title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez moved to two small attic rooms in the Marais district of Paris, where he lived for the next thirteen years. In February 1945 he attended a private performance of Schoenberg's Wind Quintet, conducted by René Leibowitz, the composer and follower of Schoenberg. Its strict use of twelve-tone technique was a revelation to him and he organised a group of fellow students to take private lessons with Leibowitz. It was here that he also discovered the music of Webern. He eventually found Leibowitz's approach too doctrinaire and broke angrily with him in 1946 when Leibowitz tried to criticise one of his early works.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In June 1945, Boulez was one of four Conservatoire students awarded "premier prix". He was described in the examiner's report as "the most gifted—a composer". Although registered at the Conservatoire for the academic year 1945–46, he soon boycotted Simone Plé-Caussade's counterpoint and fugue class, infuriated by what he described as her "lack of imagination", and organised a petition that Messiaen be given a full professorship in composition. Over the winter of 1945–46 he immersed himself in Balinese and Japanese music and African drumming at the Musée Guimet and the Musée de l'Homme in Paris: "I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: On 12 February 1946 the pianist Yvette Grimaud gave the first public performances of Boulez's music ("Douze Notations" and "Trois Psalmodies") at the Concerts du Triptyque. Boulez earned money by giving mathematics lessons to his landlord's son. He also played the ondes Martenot (an early electronic instrument), improvising accompaniments to radio dramas and occasionally deputising in the pit orchestra of the Folies Bergère. In October 1946 the actor and director Jean-Louis Barrault engaged him to play the ondes for a production of "Hamlet" for the new company he and his wife, Madeleine Renaud, had formed at the Théâtre Marigny. Boulez was soon appointed music director of the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, a post he held for nine years. He arranged and conducted incidental music, mostly by composers whose music he disliked (such as Milhaud and Tchaikovsky), but it gave him the chance to work with professional musicians, while leaving time to compose during the day.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: His involvement with the company also broadened his horizons: in 1947 they toured to Belgium and Switzerland ("absolutely "pays de cocagne", my first discovery of the big world"); in 1948 they took "Hamlet" to the second Edinburgh International Festival; in 1951 they gave a season of plays in London, at the invitation of Laurence Olivier; and between 1950 and 1957 there were three tours to South America and two to North America. Much of the music he wrote for the company was lost during the student occupation of the Théâtre de l'Odéon in 1968.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: The period between 1947 and 1950 was one of intense compositional activity for Boulez. New works included the first two piano sonatas and initial versions of two cantatas on poems by René Char, "Le Visage nuptial" and "Le Soleil des eaux". In October 1951 a substantial work for eighteen solo instruments, "Polyphonie X", caused a scandal at its premiere at the Donaueschingen Festival, some audience members disrupting the performance with hisses and whistles.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Around this time, Boulez met two composers who were to be important influences: John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His friendship with Cage began in 1949 when Cage was visiting Paris. Cage introduced Boulez to two publishers (Heugel and Amphion) who agreed to take his recent pieces; Boulez helped to arrange a private performance of Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano". When Cage returned to New York they began an intense, six-year correspondence about the future of music. In 1952 Stockhausen arrived in Paris to study with Messiaen. Although Boulez knew no German and Stockhausen no French, the rapport between them was instant: "A friend translated [and] we gesticulated wildly ... We talked about music all the time—in a way I've never talked about it with anyone else."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Towards the end of 1951, a tour with the Renaud-Barrault company took him to New York for the first time, where he met Stravinsky and Varèse. He stayed at Cage's apartment but their friendship was already cooling as he could not accept Cage's increasing commitment to compositional procedures based on chance and he later broke off contact with him.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In July 1952, Boulez attended the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt for the first time. As well as Stockhausen, Boulez was in contact there with other composers who would become significant figures in contemporary music, including Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, and Henri Pousseur. Boulez quickly became one of the leaders of the post-war modernist movement in the arts. As the music critic Alex Ross observed: "at all times he seemed absolutely sure of what he was doing. Amid the confusion of postwar life, with so many truths discredited, his certitude was reassuring."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1954, with the financial backing of Barrault and Renaud, Boulez started a series of concerts at the Petit Marigny theatre. They became known as the Domaine musical. The concerts focused initially on three areas: pre-war classics still unfamiliar in Paris (such as Bartók and Webern), works by the new generation (Stockhausen, Nono) and neglected masters from the past (Machaut, Gesualdo)—although for practical reasons the last category fell away in subsequent seasons. Boulez proved an energetic and accomplished administrator and the concerts were an immediate success. They attracted musicians, painters and writers, as well as fashionable society, but they were so costly that Boulez had to turn to wealthy private patrons for support.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Key events in the Domaine's history included a Webern festival (1955), the European premiere of Stravinsky's "Agon" (1957) and first performances of Messiaen's "Oiseaux exotiques" (1955) and "Sept Haïkaï" (1963). The concerts moved to the Salle Gaveau (1956–1959) and then to the Théâtre de l'Odéon (1959–1968). Boulez remained director until 1967, when Gilbert Amy succeeded him.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: On 18 June 1955, Hans Rosbaud conducted the first performance of Boulez's best-known work, "Le Marteau sans maître", at the ISCM Festival in Baden-Baden. A nine-movement cycle for alto voice and instrumental ensemble based on poems by René Char, it was an immediate, international success. William Glock wrote: "even at a first hearing, though difficult to take in, it was so utterly new in sound, texture and feeling that it seemed to possess a mythical quality like that of Schoenberg's "Pierrot lunaire"." When Boulez conducted the work in Los Angeles in early 1957, Stravinsky—who described it as "one of the few significant works of the post-war period of exploration"—attended the performance. Boulez dined several times with the Stravinskys and (according to Robert Craft) "soon captivated the older composer with new musical ideas, and an extraordinary intelligence, quickness and humour". Relations soured somewhat the following year over the first Paris performance of Stravinsky's "Threni" for the Domaine musical. Poorly planned by Boulez and nervously conducted by Stravinsky, the performance broke down more than once.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In January 1958, the "Improvisations sur Mallarmé (I et II)" were premiered, forming the kernel of a piece which would grow over the next four years into a vast, five-movement "portrait of Mallarmé", "Pli selon pli". It received its premiere in Donaueschingen in October 1962.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Around this time, Boulez's relations with Stockhausen grew increasingly tense as (according to the biographer Joan Peyser) he saw the younger man supplanting him as the leader of the avant-garde.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1959, Boulez left Paris for Baden-Baden, where he had an arrangement with the South-West German Radio orchestra to work as composer-in-residence and to conduct some smaller concerts, as well as access to an electronic studio where he could work on a new piece ("Poésie pour pouvoir"). He moved into, and eventually bought, a large hillside villa, which was his main residence for the rest of his life.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: During this period, he turned increasingly to conducting. His first engagement as an orchestral conductor had been in 1956, when he conducted the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra while on tour with Barrault. In Cologne he conducted his own "Le Visage nuptial" in 1957 and—with Bruno Maderna and the composer—the first performances of Stockhausen's "Gruppen" in 1958. His breakthrough came in 1959 when he replaced the ailing Hans Rosbaud at short notice in demanding programmes of twentieth-century music at the Aix-en-Provence and Donaueschingen Festivals. This led to debuts with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Bavarian Radio Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. In 1963 he conducted the Orchestre National de France in the 50th anniversary performance of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, where the piece had had its riotous premiere.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: That same year, he conducted his first opera, Berg's "Wozzeck" at the Opéra National de Paris, directed by Barrault. The conditions were exceptional, with thirty orchestral rehearsals instead of the usual three or four, the critical response was favourable and after the first performance the musicians rose to applaud him. He conducted "Wozzeck" again in April 1966 at the Frankfurt Opera in a new production by Wieland Wagner.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Wieland Wagner had already invited Boulez to conduct Wagner's "Parsifal" at the Bayreuth Festival later in the season, and Boulez returned to conduct revivals in 1967, 1968 and 1970. He also conducted performances of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" with the Bayreuth company at the Osaka Festival in Japan in 1967, but the lack of adequate rehearsal made it an experience he later said he would rather forget. By contrast, his conducting of the new production (by Václav Kašlík) of Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" at Covent Garden in 1969 was praised for its combination of "delicacy and sumptuousness".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1965, the Edinburgh International Festival staged the first full-scale retrospective of Boulez as composer and conductor. In 1966, he proposed a reorganisation of French musical life to the then minister of culture, André Malraux, but Malraux instead appointed the conservative Marcel Landowski as head of music at the Ministry of Culture. Boulez expressed his fury in an article in the "Nouvel Observateur", announcing that he was "going on strike with regard to any aspect of official music in France."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: The previous year, in March 1965, he had made his orchestral debut in the United States with the Cleveland Orchestra. He became its principal guest conductor in February 1969, a post he held until the end of 1971. After the death of George Szell in July 1970, he took on the role of music advisor for two years, but the title was largely honorary, owing to his commitments in London and New York. In the 1968–69 season, he also made guest appearances in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Apart from "Pli selon pli", the only substantial new work to emerge in the first half of the 1960s was the final version of Book 2 of his "Structures" for two pianos. Midway through the decade, however, Boulez appeared to find his voice again and produced a number of new works, including "Éclat" (1965), a short and brilliant piece for small ensemble, which by 1970 had grown into a substantial half-hour work, "Éclat/Multiples".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez first conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in February 1964, at Worthing, accompanying Vladimir Ashkenazy in a Chopin piano concerto. Boulez recalled the experience: "It was terrible, I felt like a waiter who keeps dropping the plates."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: His appearances with the orchestra over the next five years included his debuts at the Proms and at Carnegie Hall (1965) and tours to Moscow and Leningrad, Berlin and Prague (1967). In January 1969 William Glock, controller of music at the BBC, announced his appointment as chief conductor.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Two months later, Boulez conducted the New York Philharmonic for the first time. His performances so impressed both orchestra and management that he was offered the chief conductorship in succession to Leonard Bernstein. Glock was dismayed and tried to persuade him that accepting the New York position would detract both from his work in London and his ability to compose but Boulez could not resist the opportunity (as Glock put it) "to reform the music-making of both these world cities" and in June the New York appointment was confirmed.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: His tenure in New York lasted between 1971 and 1977 and was not an unqualified success. The dependence on a subscription audience limited his programming. He introduced more key works from the first half of the twentieth century and, with earlier repertoire, sought out less well-known pieces. In his first season, for example, he conducted Liszt's "The Legend of Saint Elizabeth" and "Via Crucis". Performances of new music were comparatively rare in the subscription series. The players admired his musicianship but came to regard him as dry and unemotional by comparison with Bernstein, although it was widely accepted that he improved the standard of playing. He returned on only three occasions to the orchestra in later years.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: His time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was altogether happier. With the resources of the BBC behind him, he could be bolder in his choice of repertoire. There were occasional forays into the nineteenth century, particularly at the Proms (Beethoven's "Missa solemnis" in 1972; the Brahms "German Requiem" in 1973), but for the most part he worked intensively with the orchestra on the music of the twentieth century. He conducted works by the younger generation of British composers—such as Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies—but Britten and Tippett were absent from his programmes. His relations with the musicians were generally excellent. He was chief conductor between 1971 and 1975, continuing as chief guest conductor until 1977. Thereafter he returned to the orchestra frequently until his last appearance at an all-Janáček Prom in August 2008.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In both cities, Boulez sought out venues where new music could be presented more informally: in New York he began a series of "Rug Concerts"—when the seats in Avery Fisher Hall were taken out and the audience sat on the floor—and a contemporary music series called "Prospective Encounters" in Greenwich Village. In London he gave concerts at the Roundhouse, a former railway turntable shed which Peter Brook had also used for radical theatre productions. His aim was "to create a feeling that we are all, audience, players and myself, taking part in an act of exploration".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: During this period, the music of Ravel came to the forefront of his repertoire. Between 1969 and 1975, he recorded the orchestral works with the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra and in 1973 he made studio recordings for the BBC of the two one-act operas (L'enfant et les sortilèges and L'heure espagnole).


