre Boulez: Complete Works, a survey of all his a
uthorised compositions. He remained Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy unt
il 2014, but his health prevented him from taking part in the many celebrations
held across the world for his 90th birthday in 2015.[113]
He died on 5 January 2016 at his home in Baden-Baden.[114] He was buried on 13 J
anuary in Baden-Baden s main cemetery following a private funeral service at the
town s Stiftskirche. At a memorial service the next day at the Church of SaintSulpice in Paris, eulogists included Daniel Barenboim, Renzo Piano, and Laurent
Bayle, president of the Philharmonie de Paris,[115] whose large concert hall had
been inaugurated the previous year, thanks in no small measure to Boulez s infl
uence.
Compositions[edit]
Student works[edit]
Olivier Messiaen
Boulez s earliest surviving compositions date from his school days in 194243, mos
tly songs on texts by Baudelaire, Gautier and Rilke.[116] Gerald Bennett describ
es them as "modest, delicate and rather anonymous [employing] a certain number o
f standard elements of French salon music of the timewhole-tone scales, pentatoni
c scales and polytonality".[117] As a student at the Conservatoire Boulez compos
ed a series of pieces influenced first by Honegger (Prelude, Toccata and Scherzo
and Nocturne for solo piano (194445))[118] and then by Messiaen (Trois psalmodie
sfor piano (1945) and a Quartet for four ondes martenot (194546)).[119]

It is in the Onze notations pour orchestre that Bennett first detects the influe
nce of Webern: "virtually diatonic passages alternate with others in a style mor
e nearly resembling Webern s own jagged chromaticism."[120] This was an early at
tempt to orchestrate eleven of the Douze notations pour piano (1946). In the mid
-1970s Boulez embarked on a second, more radical transformation of these short p
iano pieces into extended works for large orchestra,[121] a project which pre-oc
cupied him to the end of his life, nearly seventy years after the original compo
sition. This is only the most extreme example of a lifelong tendency to revisit
earlier works: "as long as my ideas have not exhausted every possibility of prol
iferation they stay in my mind."[122]
First published works[edit]
Before the rehabilitation of the Notations, the Sonatine pour flte et piano (1946
) was the first work Boulez acknowledged as part of his canon. A serial work of
great energy, its single-movement form was influenced by Schoenbergs Chamber Symp
hony No.1.[123] Bennett finds in it a tone new to Boulezs writing: "a sharp, brit
tle violence juxtaposed against an extreme sensitivity and delicacy."[124]In the
First Piano Sonata (1946) Jameux highlights the sheer number of different kinds
of attack in its two short movementsand the frequent accelerations of tempo in t
he second movementwhich together suggest the feeling of "instrumental delirium."[
125]
There then followed two cantatas based on the poetry of Ren Char. Of Le visage nu
ptial Griffiths observes that "Chars five poems speak in hard-edged surrealist im
agery of an ecstatic sexual passion", which Boulez reflected in music "on the bo
rders of fevered hysteria". He explored modes of articulation between song and s
peech, as well as quarter-tones.[126] In its original version (194647) the piece
was scored for small forces (soprano, contralto, two ondes Martenot, piano and p
ercussion). Forty years later Boulez arrived at the definitive version for sopra
no, mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra (198589).[127] Le soleil des eaux (1948)
originated in incidental music for a radio drama by Char. It went though three f
urther versions before reaching its final form in 1965 as a piece for soprano, m
ixed chorus and orchestra.[128] The first movement (Complainte du lzard amoureux)
is a love song addressed by a lizard to a goldfinch in the heat of a summer day
, in an atmosphere which Jameux characterises as "fluid and nonchalant".[129] By
contrast the second movement (La Sorgue) is described by Griffiths as a violent
and incantatory protest against the pollution of the river Sorgue, "with shouti
ng chorus and a bounding quaver rhythm".[130]
The Second Piano Sonata (194748) is a half-hour work of extreme virtuosity. Its f
our movements follow the standard pattern of a classical sonata but in each of t
hem Boulez subverts the traditional model. Of the two middle movements Boulez sa
id: I tried to disintegrate slow movement form by the use of the trope, and repet
itive scherzo form by the use of variation form. He characterised this as a delib
erate attack on Schoenbergs attempts in his later music to revive older forms.[13
1] For Griffiths the violent character of much of the music is not just superfici
al: it is expressive of a whole aesthetic of annihilation, and in particular of
a need to obliterate what had gone before.[132]When Boulez played the work for Co
pland, the older composer asked "But must we start a revolution all over again?""
