Pierre Boulez Quotes

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.

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.

All the people with whom I was very close at one point in my life – Stockhausen, Berio, Ligeti, Nono, Bernd Alois Zimmermann – they are all gone.

I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time.

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.

Acting and performing music is exactly the same. Therefore, an actor, for instance, who is very impressive, he’s not simply imitating or trying to imitate, but he must dominate this kind of feeling, and then he transmits it in a much stronger way.

I said if I ever conducted, I would always give myself the best chance to succeed – though sometimes, despite everything, you still fail.

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.

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.

People see me as a theoretician, but my music is also seductive, even spiritual.

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.