Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) was a French composer, conductor,
and music theorist. He conducted with major orchestras in the
United States and Europe, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the
BBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago
Symphony, and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Jonathan Dunsby is professor of music theory at the Eastman
School of Music, University of Rochester. Jonathan Goldman
is associate professor of musicology at the University of
Montreal.
Arnold Whittall is emeritus professor of music at King's
College London.
"Boulez spent his career writing and composing with intensity, and
Music Lessons clearly demonstrates his ability to explain the music
art form to everyone, whether they are musicians or not. Boulez was
and remains an inspiration to those who call themselves artists,
and Music Lessons makes his teachings more accessible than ever as
the first publication in English of his groundbreaking Collège de
France lectures. This book is recommended for all music lovers,
from professionals to the casual listener."-- "Music Reference
Services Quarterly"
"Not since the nineteenth century has a composer of major stature
written so eloquently, elegantly, and profoundly as Boulez did in
these leçons. They read, engagingly, like a journal of discovery,
evolution, and defining of a personal artistic aesthetic. From
iconoclastic enfant terrible of the European avant-garde to the
equally demanding but avuncular orchestra maestro, Boulez insists
(autocratically) on the obligation of composer, performer, and
listener to think about music, not just feel it. The translations
are rendered sensitively and comprehensively, resulting in a book
of historical significance."--Bernard Rands, Pulitzer Prize- and
Grammy-winning composer and Bigelow Rosen Professor Emeritus,
Harvard University
"While also picking up steam as a composer, appearing
internationally as a conductor, and leading a computer music lab in
Paris, Pierre Boulez in his fifties and sixties was bringing his
theoretical contemplations to a summit in the lectures contained in
this volume. This is a book to set beside Schoenberg's Style and
Idea as one of the great documents of musical thought from the last
century, essential reading for young composers and all who are
concerned with where we are musically, how we got here, and whither
we might go."--Paul Griffiths, author of Modern Music: A Concise
History from Debussy to Boulez
"Readers can now take stock of the daunting, demanding Boulezian
worldview and, whether they warm to his own works or not,
appreciate him as one of the most important writers ever about
music. Although Boulez was to live over 20 years after the final
lecture, Music Lessons has the feel of a vast expository
Gesamtkunstwerk that ponders and probes musical experience to its
very essence. It ranges over music's fundamental building blocks --
its modes of organization and how we perceive it, both acoustically
and culturally -- to how memory both aids and interferes with the
process of cognition, and on to matters of notation, style, idea,
technology and tradition."--John Adams "The New York Times"
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