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1972, Wolfgang Wagner, who had succeeded his brother Wieland as director of the Bayreuth Festival, invited Boulez to conduct the 1976 centenary production of Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen". The director was Patrice Chéreau. Highly controversial in its first year, according to Barry Millington by the end of the run in 1980 "enthusiasm for the production vastly outweighed disapproval". It was televised around the world.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: A small number of new works emerged during this period, of which perhaps the most important is "Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna" (1975).


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1970 Boulez was asked by President Pompidou to return to France and set up an institute specialising in musical research and creation at the arts complex—now known as the Centre Georges Pompidou—which was planned for the Beaubourg district of Paris. The Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM) opened in 1977.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez’s model was the Bauhaus, which had been a meeting place for artists and scientists of all disciplines. IRCAM's aims included research into acoustics, instrumental design and the use of computers in music. The original building was constructed underground, partly to isolate it acoustically (an above-ground extension was added later). The institution was criticised for absorbing too much state subsidy, Boulez for wielding too much power. At the same time he founded the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a virtuoso ensemble which specialised in twentieth-century music and the creation of new works.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1979, Boulez conducted the world premiere of the three-act version of Alban Berg's "Lulu" at the Paris Opera in Friedrich Cerha’s completion, and in Patrice Chéreau's production. Otherwise he scaled back his conducting commitments to concentrate on IRCAM. Most of his appearances during this period were with his own Ensemble intercontemporain—including tours to the United States (1986), Australia (1988), the Soviet Union (1990) and Canada (1991)—although he also renewed his links in the 1980s with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: By contrast, he composed significantly more during this period, producing a series of pieces which used the potential, developed at IRCAM, electronically to transform sound in real time. The first of these was "Répons" (1981–1984), a 40-minute work for soloists, ensemble and electronics. He also radically reworked earlier pieces, including "Notations I-IV", a transcription and expansion of tiny piano pieces for large orchestra (1945–1980) and his cantata on poems by René Char, "Le Visage nuptial" (1946–1989).


