Composer Pierre Boulez dies

He died at his Baden-Baden, Germany, home on Tuesday after a long illness.

He was born on 26 March 1925 in Montbrison, central France. In 1966 he moved to Germany.

Boulez led the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra during the 1970s.

“Pierre Boulez made French music shine throughout the world”, French President Francois Hollande said Wednesday in a statement.

Even conducting extravagantly romantic music such as Wagner or Mahler, Boulez was a cool and contained presence on the podium, preferring a grey business suit and tie to tuxedo and tails, his gestures communicating logic over frenzy.

Boulez’s family confirmed his death to the Paris Philharmonic Orchestra, which he helmed.

He was also known as a provocateur, someone who offered opinions on the role of music that often infuriated others – he dismissed Shostakovich as a composer who “plays with cliches most of the time”, and said that classical music’s history “seems more than ever to me a great burden”. He didn’t use a baton. He was “an extraordinary conductor and composer, who has marked his era”, French Culture minister Fleur Pellerin said.

‘I may be wrong, but I equate music with culture, ‘ he was quoted as saying in the Gramophone interview. His early music was radical and experimental, and later became progressively associated with computer technology – particularly following his foundation in 1977 of the Parisian contemporary music centre, Institute for the Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music. ‘I don’t think music is an entertainment product.

‘All these years, I’ve been trying to convince people that music is not there to please them; it’s there to disturb them’.

Boulez’s compositions were noted for their difficulty, with one of his defining works, “Le Marteau Sans Maitre” (“The Hammer Without a Master”), drawing inspiration from surrealist poetry and lacking any bass line.

Thiem, Boulez’s assistant, said he never married. Funeral plans were incomplete.