Dialogues with Boulez

Pierre Boulez is arguably classical music's most important living composer and conductor. His most famous compositions, the widely-performed Le marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli, and Le visage nuptial, have earned him the reputation as a musical provocateur, while his current role as principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has established him as patriarch and elder statesman of today's classical music scene. In this book of dialogues with author Rocco Di Pietro, Mr. Boulez reveals delightful ideas and insights on composition and imagination, listening and teaching, and muses on the nature of youth, communication, and fame. Di Pietro's unusual writing format allows the reader to more easily understand the complexities of Boulez's thinking. A firm believer in accidents, he reveals how his career took shape through a combination of coincidence and talent. Essential for recent Boulez converts and long time devotees alike. ""In these fascinating dialogues, Pierre Boulez speaks a lot about developments and trajectories, and what he says helps us understand the course his creative life has taken." This series of conversations between Rocco Di Pietro, who in the preface describes himself as a "failed composer," and Boulez himself, the mature composer and renowned conductor, presents the reader with challenging questions about composition and imagination, classical and modernist traditions, and how the arts communicate with the individual."