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1980, the five original directors of the IRCAM departments, including the composer Luciano Berio, resigned. Although Boulez declared these changes "very healthy", it clearly represented a crisis in his leadership.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Retrospectives of his music were mounted in Paris (Festival d'Automne, 1981), Baden-Baden (1985) and London (BBC, 1989). From 1976 to 1995, he held the Chair in "Invention, technique et langage en musique" at the Collège de France. In 1988 he made a series of six programmes for French television, "Boulez XXe siècle", each of which focused on a specific aspect of contemporary music (rhythm, timbre, form etc.) He also bought a flat on the 30th floor of a building in the Front de Seine district of Paris.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1992, Boulez gave up the directorship of IRCAM and was succeeded by Laurent Bayle. He was composer in residence at that year's Salzburg Festival.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: The previous year he began a series of annual residencies with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1995 he was named principal guest conductor in Chicago, only the third conductor to hold that position in the orchestra's history. He held the post until 2005, when he became conductor emeritus. His 70th birthday in 1995 was marked by a six-month retrospective tour with the London Symphony Orchestra, taking in Paris, Vienna, New York and Tokyo. In 2001 he conducted a major Bartók cycle with the Orchestre de Paris.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: This period also marked a return to the opera house, including two productions with Peter Stein: Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" (1992, Welsh National Opera and Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris); and Schoenberg's "Moses und Aron" (1995, Dutch National Opera and Salzburg Festival). In 2004 and 2005 he returned to Bayreuth to conduct a controversial new production of "Parsifal" directed by Christoph Schlingensief.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: The two most substantial compositions from this period are "...explosante-fixe..." (1993), which had its origins in 1972 as a tribute to Stravinsky and which again used the electronic resources of IRCAM, and "sur Incises" (1998), for which he was awarded the 2001 Grawemeyer Prize for composition.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: He continued to work on institutional organisation. He co-founded the Cité de la Musique, which opened in La Villette on the outskirts of Paris in 1995. Consisting of a modular concert hall, museum and mediatheque—with the Paris' Conservatoire on an adjacent site—it became the home to the Ensemble Intercontemporain and attracted a diverse audience. In 2004, he co-founded the Lucerne Festival Academy, an orchestral institute for young musicians, dedicated to music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For the next ten years he spent the last three weeks of summer working with young composers and conducting concerts with the Academy's orchestra.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez's last major work was "Dérive 2" (2006), a 45-minute piece for eleven instruments. He left a number of compositional projects unfinished, including the remaining "Notations" for orchestra.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: He remained active as a conductor over the next six years. In 2007 he was re-united with Chéreau for a production of Janáček's "From the House of the Dead" (Theater an der Wien, Amsterdam and Aix). In April of the same year, as part of the Festtage in Berlin, Boulez and Daniel Barenboim gave a cycle of the Mahler symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin, which they repeated two years later at Carnegie Hall. In late 2007 the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble Intercontemporain presented a retrospective of Boulez's music and in 2008 the Louvre mounted the exhibition "Pierre Boulez, Œuvre: fragment".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: His appearances became more infrequent after an eye operation in 2010 left him with severely impaired sight. Other health problems included a shoulder injury resulting from a fall. In late 2011, when he was already quite frail, he led the combined Ensemble Intercontemporain and Lucerne Festival Academy, with the soprano Barbara Hannigan, in a tour of six European cities of his own "Pli selon pli". His final appearance as a conductor was in Salzburg on 28 January 2012 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Mitsuko Uchida in a programme of Schoenberg ("Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene" and the Piano Concerto), Mozart (Piano Concerto No.19 in F major K459) and Stravinsky ("Pulcinella Suite"). Thereafter he cancelled all conducting engagements.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Later in 2012, he worked with the Diotima Quartet, making final revisions to his only string quartet, "Livre pour quatuor", begun in 1948. In 2013 he oversaw the release on Deutsche Grammophon of "Pierre Boulez: Complete Works", a 13-CD survey of all his authorised compositions. He remained Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy until 2014, but his health prevented him from taking part in the many celebrations held across the world for his 90th birthday in 2015. These included a multi-media exhibition at the Musée de la Musique in Paris, which focused in particular on the inspiration Boulez had drawn from literature and the visual arts.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez died on 5 January 2016 at his home in Baden-Baden. He was buried on 13 January in Baden-Baden's main cemetery following a private funeral service at the town's Stiftskirche. At a memorial service the next day at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, eulogists included Daniel Barenboim, Renzo Piano, and Laurent Bayle, then president of the Philharmonie de Paris, whose large concert hall had been inaugurated the previous year, thanks in no small measure to Boulez's influence.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez's earliest surviving compositions date from his school days in 1942–43, mostly songs on texts by Baudelaire, Gautier and Rilke. Gerald Bennett describes the pieces as "modest, delicate and rather anonymous [employing] a certain number of standard elements of French salon music of the time—whole-tone scales, pentatonic scales and polytonality".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: As a student at the Conservatoire Boulez composed a series of pieces influenced first by Honegger and Jolivet ("Prelude, Toccata and Scherzo" and "Nocturne" for solo piano (1944–45)) and then by Messiaen ("Trois psalmodies" for piano (1945) and a Quartet for four ondes Martenot (1945–46)). The encounter with Schoenberg—through his studies with Leibowitz—was the catalyst for his first piece of serial music, the "Thème et variations" for piano, left hand (1945). Peter O'Hagan describes it as "his boldest and most ambitious work to date".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: It is in the "Douze notations" for piano (December 1945) that Bennett first detects the influence of Webern. In the two months after the composition of the piano "Notations" Boulez attempted an (unperformed and unpublished) orchestration of eleven of the twelve short pieces. Over a decade later he re-used two of them in instrumental interludes in "Improvisation I sur Mallarmé". Then in the mid-1970s he embarked on a further, more radical transformation of the "Notations" into extended works for very large orchestra, a project which preoccupied him to the end of his life, nearly seventy years after the original composition.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: This is only the most extreme example of a lifelong tendency to revisit earlier works: "as long as my ideas have not exhausted every possibility of proliferation they stay in my mind." Robert Piencikowski characterises this in part as "an obsessional concern for perfection" and observes that with some pieces (such as "Le Visage nuptial") "one could speak of successive distinct versions, each one presenting a particular state of the musical material, without the successor invalidating the previous one or vice versa"—although he notes that Boulez almost invariably vetoed the performance of previous versions.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Before the rehabilitation of the "Notations", the "Sonatine" for flute and piano (1946–1949) was the first work Boulez acknowledged. A serial work of great energy, its single-movement form was influenced by Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1. Bennett finds in the piece a tone new to Boulez's writing: "a sharp, brittle violence juxtaposed against an extreme sensitivity and delicacy". In the Piano Sonata No. 1 (1946–49) the biographer Dominique Jameux highlights the sheer number of different kinds of attack in its two short movements—and the frequent accelerations of tempo in the second movement—which together create a feeling of "instrumental delirium".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: There followed two cantatas based on the poetry of René Char. Of "Le Visage nuptial" Paul Griffiths observes that "Char's five poems speak in hard-edged surrealist imagery of an ecstatic sexual passion", which Boulez reflected in music "on the borders of fevered hysteria". In its original version (1946–47) the piece was scored for small forces (soprano, contralto, two ondes Martenot, piano and percussion). Forty years later Boulez arrived at the definitive version for soprano, mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra (1985–1989). "Le Soleil des eaux" (1948) originated in incidental music for a radio drama by Char. It went through three further versions before reaching its final form in 1965 as a piece for soprano, mixed chorus and orchestra. The first movement ("Complainte du lézard amoureux") is a love song addressed by a lizard to a goldfinch in the heat of a summer day; the second ("La Sorgue") is a violent, incantatory protest against the pollution of the river Sorgue.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: The Second Piano Sonata (1947–48) is a half-hour work which requires formidable technical prowess from the performer. Its four movements follow the standard pattern of a classical sonata but in each of them Boulez subverts the traditional model. For Griffiths the violent character of much of the music "is not just superficial: it is expressive of … a need to obliterate what had gone before". Boulez played the work for Aaron Copland, who asked: "But must we start a revolution all over again?"