Pierre Boulez

[gvopedz]

Composer, conductor, polemicist and iconoclast Pierre Boulez was born 100 years ago and, on his death in 2016, left classical music utterly changed.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/08/pierre-boulez-centenary--he-jolted-us-out-of-our-comfort-zone-antonio-pappano-martyn-brabbins-and-more-on-the-composer

 

[Rabshakeh]

17 hours ago, gvopedz said:

Composer, conductor, polemicist and iconoclast Pierre Boulez was born 100 years ago and, on his death in 2016, left classical music utterly changed.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/08/pierre-boulez-centenary--he-jolted-us-out-of-our-comfort-zone-antonio-pappano-martyn-brabbins-and-more-on-the-composer

 

I read that. I was pleased to see it in the Guardian, which increasingly doesn't acknowledge this kind of music. 

One of the great masters of the 20th century, to my mind.

[mjazzg]

And mine

[gvopedz]

Yes.  Right now I am listening to the Boulez piece, Le Marteau Sans Maître

[Rabshakeh]

3 hours ago, gvopedz said:

Yes.  Right now I am listening to the Boulez piece, Le Marteau Sans Maître

Just a superb piece of music. One of the first major pieces I would play to anyone to illustrate how wonderful modernist music was.

Without wanting to bring the tone down, I may be guilty of having fallen in love with Boulez after buying the Zappa record that he conducted as a teenager. That is a terrible, contemptuous, record (no more than Zappa's greatly overrated "serious" music deserved in my view, although I am still a big Zappa guy) and nobody comes out of it looking good, but it lodged the name in my head at a young age. 

Edited January 10 by Rabshakeh

[JSngry]

It was Boulez who opened my ears to Webern, no small feat as I had years of visceral dislike to get past. But he blew right through all that more or less immediately.