People see me as a theoretician, but my music is also seductive, even spiritual. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
I said if I ever conducted, I would always give myself the best chance to succeed – though sometimes, despite everything, you still fail. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
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. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
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. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
My parents were so far from the music world that they couldn’t conceive how you could make a living. But for me, it was the only solution for the rest of my life. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
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. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
Conducting is more difficult than playing a single instrument. You have to know the culture, to know the score, and to project what you want to hear. Some conductors are well prepared but cannot transmit their ideas to an orchestra, and others are good communicators but have nothing to transmit because they are not absorbed enough in the score. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
I am not nostalgic about things. When you have a kind of improvement, I am not nostalgic about the past. Pierre Boulez Read Quote