Mais oui," Boulez replied, "sans piti".[133]
Total serialism[edit]
That revolution entered its most extreme phase in 195052, when Boulez developed a
technique in which not only pitch but the other parameters of musicduration, dyn
amic level and attackwere organised according to serial principles, an approach k
nown as total serialism or punctualism. Messaien had already made an experiment
in this direction in his Mode de valeurs et dintensit for piano (1949). Boulez wen
t further, ordering each parameter into sets of twelve and prescribing no repeti
tion until all twelve had sounded. According to Alex Ross the resulting surfeit o
f ever-changing musical data has the effect of erasing at any given point previou
s impressions the listener may have formed: the present moment is all there is.[13
4]
Boulez s works in this idiom consist of Polyphonie X (195051; withdrawn) for 18 i
nstruments, the two musique concrte tudes (195152; withdrawn), and Structures, Book

I for two pianos (195152).[135] Gyrgy Ligeti published a detailed analysis of the
first "chapter" of this last piece in 1958, concluding that its "ascetic attitu
de [was] akin to compulsion neurosis", and that Boulez "had to break away from i
t... and so he created the sensual, feline world of the Marteau ".[136]
Le marteau sans matre[edit]
Structures, Book I was a turning point for Boulez. Recognising a lack of express
ive flexibility in the language (outlined in his essay "At the Limit of Fertile
Land...") Boulez refined his compositional language, loosening the strictness of
total serialism into a more supple and strongly gestural music. His first ventu
re into this new kind of serialism was a work for twelve solo voices titled Oubl
i signal lapid (1952), but it was withdrawn after a single performance. Its mater
ial was reused in the 1970 composition Cummings ist der Dichter.[137]
Boulez s strongest achievement in this method is Le marteau sans matre (The Hamme
r without a Master) for ensemble and voice, from 1953 to 1957, a "keystone of 20
th-century music".[138]
Boulez described one of the work s innovations, called "pitch multiplication", i
n several articles, most importantly in the chapter "Musical Technique" in Boule
z 1971. It was Lev Koblyakov, however, who first described its presence in the t
hree "L artisanat furieux" movements of Le marteau sans matre,[139] in his 1981 d
octoral thesis.[140] However, an explanation of the processes themselves was not
made until 1993.[141] Other techniques used in the "Bourreaux de solitude" cycl
e were first described by Ulrich Mosch,[142] and later fully elaborated by him.[
143]
Controlled chance[edit]
Why compose works that have to be re-created every time they are performed? Beca
use definitive, once-and-for-all developments seem no longer appropriate to musi
cal thought as it is today, or to the actual state that we have reached in the e
volution of musical technique, which is increasingly concerned with the investig
ation of a relative world, a permanent discovering rather like the state of p
ermanent revolution .
Pierre Boulez ("Sonate, que me veux-tu?", 1960)[144]
From the 1950s, beginning with the Third Piano Sonata (195557/63), Boulez experim
ented with what he called "controlled chance" and he developed his views on alea
toric music in the articles "Ala" and "Sonate, que me veux-tu?"[145] His use of c
hance, which he would later employ in compositions like clat (1965), Domaines (19
6168) and Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna (197475), is very different from that i
n the works of, for example, John Cage. While in Cage s music the performers are
often given the freedom to create completely unforeseen sounds, with the object
of removing the composer s intention from the music, in works by Boulez they on
ly get to choose between possibilities that have been written out in detail by t
he composer a method that, when applied to the successional order of sections, is of
ten described as "mobile form", a formal technique innovated by his colleague Ea
rle Brown in 1952 and originally inspired by Alexander Calder s sculptures.[146]
Works with electronics[edit]
Boulez likened the experience of playing taped music in a concert hall to a "cre
matorium ceremony". The only wholly pre-recorded pieces he composed were the Deu
x Etudes (1951, withdrawn). He first combined orchestra and electronics in Posie
pour pouvoir (1958), using a text by Henri Michaux. He created a quasi-theatrica
l space with the orchestra and two conductors on platforms in a mounting spiral,
and with the speakers placed behind the audience. His aim was to achieve contin
uity between what he described as "the heterogeneous character of the two media,
" using percussion to mediate between them. He was dissatisfied with the result
and never returned to the piece.[147]
Unfinished works[edit]
A distinction may be made between works which Boulez was actively progressing an
d those which he appears to have put to one side despite their potential for fur
ther development. As for the latter category, the archives contain two unpublish
ed movements of the Third Piano Sonata[148] and further sections of clat/Multiple
s ("it is almost finished ... I have practically twice the length of the work as
I play it now").[149] At one stage he planned to add a second part, of equal le

ngth, to Rpons, creating a work which would occupy a full evening. [150]
As for works Boulez was known to be working on in his later years, the premieres
of two further orchestral Notations (V and VI) were announced by the Chicago Sy
mphony Orchestra for May 2006 but later postponed.[151] In an interview in 2010
Boulez said that he had finished Notation V in short score and was now working o
n Notation VIII.[149] He was in the process of developing Anthmes 2 into a largescale work for violin and orchestra for Anne-Sophie Mutter[152] and spoke of wri
ting an opera based on Beckett s Waiting For Godot.[153] None of these projects
came to fruition.
