Top 19 Quotes by Pierre Boulez

I am not nostalgic about things. When you have a kind of improvement, I am not nostalgic about the past.

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.

People see me as a theoretician, but my music is also seductive, even spiritual.

Webern was a kind of 'Kamchatka of music,' an unknown country of music. That's true; for me and people of my generation, he was a radical - you couldn't be more radical than he was.

I always admired very much the virtuosity in Strauss because, really, he's a master of using the orchestra. And I like virtuosity, I must say, even if the taste of the music is not always mine.

'Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta' is a kind of expansion of chamber music.

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.

The most difficult problem in conducting is intonation. You must know what is wrong and how to correct it.

I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time.