Pierre Boulez (born 1925) was the most important French musician after World War II. His activities as composer, conductor, and lecturist made him the uncontested leader of music in the second half of the century.

Pierre Boulez was born in Montbrison and attended a technical school, majoring in mathematics. Immediately after the war he went to Paris to study composition with Olivier Messiaen. Boulez, always a man of strong opinions, led a protest against Igor Stravinsky's neoclassic music and was one of the first French composers to adopt Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of composition. He attended the Summer School for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany, and became acquainted with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, and other young avant-garde composers who were to create musical styles for the next two decades.

In time Boulez outgrew the strict Schoenberg dogma, and on the death of the founder of the Viennese school, Boulez...