—"Yes, mercilessly", Boulez replied.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: That revolution entered its most extreme phase in 1950–1952, when Boulez developed a technique in which not only pitch but other musical parameters—duration, dynamics, timbre and attack—were organised according to serial principles, an approach known as total serialism or punctualism. Messiaen had already made an experiment in this direction in his "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités" for piano (1949). Boulez's first sketches towards total serialism appeared in parts of "Livre pour quatuor" (Book for Quartet, 1948–49, revised 2011–12), a collection of movements for string quartet from which the players may choose at any one performance, foreshadowing Boulez's later interest in variable form.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In the early 1950s Boulez began to apply the technique rigorously, ordering each parameter into sets of twelve and prescribing no repetition until all twelve had sounded. According to the music critic Alex Ross the resulting surfeit of ever-changing musical data has the effect of erasing at any given point previous impressions the listener may have formed: "the present moment is all there is". Boulez linked this development to a desire by his generation to create a "tabula rasa" after the war.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: His works in this idiom are "Polyphonie X" (195051; withdrawn) for 18 instruments, the two "musique concrète" "études" (1951–52; withdrawn), and "Structures, Book I" for two pianos (1951–52). Speaking of "Structures, Book I" in 2011 Boulez described it as a piece in which "the responsibility of the composer is practically absent. Had computers existed at that time I would have put the data through them and made the piece that way. But I did it by hand...It was a demonstration through the absurd." Asked whether it should still be listened to as music, Boulez replied: "I am not terribly eager to listen to it. But for me it was an experiment that was absolutely necessary."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: "Structures, Book I" was a turning point for Boulez. Recognising a lack of expressive flexibility in the language (described in his essay "At the Limit of Fertile Land..."), Boulez loosened the strictness of total serialism into a more supple and strongly gestural music: "I am trying to rid myself of my thumbprints and taboos", he wrote to Cage. The most significant result of this new freedom was "Le Marteau sans maître" (1953–1955), described by Griffiths and Bill Hopkins as a "keystone of twentieth-century music". Three short poems by Char form the starting-point for three interlocking cycles. Four movements are vocal settings of the poems (one is set twice), the other five are instrumental commentaries. According to Hopkins and Griffiths the music is characterised by abrupt tempo transitions, passages of broadly improvisatory melodic style and exotic instrumental colouring. The piece is scored for contralto soloist with alto flute, xylorimba, vibraphone, percussion, guitar and viola. Boulez said that the choice of these instruments showed the influence of non-European cultures, to which he had always been attracted.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: For the text of his next major work, "Pli selon pli" (1957–1989), Boulez turned to the symbolist poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé, attracted by its extreme density and radical syntax. At seventy minutes, it is his longest composition. Three "Improvisations"—of increasing complexity—on individual sonnets are framed by two orchestral movements, into which fragments of other poems are embedded. Boulez's word-setting, which in the first "Improvisation" is straightforwardly syllabic, becomes ever more melismatic, to the point where the words cannot be distinguished. Boulez's stated aim was to make the sonnets "become" the music at a deeper, structural level. The piece is scored for soprano and large orchestra, often deployed in chamber groups. Boulez described its sound-world, rich in percussion, as "not so much frozen as extraordinarily 'vitrified. The work had a complex genesis, reaching its definitive form in 1989.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: From the 1950s Boulez experimented with what he called "controlled chance" and he developed his views on aleatoric music in the articles "Aléa" and "Sonate, que me veux-tu?", in which he wrote of "the investigation of a relative world, a permanent 'discovering' rather like the state of 'permanent revolution.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Peyser observes that Boulez's use of chance is different from John Cage’s. In Cage's music the performers are often free to create unforeseen sounds, with the aim of removing the composer's intention from the music; in Boulez's music they choose between possibilities that have been written out by the composer. When applied to the order of sections, this is sometimes described as "mobile form", a technique devised by Earle Brown, who was inspired by the mobile sculptures of Alexander Calder. Brown and Cage introduced Boulez to Calder when Boulez was visiting New York in 1952.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez employed variants of the technique in a number of works over the next two decades: in the Third Piano Sonata (1955–1957, revised 1963) the pianist may choose different routes through the score and in one movement ("Trope") has the option of omitting certain passages altogether; in "Éclat" (1965), the conductor triggers the order in which each player joins the ensemble; in "Domaines" (1961–1968) it is the soloist who dictates the order in which the sections are played by his movement around the stage. In later works, such as "Cummings ist der Dichter" (1970, revised 1986)—a chamber cantata for 16 solo voices and small orchestra using a poem by E. E. Cummings—the conductor is given choice as to the order of certain events but there is no freedom for the individual player. In its original version "Pli selon pli" also contained elements of choice for the instrumentalists, but much of this was eliminated in later revisions.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: By contrast "Figures—Doubles—Prismes" (1957–1968) is a fixed work with no chance element. Piencikowski describes it as "a great cycle of variations whose components interpenetrate each other instead of remaining isolated in the traditional manner". It is notable for the unusual layout of the orchestra, in which the various families of instruments (woodwind, brass etc.) are scattered across the stage rather than being grouped together.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Jonathan Goldman identifies a major aesthetic shift in Boulez's work from the mid-1970s onwards, characterised variously by the presence of thematic writing, a return to vertical harmony and to clarity and legibility of form. Boulez himself said: "the "envelope" is simpler. The contents are not ... I think in my recent work it is true that the first approach is more direct, and the gesture is more obvious, let's say." The works from this period are amongst his most frequently performed.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: For Goldman, "Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna" (1974–75) marks the beginning of this development. Boulez wrote this twenty-five minute work as an epitaph for his friend and colleague, the Italian composer and conductor, who died in 1973 at the age of 53. The piece is divided into fifteen sections, the orchestra into eight groups. The odd-numbered sections are conducted; in the even-numbered sections the conductor merely sets each group in motion and its progress is regulated by a percussionist beating time. In his dedication Boulez described the work as "a ritual of disappearance and survival"; Griffiths refers to the work's "awesome grandeur".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: "Notations I–IV" (1980) are the first four transformations of piano miniatures from 1945 into pieces for very large orchestra. In his review of the New York premiere, Andrew Porter wrote that the single idea of each original piece "has, as it were, been passed through a many-faceted bright prism and broken into a thousand linked, lapped, sparkling fragments", the finale "a terse modern "Rite" ... which sets the pulses racing".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: "Dérive 1" (1984), dedicated to William Glock on his retirement from the Bath Festival, is a short quintet in which the piano takes the lead. The material is derived from six chords and, according to Ivan Hewett, the piece "shuffles and decorates these chords, bursting outwards in spirals and eddies, before returning to its starting point". At the end the music "shivers into silence".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez compared the experience of listening to pre-recorded electronic music in the concert hall to a crematorium ceremony. His real interest lay in the instantaneous transformation of instrumental sounds but the technology was not available until the founding of IRCAM in the 1970s. Before then he had produced "Deux Etudes" (1951) for magnetic tape for Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe Recherche de la Radiodiffusion Française, as well as a large-scale piece for live orchestra with tape, "Poésie pour pouvoir" (1958). He was dissatisfied with both pieces and withdrew them.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: The first piece completed at IRCAM was "Répons" (1980–1984). In this forty-minute work an instrumental ensemble is placed in the middle of the hall, while six soloists surround the audience: two pianos, harp, cimbalom, vibraphone and glockenspiel/xylophone. It is their music which is transformed electronically and projected through the space. Peter Heyworth described the moment when they enter, some ten minutes into the piece: "it is as though a great window were thrown open, through which a new sound world enters, and with it a new world of the imagination. Even more impressive is the fact that there is no longer a schism between the worlds of natural and electronic sounds, but rather a continuous spectrum."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: "Dialogue de l'ombre double" (1982–1985) for clarinet and electronics grew out of a fragment of "Domaines" and was a gift for Luciano Berio on his 60th birthday. Lasting around eighteen minutes, it is a dialogue between a solo clarinet (played live, though sometimes reverberated through an offstage piano) and its double (in passages pre-recorded by the same musician and projected around the hall). Boulez approved transcriptions of the piece for bassoon (in 1995) and for recorder (in 2011).