Character and personal life[edit]
As a young man Boulez was an explosive, often confrontational figure. Jean-Louis
Barrault, who knew him in his twenties, caught the contradictions in his person
ality: "his powerful aggressiveness was a sign of creative passion, a particular
blend of intransigence and humour, the way his moods of affection and insolence
succeeded one another, all these had drawn us near to him."[154] Messiaen said
later: "He was in revolt against everything."[155] Indeed at one point Boulez tu
rned against Messiaen, describing his Trois petites liturgies de la prsence divin
e as brothel music and saying that the Turangalla-symphonie made him vomit.[22] It
was five years before relations were restored.[156]
Senecio, Head of a Man(1922) by Paul Klee
Alex Ross, in his book The Rest is Noise, described him as a bully. Boulez did n
ot disagree: Certainly I was a bully. Im not ashamed of it at all. The hostility o
f the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was v
ery strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society.[21] Boulez s hostil
ity was not only directed against the establishment. When, in 1951, Henri Dutill
eux, who was only a few years older than Boulez, presented his First Symphony, B
oulez greeted him by turning his back.[157] As Dutilleux said many years later:
"the problem was he had a lot more power than me. Indeed, he has often seemed to
enjoy expressing his contempt for other musicians who do not share his musical
views."[158] The most notorious instance of this is Boulez s declaration in 1952
that "any musician who has not experienced I do not say understood, but truly exper
ienced the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelev
ant to the needs of his epoch."[159]
On the other hand, those who knew him well often referred to his loyalty, both t
o individuals and to organisations.[160] When the great French conductor Roger Ds
ormire was paralysed by a stroke in 1952 Boulez sent scripts to French Radio in Ds
ormire s name so that his mentor could collect the fee.[161] The writer Jean Verm
eil, who observed Boulez in the 1990s in the company of Jean Batigne (founder of
the Percussions de Strasbourg), discovered "a Boulez asking about the health of
a musician in the Strasbourg orchestra, about another player s children, a Boul
ez who knew everyone by name and who reacted to each person s news with sadness
or with joy."[162] In later life, he was known for his charm and personal warmth
.[1] Of his humour, Gerard McBurney wrote that it "depended on his twinkling eye
s, his perfect timing, his infectious schoolboy giggle, and his reckless compuls
ion always to say what the other person would not expect."[163] His close friend
s included Daniel Barenboim and Patrice Chreau.[164]
Boulez had a lifelong interest in the visual arts. He wrote extensively about th
e painter Paul Klee and collected contemporary art, including works by Joan Mir,
Francis Bacon, Nicholas de Stal and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, all of whom he
knew personally.[165] He was also a keen walker and, when he was at home in Bade
n-Baden, spent the late afternoons and much of the weekends walking in the Black
Forest.[166]
In its obituary, The New York Times reported that "about his private life he rem
ained tightly guarded" and that apart from his older sister, Jeanne, "few others
were able to break through his reserve."[167] Boulez acknowledged to the biogra
pher Joan Peyser that there was a passionate affair in 1946, described as "inten
se and tormented" and which Peyser suggested was the trigger for the "wild, cour
ageous works" of that period. Aside from this his personal life remained almost

entirely invisible.[168] Music critic Norman Lebrecht, who knew Boulez personall
y, speculated that he was gay, citing the fact that for many years he shared his
home in Baden-Baden with Hans Messmer,[1] whom he sometimes referred to as his
valet.[169] In his portrait for The New Yorker, published shortly after Boulez s
death under the title The Magus, Alex Ross described him as "affable, implacabl
e, unknowable."[153]
Conducting[edit]
Boulez was one of the leading conductors of the second half of the twentieth cen
tury. In a career lasting more than sixty years he directed most of the world s
major orchestras. He was entirely self-taught, although he said that he learnt a
great dealboth about the practicalities of conducting and about orchestrationfrom
attending Roger Dsormire s rehearsals.[170] He also credited Hans Rosbaud and Geo
rge Szell as influential mentors.[171]
Pierre Boulez and George Szell outside Severance Hall in Cleveland. Photo by Pet
er Hastings. Courtesy of the Cleveland Orchestra Archives.
