Pierre Boulez

(born Montbrison, France, 1925) French composer, conductor, and theorist. Studied harmony at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen and serial techniques with Rene Leibowitz, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. Boulez became known in the USA when David Tudor gave the American premiere of his Second Piano Sonata in 1950. Since the mid 1960s, he has devoted his career primarily to conducting and, from 1978, to directing the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), an institute in Paris for training and research in composition, electronic and computer techniques, acoustics, and instrument building.

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