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In the early 1970s he had worked on an extended chamber piece called "…explosante-fixe…" for eight solo instruments, electronically transformed by a machine called a halophone, but the technology was still primitive and he eventually withdrew it. He re-used some of its material in other works, including a later piece with the same name. This definitive version, recorded commercially, was composed at IRCAM between 1991 and 1993 for MIDI-flute and two accompanying flutes with ensemble and live electronics. By this time the technology was such that the computer could follow the score and respond to triggers from the players. According to Griffiths, "the principal flute is caught as if in a hall of mirrors, its line imitated in what the other flutes play, and then in the contributions of the larger ensemble.". Hopkins and Griffiths describe it as "music characteristically caught between thrill and desperation".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: "Anthèmes II" for violin and electronics (1997) grew out of a piece for solo violin "Anthèmes I" (1991), which Boulez wrote for the Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition in Paris and which in turn derived from material in the original "…explosante-fixe…" The virtuoso writing for the instrument is captured by the electronic system, transformed in real time and propelled around the space to create what Jonathan Goldman calls a "hyper-violin". Although this gives rise to effects of speed and complexity which no violinist could achieve, Boulez restricts the palette of electronic sounds so that their source, the violin, is always recognisable.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In later works Boulez relinquished electronics, although Griffiths suggests that in "sur Incises" (1996–1998) the choice of like but distinct instruments, spread across the platform, enabled Boulez to create effects of harmonic, timbral and spatial echo for which he previously used electronic means. The piece is scored for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists (including steel drums) and grew out of "Incises" (1993–2001), a short piece written for a piano competition. In an interview in 2013 he described it as his most important work—"because it is the freest".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: "Notation VII" (1999), marked "hieratic" in the score, is the longest of the orchestral "Notations". According to Griffiths: "what was abrupt in 1945 is now languorous; what was crude is now done with a lifetime's experience and expertise; what was simple is fantastically embellished, even submerged."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: "Dérive 2" started out in 1988 as a five-minute piece, dedicated to Elliott Carter on his 80th birthday; by 2006 it was a 45-minute work for eleven instruments and Boulez's last major composition. According to Claude Samuel, Boulez wanted to explore rhythmic shifts, tempo changes and superimpositions of different speeds, inspired in part by his contact with the music of György Ligeti. Boulez described it as "a sort of narrative mosaic".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: A distinction may be made between works which Boulez was actively progressing and those which he put to one side despite their potential for further development. In the latter category, the archives contain three unpublished movements of the Third Piano Sonata and further sections of "Éclat/Multiples" which, if performed, would practically double its length.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: As for works Boulez was known to be working on in his later years, the premieres of two more orchestral "Notations" ("V" and "VI") were announced by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for May 2006, but postponed. He was in the process of developing "Anthèmes 2" into a large-scale work for violin and orchestra for Anne-Sophie Mutter and spoke of writing an opera based on Beckett's "Waiting for Godot". None of these projects came to fruition.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: As a young man Boulez was an explosive, often confrontational figure. Jean-Louis Barrault, who knew him in his twenties, caught the contradictions in his personality: "his powerful aggressiveness was a sign of creative passion, a particular blend of intransigence and humour, the way his moods of affection and insolence succeeded one another, all these had drawn us near to him." Messiaen said later: "He was in revolt against everything." Indeed, at one point Boulez turned against Messiaen, describing his "Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine" as "brothel music" and saying that the "Turangalîla-Symphonie" made him vomit. It was five years before relations were restored.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In a 2000 article in "The New Yorker" Alex Ross described him as a bully. Boulez did not disagree: "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." The most notorious instance of this is Boulez's declaration in 1952 that "any musician who has not experienced—I do not say understood, but truly experienced—the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: On the other hand, those who knew him well often referred to his loyalty, both to individuals and to organisations. When his mentor, the conductor Roger Désormière, was paralysed by a stroke in 1952 Boulez sent scripts to French Radio in Désormière's name so that the older man could collect the fee. The writer Jean Vermeil, who observed Boulez in the 1990s in the company of Jean Batigne (founder of the Percussions de Strasbourg), discovered "a Boulez asking about the health of a musician in the Strasbourg orchestra, about another player's children, a Boulez who knew everyone by name and who reacted to each person's news with sadness or with joy". In later life, he was known for his charm and personal warmth. Of his humour, Gerard McBurney wrote that it "depended on his twinkling eyes, his perfect timing, his infectious schoolboy giggle, and his reckless compulsion always to say what the other person would not expect".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez read widely and identified Proust, Joyce and Kafka as particular influences. He had a lifelong interest in the visual arts. He wrote extensively about the painter Paul Klee and collected contemporary art, including works by Joan Miró, Francis Bacon, Nicolas de Staël and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, all of whom he knew personally. He also had close links with three of the leading philosophers of the time: Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: He was a keen walker and, when he was at home in Baden-Baden, spent the late afternoons and much of the weekends walking in the Black Forest. He owned an old farmhouse in the Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence department of France and built another, modern home on the same land in the late 1970s.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In its obituary, "The New York Times" reported that "about his private life he remained tightly guarded". Boulez acknowledged to Joan Peyser that there was a passionate affair in 1946, described as "intense and tormented" and which Peyser suggested was the trigger for the "wild, courageous works" of that period. After Boulez's death, his sister Jeanne told the biographer Christian Merlin that the affair was with the actress María Casares, but Merlin concludes that there is little evidence to support this. The author and blogger Norman Lebrecht, who knew Boulez, speculated that he was gay, citing the fact that for many years he shared his home in Baden-Baden with Hans Messner, whom he sometimes referred to as his valet. In his portrait for "The New Yorker", published shortly after Boulez's death under the title "The Magus", Alex Ross described him as "affable, implacable, unknowable".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez was one of the leading conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. In a career lasting more than sixty years he directed most of the world's major orchestras. He was entirely self-taught, although he said that he learnt a great deal from attending Désormière's and Hans Rosbaud's rehearsals. He also cited George Szell as an influential mentor.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez gave various reasons for conducting as much as he did. He gave his first concerts for the Domaine musical because its financial resources were limited: "I told myself that, being much less expensive, I would have a go myself." He also said that the best possible training for a composer was "to have to play or conduct his own works and to face their difficulties of execution"—yet on a practical level he sometimes struggled to find time to compose given his conducting commitments. The writer and pianist Susan Bradshaw thought this was deliberate and related to a sense of being overshadowed as a composer by Stockhausen, who from the late 1950s was increasingly prolific. The French litterateur and musicologist Pierre Souvchinsky disagreed: "Boulez became a conductor because he had a great gift for it."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Not everyone agreed about the greatness of that gift. For the conductor Otto Klemperer, he was "without doubt the only man of his generation who is an outstanding conductor "and" musician". Hans Keller expressed a more critical opinion:


title: Pierre Boulez

text: He worked with many leading soloists and had particularly long-term collaborations with Daniel Barenboim and Jessye Norman.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: According to Peter Heyworth, Boulez produced a lean, athletic sound which, underpinned by his rhythmic exactitude, could generate an electric sense of excitement. The ability to reveal the structure of a score and to clarify dense orchestral textures were hallmarks of his conducting. He conducted without a baton and, as Heyworth observed: "there is no trace of theatre—not even the rather theatrical sort of economy that was practised by Richard Strauss." According to Boulez: "outward excitement uses up inner excitement."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez's ear for sound was legendary: "there are countless stories of him detecting, for example, faulty intonation from the third oboe in a complex orchestral texture," Paul Griffiths wrote in "The New York Times". Oliver Knussen, himself a well-known composer-conductor, observed that "his rehearsals are models of clear-headedness and professional courtesy—he effortlessly commands respect." Nicholas Kenyon wrote of Boulez's rehearsal ethos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra:


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez also conducted in the opera house. His chosen repertoire was small and included no Italian opera. Apart from Wagner, he conducted only twentieth-century works. Of his work with Wieland Wagner on "Wozzeck" and "Parsifal", Boulez said: "I would willingly have hitched, if not my entire fate, then at least a part of it, to someone like him, for [our] discussions about music and productions were thrilling."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: They planned other productions together, including "Salome" and "Elektra", "Boris Godunov" and "Don Giovanni". However, by the time rehearsals for their Bayreuth "Parsifal" began Wieland was already gravely ill and he died in October 1966.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: When the Frankfurt "Wozzeck" was revived after Wieland's death, Boulez was deeply disillusioned by the working conditions: "there was no rehearsal, no care taken over anything. The cynicism of the way an opera house like that was run disgusted me. It still disgusts me."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: He later said that it was this experience which prompted his notorious remarks in an interview the following year in "Der Spiegel", in which he claimed that "no opera worth mentioning had been composed since 1935", that "a Beatles record is certainly cleverer (and shorter) than a Henze opera" and that "the most elegant" solution to opera's moribund condition would be "to blow the opera houses up".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In 1967, Boulez, theatre director Jean Vilar and choreographer Maurice Béjart were asked to devise a scheme for the reform of the Paris Opéra, with a view to Boulez becoming its music director. Their plan was derailed by the political fallout from the 1968 student protests. Later, in the mid-1980s, Boulez became vice president of the planned Opéra Bastille in Paris, working with Daniel Barenboim, who was to be its music director. In 1988 a newly-appointed director, Pierre Bergé, dismissed Barenboim. Boulez withdrew in solidarity.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In the event, Boulez conducted only specific projects—in productions by leading stage directors—when he could be satisfied that conditions were right. Thanks to his years with the Barrault company, the theatrical dimension was as important to him as the musical and he always attended staging rehearsals.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: For the centenary "Ring" in Bayreuth, Boulez originally asked Ingmar Bergman then Peter Brook to direct, both of whom refused. Peter Stein initially agreed but withdrew in 1974. Patrice Chéreau, who was primarily a theatre director, accepted and went on to create one of the defining opera productions of modern times. According to Allan Kozinn the production "helped open the floodgates of directorial reinterpretation of opera" (sometimes known as "Regietheater"). Chéreau treated the story in part as an allegory of capitalism, drawing on ideas that George Bernard Shaw explored in "The Perfect Wagnerite" in 1898. He updated the action to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using imagery of the industrial age, and he achieved an unprecedented degree of naturalism in the singers' performances. Boulez's conducting was no less controversial, emphasising continuity, flexibility and transparency over mythic grandeur and weight. In its first year the production met with hostility from the largely conservative audience, and around thirty orchestral musicians refused to work with Boulez in subsequent seasons. Both production and musical realisation grew in stature over the following four years and after the final performance in 1980 there was a 90-minute ovation. Boulez worked with Chéreau again on Berg's "Lulu" in Paris (1979) and Janáček's "From the House of the Dead" in Vienna (2007).


title: Pierre Boulez

text: His other preferred director was Peter Stein. Of Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" Boulez had written: "I don't like the French tradition of sweetness and gentleness ... [the work] is not gentle at all, but cruel and mysterious." Stein realised that vision in his staging for Welsh National Opera in 1992, John Rockwell describing it as "an abstract, angry "Pelléas", one perhaps over-intent on emphasizing the score's links to modernity". David Stevens described their 1995 production of Schoenberg's "Moses und Aron" in Amsterdam as "theatrically and musically thrilling".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: From the mid-1960s, Boulez spoke of composing an opera himself. His attempts to find a librettist were unsuccessful: "both times the writer has died on me, so I'm a bit superstitious about looking for a third candidate". From the late 1960s he exchanged ideas with the radical French playwright and novelist Jean Genet and a subject—treason—was agreed on. Parts of a draft libretto were found among Genet's papers after his death in 1986. Boulez later turned to the German playwright Heiner Müller, who was working on a reduction of Aeschylus's "Oresteia" when he died in 1995, again without leaving anything usable. In the 1980s he discussed with Patrice Chéreau an adaptation of Genet's 1961 play "Les Paravents" ("The Screens"), which was planned for the 1989 opening of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, but this too came to nothing. In a 1996 interview Boulez said that he was thinking of Edward Bond's "The War Plays" or "Lear", "but only thinking". When news emerged in 2010 that he was working on an opera based on Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", few believed such an ambitious undertaking could be realised so late in the day.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez's first recordings date from his time with the Domaine musical in the late 1950s and early 1960s and were made for the French Vega label. They document his first thoughts on works which he would subsequently re-record (such as Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No.1), as well as pieces to which he did not return in the studio (such as Stravinsky's "Renard" and Stockhausen's "Zeitmaße"). They also include the first of his five recordings of "Le Marteau sans maître" (with contralto Marie-Thérèse Cahn). In 2015 Universal Music brought these recordings together in a 10-CD set.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Between 1966 and 1989 he recorded for Columbia Records (later Sony Classical). Among the first projects were the Paris "Wozzeck" (with Walter Berry) and the Covent Garden "Pelléas et Mélisande" (with George Shirley and Elisabeth Söderström). He made a highly praised recording of "The Rite of Spring" with the Cleveland Orchestra and a number of recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, including rarities such as Berlioz's "Lélio" and the first complete recording of Mahler's "Das klagende Lied". The LSO also contributed to the Webern edition which Boulez supervised, consisting of all the works with opus numbers. He produced a wide-ranging survey of the music of Schoenberg, including "Gurrelieder" and "Moses und Aron" (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra), and also less well-known works such as the unaccompanied choral music. As for Boulez's own music, in 1969 there was a first recording of "Pli selon pli" (with Halina Łukomska as soprano soloist) and recordings of "Rituel" and "Éclat/Multiples". In 2014 Sony Classical issued "Pierre Boulez—The Complete Columbia Album Collection" on 67 CDs.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Three operatic projects from this period were picked up by other labels: the Bayreuth "Ring" was released on video and LP by Philips; the Bayreuth "Parsifal" and Paris "Lulu" were recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In the 1980s, he also recorded for the Erato label, mostly with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with a greater emphasis on the music of his contemporaries (Berio, Ligeti, Carter etc.), as well as a survey of some of his own music, including "Le Visage nuptial", "Le Soleil des eaux" and "Figures—Doubles—Prismes". In 2015 Erato issued "Pierre Boulez—The Complete Erato Recordings" on 14 CDs. For EMI in 1984 he recorded a number of pieces on Frank Zappa's album with the Ensemble Intercontemporain.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: From 1991, onwards Boulez recorded under an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. It centred on the orchestras of Chicago and Cleveland in the United States and Vienna and Berlin in Europe. He re-recorded much of his core repertoire—the orchestral music of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Bartók—and oversaw a second Webern edition, including the unpublished works. His own late music featured prominently, including "Répons", "...explosante-fixe..." and "sur Incises". There was also a recording of "Pli selon pli" (with Christine Schäfer) in its definitive version, incorporating revisions made in the late 1980s. Composers new to his discography included Richard Strauss, Szymanowski and Anton Bruckner—his recording of the Eighth Symphony met with particular acclaim. The most significant addition to his recorded repertoire was the multi-orchestra cycle of the Mahler symphonies and vocal works with orchestra. All of Boulez's recordings for Deutsche Grammophon have been collected into boxed sets of CDs.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In addition, many hundreds of concerts conducted by Boulez are held in the archives of radio stations and orchestras. In 2005 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra released a 2-CD set of broadcasts by Boulez, focusing on works which he had not recorded commercially, including Janáček's "Glagolitic Mass" and Messiaen's "L'ascension".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Early in his career Boulez sometimes performed publicly as a pianist. In 1955 he accompanied the tenor Jean Giraudeau in a recording of songs by Stravinsky and Mussorgsky. Between 1957 and 1959 he gave several performances of his own Third Piano Sonata (a performance he gave in Darmstadt on 30 August 1959 was issued on CD in 2016). He also gave recitals of music for two pianos with Yvonne Loriod. In the 1960s and 1970s he occasionally included songs for voice and piano in orchestral programmes, for example accompanying Christa Ludwig in songs by Berg at a New York Philharmonic Orchestra concert in February 1972. A rare example of his pianism in later life was a short film made by Austrian television in 1992, in which Boulez played his early "Notations".