Explaining why he turned to conducting, Boulez said that he was convinced that t
he best possible training for a composer was "to have to play or conduct his own
works and to face their difficulties of execution"yet on a practical level he so
metimes struggled to find time to compose around his conducting commitments.[172
] The writer and pianist Susan Bradshaw thought this was deliberate and related
to a sense of being overshadowed as a composer by Stockhausen, who from the late
1950s was increasingly prolific. "His conducting career made it impossible for
him to compose. And he probably preferred it this way." The French aesthetician
Pierre Souvchinsky disagreed: "Boulez became a conductor because he had a great
gift for it".[173]
Not everyone agreed about the greatness of that gift. For the conductor Otto Kle
mperer he was "without doubt the only man of his generation who is an outstandin
g conductor and musician."[174] For the critic Hans Keller he was "incapable of
phrasing. It s as simple as that ... That s why he conducts Bach, Beethoven or W
ebern in exactly the same way."[175] His biographer Joan Peyser considered that
"in general Boulez conducts what he loves magnificently, conducts what he likes
very well and, with rare exceptions, gives stiff performances of the classic and
romantic repertoire."[176]
He was primarily known for his polished interpretations of twentieth-century cla
ssics Stravinsky and Bartk, Debussy and Ravel, Mahler and Varse, Schoenberg, Webern an
d Berg[177] as well as for authoritative performances of contemporary music. Althou
gh in the first part of his career he conducted a wide range of earlier composer
s, only Berlioz and Wagner remained a consistent presence in his repertoire. In
1984 he collaborated with Frank Zappa, conducting the Ensemble Intercontemporain
in three of Zappa s pieces.
Clarity, precision, rhythmic agility and a respect for the composers intentions
as notated in the musical score are the hallmarks of his conducting style.[178]
[179][180][181] Oliver Knussen, himself a distinguished composer-conductor, obse
rved that: "his rehearsals are models of clear-headedness and professional court
esyhe effortlessly commands respect."[182] His rhythmic precision, achieved witho
ut the use of a baton, combined with his acute tonal discernment to engender man
y orchestral legends: "There are countless stories of him detecting, for example
, faulty intonation from the third oboe in a complex orchestral texture," Paul G
riffiths wrote in The New York Times.[167]
When asked about the audience, Boulez said: "For modern music, I prefer an audie
nce that has vertical intereststhat is, people who are interested in modern movie
s, modern art, modern literature" rather than "those who are interested in Beeth
oven as they would be in a cup of tea".[183]
Opera[edit]
The 1976 centenary production of Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festiva
l, conducted by Boulez

Boulez also conducted in the opera house. His chosen repertoire was small and in
cluded no Italian opera. Apart from Wagner, he conducted only twentieth-century
works. Things might have been different had his attempts to find a long-term col
laborator, and to reform operatic institutions, not been consistently frustrated
.
Of his early work with Wieland Wagner on Wozzeck and Parsifal Boulez said: "I wo
uld willingly have hitched, if not my entire fate, then at least a part of it, t
o someone like him, for [our] discussions about music and productions were thril
ling." They planned other productions together, including Elektra, Boris Godunov
and Don Giovanni, but by the time rehearsals for their Bayreuth Parsifal began
Wieland was already gravely ill and he died in October 1966.[184]
When the Frankfurt Wozzeck was revived after Wieland s death Boulez was deeply d
isillusioned by the working conditions: "there was no rehearsal, no care taken o
ver anything. The cynicism of the way an opera house like that was run disgusted
me. It still disgusts me." He later said[61] that it was this experience which
prompted his notorious remarks in an interview the following year in Der Spiegel
, in which he claimed that "no opera worth mentioning had been composed since 19
35", that "a Beatles record is certainly cleverer (and shorter) than a Henze ope
ra" and that "the most elegant" solution to opera s moribund condition would be
"to blow the opera houses up".[185]
In 1967, not long after the Spiegel interview Boulez, theatre director Jean Vila
r and choreographer Maurice Bjart were asked to devise a scheme for the reform of
the Paris Opra, with a view to Boulez becoming its music director. Their planto c
lose the Opra-Comique, merge its orchestra with that of the Palais Garnier, end p
ermanent singer contracts and focus on a smaller repertoirewas derailed by the po
litical fallout from the 1968 student protests.[186] Later, in the mid-1980s, Bo
ulez became Vice President of the planned Opra Bastille in Paris, working with Da
niel Barenboim, who was to be its music director. In 1988 the incoming Culture M
inister Jack Lang appointed Pierre Berg (president of Yves Saint Laurent) as Dire
ctor. Berg dismissed Barenboim and Boulez withdrew in solidarity, taking his plan
ned productions with him.[187]
In the event Boulez conducted only specific projectsoften in landmark productions
by leading stage directorswhen he could be satisfied that conditions were right.
