Pierre Boulez (1925 – 2016) An avant-garde that marked the twentieth century – Clarín.com

The French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez died Tuesday at his vacation home in Baden-Baden, Germany, at age 90. He was born in Montbrison (Loire) on 26 March 1925. In 1941 he studied mathematics at Lyon, but the following year he settled in Paris and chose the music.

Your interests are focused first and foremost on the composition. In 1944 he attended the famous Messiaen harmony classes at the Paris Conservatory, and the following year René Leibowitz him into the secrets of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique. And, precisely, with one foot in the other Messiaen and Schoenberg, Boulez in 1952 he wrote the first book of his Structures for two pianos, a seminal work that provides the basis for postwar serialism as it moves the Viennese master formula dodecafónica the different variables of sound.

Both the composition and orchestral conducting, Boulez was self-taught. In this second category made his first practices as musical responsible for the theater company Barrault, where he worked between 1946 and 1956. In 1966, he was already directing nothing less than Parsifal in Bayreuth, invited by Wieland Wagner. He ran without baton, as it considered that the hand could be more expressive than a wooden stick.

But Boulez was much more than a composer and a director. Its intervention in all areas of musical activity was unparalleled: in composition, interpretation and dissemination, theory, essay, criticism, management. Arguably the mid-70s, with the creation of the IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic and Musical), Boulez became a kind of musical affairs minister of France. The brand new hall Philharmonie de Paris, located in the Cité de la Musique (another idea of ​​yours), can be considered a symbolic crowning work of Superminister Boulez.

His influence was not limited to the French scene. In 1971 Leonard Bernstein replaced as head of the New York Philharmonic and became cycles that orchestra on authentic festivals of the twentieth century. “The aesthetic risk the musician said on one occasion that involves contact with the public is irreplaceable; what is needed is to introduce subversion in musical organizations, instead of being proud of keeping hands clean. So in New York I tried to transform the orchestra, not to remain a traditional and reactionary body, but a place where contemporary life is shaken in all sectors “.

Its influence would be felt also in Buenos Aires. In 1954 the company came with Barrault and made contact with local composers like Francisco Kröpfl and Mauricio Kagel. Boulez did hear tapes of the first concerts of the Domaine Musical, taught the first score of an electronic book, the Study No. 1 for Stockhausen, and generously revealed the technique of serial complex Hammer ownerless finished composing work during their stay in Buenos Aires. In 1996 Boulez back in front of your most precious musical creature, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with two memorable concerts in Columbus for the Mozarteum Argentino.