title: Pierre Boulez

text: According to Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Boulez was one of two twentieth-century composers who wrote most prolifically about music, the other being Schoenberg. Ironically, it was with a 1952 article with the inflammatory title "Schoenberg is Dead", published in the British journal "The Score" shortly after the older composer's death, that Boulez first attracted international attention as a writer. This highly polemical piece, in which he attacked Schoenberg for his conservatism, contrasting it with Webern's radicalism, caused widespread controversy.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Jonathan Goldman points out that, over the decades, Boulez's writings addressed very different readerships: in the 1950s the cultured Parisian attendees of the Domaine musical; in the 1960s the specialised avant-garde composers and performers of the Darmstadt and Basel courses; and, between 1976 and 1995, the highly literate but non-specialist audience of the lectures he gave as Professor of the Collège de France. Much of Boulez's writing was linked to specific occasions, whether a first performance of a new piece, notes for a recording or a eulogy for a lost colleague. Generally he avoided publishing detailed analyses, other than one of "The Rite of Spring". As Nattiez points out: "as a writer Boulez is a communicator of ideas rather than of technical information. This may sometimes prove disappointing to composition students, but it is no doubt a peculiarity of his writing that explains its popularity with non-musicians."


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez's writings have appeared in English as "Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship", "Boulez on Music Today", "Orientations: Collected Writings" and "Pierre Boulez, Music Lessons: The Complete Collège de France Lectures". Throughout his career he also expressed himself through long-form interviews, of which perhaps the most substantial are those with Antoine Goléa (1958), Célestin Deliège (1975) and Jean Vermeil (1989). In addition, two volumes of correspondence have been published: with the composer John Cage (from the period 1949–62); and with the anthropologist and ethnomusicologist André Schaeffner (from 1954 to 1970).


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez taught at the Darmstadt Summer School most years between 1954 and 1965. He was professor of composition at the Musik Akademie Basel in Switzerland (1960–63) and a visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 1963. He also taught privately in the early part of his career. Students included the composers Richard Rodney Bennett, Jean-Claude Éloy and Heinz Holliger.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: An article published for Boulez's 80th birthday in "The Guardian" revealed that Boulez's fellow-composers had divided, and sometimes equivocal, views about him:


title: Pierre Boulez

text: When Boulez died in January 2016, he left no will. In 1986 he entered into an agreement to place his musical and literary manuscripts with the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. In December 2017, the Bibliothèque nationale de France announced that the Boulez estate had made a substantial donation of Boulez's private papers and possessions not covered by the Sacher contract, including 220 metres of books, 50 metres of archives and correspondence, as well as scores, photographs, recordings and about 100 other objects.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: In October 2016, the large concert hall of the Philharmonie de Paris, for which Boulez campaigned for many years, was renamed the Grande salle Pierre Boulez. In March 2017, a new concert hall, the Pierre Boulez Saal, designed by Frank Gehry, was opened in Berlin under the auspices of the Barenboim–Said Academy. It is home to a new Boulez Ensemble, made up of members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle and guest musicians from Berlin and around the world.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: Boulez's music continues to be taken up by interpreters of the next generation. In September 2016 Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic paired Boulez's Éclat with Mahler's 7th Symphony for an international tour. In May and June 2017 many of Boulez's major works, including "...explosante-fixe..." and "Répons", were performed at the Vienna Konzerthaus 38th International Festival by Klangforum Wien, conducted by Baldur Brönnimann. In October 2017, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Matthias Pinscher, gave four performances of "Répons" over two evenings at the Park Avenue Armory, New York, in a presentation conceived by Pierre Audi. In September 2018 the first edition of the Pierre Boulez Biennial took place in Paris and Berlin, a joint initiative by the Philharmonie de Paris and the Staatskapelle Berlin under Daniel Barenboim. Performances of Boulez's music were set in the context of works which influenced him. The second Biennial was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, but a modified version went ahead (online in 2020, in person in 2021), with a particular focus on the piano music.


title: Pierre Boulez

text: State honours awarded to Boulez included Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE); and Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Among his many awards, Boulez listed the following in his "Who's Who" entry: Grand Prix de la Musique, Paris, 1982; Charles Heidsieck Award for Outstanding Contribution to Franco-British Music, 1989; Polar Music Prize, Stockholm, 1996; Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 1999; Wolf Prize, Israel, 2000; Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, University of Louisville, 2001; Glenn Gould Prize, Glenn Gould Foundation, 2002; Kyoto Prize, Japan, 2009; De Gaulle-Adenauer Prize, 2011; Giga-Hertz Prize, 2011; Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Venice Biennale, 2012; Gloria Artis Gold Medal, 2012; Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music, 2012; Karol Szymanowski Prize, Foundation Karol Szymanowski, 2012; Frontiers of Knowledge Award, BBVA Foundation, 2013, and nine honorary doctorates from universities and conservatoires in Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic and the United States.


Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) is a large acrylic-on-canvas pop art painting by British artist David Hockney, completed in May 1972. It measures , and depicts two figures: one swimming underwater and one clothed male figure looking down at the swimmer. In November 2018, it sold for US$90.3 million, at that time the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting by a living artist.


title: Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)

text: Hockney visited California for the first time in January 1964 after a successful first solo exhibition at the John Kasmin gallery. The United States fascinated him, and Los Angeles in particular, partly because of the influence of Hollywood cinema but also because of the modernist building Case Study House #21. As a gay man, he was also a fan of the beefcake magazine "Physique Pictorial", which was published in Los Angeles. "I instinctively knew I was going to like it," Hockney said, "and as I flew over San Bernardino and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything and the sun, I was more thrilled than I have ever been in arriving in any city."


text: Hockney painted the first of his pool paintings, "California Art Collector" in 1964, and the swimming pool became a recurring theme in his paintings, such as "Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool" (1966, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and most notably "A Bigger Splash" (1967, Tate Gallery). He painted a series of double portraits from 1968 to 1977, including "American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman)" (1968, Art Institute of Chicago), and "Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy" (1971, Tate Gallery).


text: This work brings together two of Hockney's themes from his paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the swimming pool, and the double portrait. It depicts a male figure in white trunks swimming breaststroke underwater, and the painter Peter Schlesinger, Hockney's former lover and muse, fully clothed and standing at the edge of the pool looking down at the swimmer. The painting is set in southern France, near Saint-Tropez. In characteristic Hockney style, the foreground is simplified and flattened with a view of tree-clad hills in the background.