Thanks to his years with the Barrault company, the theatrical dimension was as
important to him as the musical and he always attended staging rehearsals.[188]
Patrice Chreau
For the centenary Ring in Bayreuth, Boulez originally asked Ingmar Bergman then
Peter Brook to direct, both of whom refused. Peter Stein initially agreed but wi
thdrew in 1974.[189] Patrice Chreau, who was primarily a theatre director, accept
ed and went on to create one of the defining opera productions of modern times,
helping to usher in the era ofRegietheater. He treated the story in part as an a
llegory of capitalism, drawing on ideas that George Bernard Shaw explored in The
Perfect Wagnerite in 1898.[81] He updated the action to the 19th and 20th centu
ries, using imagery of the industrial age, and he achieved an unprecedented degr
ee of naturalism in the singers performances. Boulez s conducting was no less c
ontroversial, emphasising continuity, flexibility and transparency over mythic g
randeur and weight.[190] In its first year the production was greeted with noisy
hostility by the conservative audience, and a core of around thirty orchestral
musicians refused to work with Boulez in subsequent seasons.[191] Both productio
n and musical realisation grew in stature over the following four years and by t
he end of the final cycle in 1980 they received a 45-minute ovation.[167] Boulez
worked with Chreau again on Berg s Lulu in Paris (1979) and Janek s From the House
of the Dead in Vienna (2007).
His other preferred director was Peter Stein. Of Debussy s Pellas et Mlisande Boul
ez had written: "I don t like the French tradition of sweetness and gentleness .
.. [the work] is not gentle at all, but cruel and mysterious."[192] Stein realis
ed that vision in his staging for WNO in 1992, John Rockwell describing it as "a
n abstract, angry Pellas, one perhaps over-intent on emphasizing the score s link

s to modernity".[193] David Stevens described their 1995 production of Schoenber

g s Moses und Aron in Amsterdam as "theatrically and musically thrilling."[194]
From the mid-1960s Boulez spoke of composing an opera himself. His attempts to f
ind a librettist were unsuccessful: "both times the writer has died on me, so I
m a bit superstitious about looking for a third candidate".[61] From the late 19
60s he exchanged ideas with the radical French playwright and novelist Jean Gene
t and parts of a draft libretto were found among Genets papers after his death in
1986.[195] He later turned to the German playwright Heiner Mller, who was workin
g on a reduction of Aeschylus s The Oresteia for Boulez when he died in 1995, ag
ain without leaving anything usable.[61] In the 1980s he discussed with Patrice
Chreau an adaptation of Genets 1961 play Les Paravents (The Screens), which was pl
anned for the 1989 opening of the Opra Bastille in Paris, but this too came to no
thing.[196] In a 1996 interview Boulez said that he was thinking of Edward Bond
s The War Plays or Lear, but only thinking.[61] When news emerged in 2010 that he
was working on an opera based on Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot, few believed
such an ambitious undertaking could be realised so late in the day.[195]
Recording[edit]
Boulez s first recordings date from his time with the Domaine musical in the lat
e 1950s and early 1960s and were made for the French Vega label. They document h
is first thoughts on works which he would subsequently re-record (such as Varse s
Intgrales and Schoenberg s Chamber Symphony No.1), as well as pieces to which he
did not return in the studio (such as Stravinsky s Renard and Stockhausen s Zei
tmae). They also include two of his five recordings of Le marteau sans matre (with
contraltos Marie-Thrse Cahn in 1956 and Jeanne Deroubaix in 1964). In 2015 Univer
sal Music brought together the recordings from this period in a 10-CD set.[197]
Arnold Schoenberg by Egon Schiele (1917)
Between 1966 and 1989 he recorded for Columbia Records (later Sony Classical). A
mong the first projects were the Paris Wozzeck (with Walter Berry) and the Coven
t Garden Pellas et Mlisande(with George Shirley and Elisabeth Sderstrm). He made a h
ighly-praised recording of Le sacre du printemps with the Cleveland Orchestra an
d a number of recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, including rarities
such as Berlioz s Llio and the first complete recording of Mahler s Das klagende
Lied. The LSO also contributed to the Webern edition which Boulez supervised, co
nsisting of all the works with opus numbers. When he took up his posts with the
New York Philharmonic and BBC Symphony Orchestras, and later the Ensemble Interc
ontemporain, most recordings were made with them. One of the outstanding achieve
ments of the Columbia years was a wide-ranging survey of the music of Schoenberg
, including Gurrelieder, Moses und Aron,Erwartung and Pierrot lunaire, but also
less well-known works such as Die Jakobsleiter and the unaccompanied choral musi
c. As for Boulez s own music, there were two further recordings of Le marteau sa
ns matre (with Yvonne Minton in 1972 and Elisabeth Laurence in 1985), a first rec
ording of Pli selon pli (with Halina ukomska as soprano soloist) and recordings o
f Rituel andclat/Multiples. In 2014 Sony Classical issued Pierre BoulezThe Complet
e Columbia Album Collection on 67 CDs.[198]
Three major operatic projects from this period were picked up by other labels: t
he Bayreuth Ring was released on video and LP by Philips; the Bayreuth Parsifal
and Paris Lulu were recorded forDeutsche Grammophon.
In the 1980s he also recorded for the Erato label, mostly with the Ensemble Inte
rcontemporain, with a greater emphasis on the music of his contemporaries (Berio
, Ligeti, Carter, Donatoni, Xenakis and Kurtg). There was a Stravinsky cycleinclud
ing his only recordings of the complete Pulcinella and The Soldier s Taleas well
as a survey of some of his own music, including a second recording of Pli selon
pli (with Phyllis Bryn-Julson as soloist) and recordings of Le visage nuptial, L
e soleil des eaux and Figures, Double, Prismes. In 2015 Erato issued Pierre Boul
ezThe Complete Erato Recordings on 14 CDs.[199]
From 1991 onwards Boulez recorded under an exclusive contract with Deutsche Gram
mophon. It centred on the orchestras of Chicago and Cleveland in the United Stat
es and Vienna and Berlin in Europe.[200] He re-recorded much of his core reperto

irethe orchestral music of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Bartokand oversaw a seco
nd Webern edition, extending this time to the unpublished works. HIs own late mu
sic featured prominently, including Rpons, ...explosante-fixe... and Sur Incises.
There was a fifth recording of Le marteau sans matre (with Hilary Summers in 200
2) and a third of Pli selon pli (with Christine Schfer) in its definitive version
, incorporating major revisions made in the late 1980s. Composers new to his dis
cography included Richard Strauss, Szymanowski and Anton Brucknerhis recording of
the Eighth Symphony met with particular acclaim.[201]The most significant addit
ion to his recorded repertoire was the multi-orchestra cycle of the Mahler symph
onies and vocal works with orchestra. It began with the Vienna Philharmonic Orch
estra in a 1994 studio recording of the Sixth Symphony and ended with the same o
rchestra in a live recording from the 2011 Salzburg Festival of Das klagende Lie
d (this time omitting Waldmrchen). Coupled with Berg s Lulu-Suite, it was his fin
al recording.
All of Boulez s recordings for Deutsche Grammophon have been collected into boxe
d sets of CDs. In 2015 DG issued a 44-CD set Boulez20th Century for his 90th birt
hday. DVDs of two opera productions are also available on DG: the WNO Pellas et Ml
isande and the Vienna From the House of the Dead.
In addition, many hundreds of concerts conducted by Boulez are held in the archi
ves of radio stations and orchestras. Occasional releases provide a glimpse of t
he wealth of material they contain. In 2005, for example, the Chicago Symphony O
rchestra released a 2-CD set of broadcasts by Boulez, focussing in particular on
works which he had not otherwise recorded, including Janek s Glagolitic Mass, the
suite from Debussy s Le martyre de Saint Sbastienand Messiaen s L ascension.[202
]