text: The composition was inspired by a serendipitous combination of photographs that Hockney noticed on his studio floor: one of a man swimming underwater, taken in California in 1966, and the other of a man standing looking at the ground. Juxtaposed, it appeared as if the standing person was looking at the swimmer. Hockney's relationship with Schlesinger had ended abruptly in 1971, following a fight in Cadaqués. "By showing another young man swimming towards Peter, the artist acknowledges lost love and his boyfriend’s desire for a new partner". The painting can be viewed as fitting into a European tradition since the Renaissance of depicting the nude bathing, washing off the stain of pollution amid the peace of nature.


text: Hockney worked on the painting for four months in late 1971, but dissatisfied with the composition, in particular with the angle of the pool, abandoned the work and started afresh. He then travelled for several months with Mark Lancaster, and returned to the work in early 1972. The year 1972 was a very productive year for Hockney, as he threw himself into his work to escape from his unhappiness, often working 14 or 15 hours a day. Around the same time, he was working on his (unfinished) double portrait of "George Lawson and Wayne Sleep" (1972-5, Tate).


text: In April 1972, Hockney flew to the south of France to better visualise the figure swimming underwater, using the pool at film director Tony Richardson's villa at Le Nid du Duc near Saint-Tropez to do so. Hockney's studio assistant, Mo McDermott, recreated the pose of the downcast man, while a young photographer, John St Clair, was the swimmer. Hockney took hundreds of photographs based on his original composition.


text: Back at his London studio, Hockney assembled the photos along with photographs of Peter Schlesinger taken in Kensington Gardens wearing the same pink jacket. Hockney worked on the painting for two weeks, working 18-hour days, completing and varnishing it only the night before it was due to be shipped to New York for the exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery. It was first shown in the exhibition "Paintings and Drawings", which ran from 13 to 31 May 1972.


text: Hockney said of the painting, "I must admit I loved working on that picture, [...] working with such intensity; it was marvellous doing it, really thrilling"


text: The creation of the painting and the breakdown of Hockney's relationship with Schlesinger were featured in the semi-fictional 1974 documentary "A Bigger Splash", named after the 1967 Hockney painting.


text: The painting was originally sold to James Astor and his wife in 1972 for $18,000 (). Six months later it was sold on for $50,000 (). It was acquired in 1983 by the American billionaire David Geffen, who sold it to British billionaire Joe Lewis in 1995 at an undisclosed price.


text: It was included in the Hockney exhibition, which toured the Tate Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou from February 2017 to February 2018.


text: On 15 November 2018, in nine minutes of bidding, it was sold to an unknown buyer for $90.3 million at Christie's auction house in New York City, setting an auction record for a living artist. The sale broke the previous record for a living artist of $58 million for Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog (Orange)" in 2013 and more than tripled the record for a work by Hockney, $28.5 million for "Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica" set in May 2018. The highest known prices for a painting by a living artist in private sales are for two paintings by Jasper Johns (born 1930): in 2006, Kenneth C. Griffin bought Johns' "False Start" for about $80 million ($ million in ) from David Geffen, and in 2010 Steven A. Cohen bought Johns' 1958 "Flag" for around $110 million (equivalent to $ million in ) from Leo Castelli's son.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: Romeo and Juliet (), Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev reused music from the ballet in three suites for orchestra and a solo piano work.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: Based on a synopsis created by Adrian Piotrovsky (who first suggested the subject to Prokofiev) and Sergey Radlov, the ballet was composed by Prokofiev in September 1935 to their scenario which followed the precepts of "drambalet" (dramatised ballet, officially promoted at the Kirov Ballet to replace works based primarily on choreographic display and innovation). Following Radlov's acrimonious resignation from the Kirov in June 1934, a new agreement was signed with the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on the understanding that Piotrovsky would remain involved.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: However, the ballet's original happy ending (contrary to Shakespeare) provoked controversy among Soviet cultural officials. The ballet's production was then postponed indefinitely when the staff of the Bolshoi was overhauled at the behest of the chairman of the Committee on Arts Affairs, Platon Kerzhentsev. The ballet's failure to be produced in the Soviet Union until 1940 may also have been a result of consequences in the performing arts following "Pravda's" denunciation of Dmitri Shostakovich in 1936, as well as other "degenerate modernists" including Piotrovsky. The conductor Yuri Fayer met with Prokofiev frequently during the writing of the music, and he strongly urged the composer to revert to the traditional ending. Fayer went on to conduct the first performance of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: Suites of the ballet music were heard in Moscow and the United States, but the full ballet premiered in the Mahen Theatre, Brno (then in Czechoslovakia, now in the Czech Republic), on 30 December 1938. This version was a single-act production with music mainly from the first two suites. Prokofiev was not able to attend the premiere due to his status of outbound restriction.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: It is better known today from the significantly revised version that was first presented at the Kirov Theatre (now Mariinsky Theatre) in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) on 11 January 1940, with choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky and with Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeyev in the leading roles. Despite the objections of Prokofiev, Lavrovsky significantly changed the score of the ballet. This production received international acclaim and was awarded the Stalin Prize.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1955, Mosfilm made the film version of this production with Galina Ulanova as Juliet and Yuri Zhdanov as Romeo. This film won the Best Lyrical Film and nominated as Palme d'Or in the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1955, Frederick Ashton choreographed a production of "Romeo and Juliet" for the Royal Danish Ballet.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1962, John Cranko's choreography of "Romeo and Juliet" for the Stuttgart Ballet helped the company achieve a worldwide reputation. It had its American premiere in 1969.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1965, choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan's version for the Royal Ballet premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev danced the title roles. Fonteyn, considered to be near retirement, embarked upon a rejuvenated career with a partnership with Nureyev. Also in 1965, Oleg Vinogradov stages a version in Russia while serving as assistant ballet master to Pyotr Gusev.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1971, John Neumeier, partly inspired by John Cranko, created another version of the ballet in Frankfurt. In 1974, Neumeier's "Romeo and Juliet" premiered in Hamburg as his first full-length ballet with the company.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1977, Rudolf Nureyev created a new version of "Romeo and Juliet" for the London Festival Ballet, today's English National Ballet. He performed the lead role of Romeo with British ballerinas Eva Evdokimova and Patricia Ruanne creating the role of Juliet. As a partnership, they toured the production internationally. Eva Evdokimova danced the leading role Juliet in London and Paris, and it continues to be a popular ballet in the ENB repertoire, with its most recent revival in 2010 staged by Patricia Ruanne and Frederic Jahn of the original 1977 cast. This production was also staged by La Scala Theater Ballet in 1980 and Paris Opera Ballet in 1984 and has been a renowned performance in the POB repertoire.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1979, Yuri Grigorovich created a new version for the Bolshoi, "which did away with most of the stage properties and stylized the action into an all-danced text." This was revived in 2010 and remains in the Bolshoi repertory.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1985, choreographer László Seregi's production premiered at the Hungarian National Ballet, Budapest.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1990, director Armondo Linus Acosta used Prokofiev's score, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, to create a motion picture adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Acosta's "Romeo.Juliet" was conceived as a film-in-concert with a live orchestra performing the soundtrack, and was performed as such to international acclaim with by conductors such as André Previn, Barry Wordsworth, and Nicholas Cleobury.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1991, Christopher Gable directed his own production for the Northern Ballet Theatre. It was choreographed by Massimo Moricone and featured William Walker as Romeo and Jayne Regan as Juliet.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 1996, choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot premiered his version of "Roméo et Juliette" at Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. Taking formal inspiration from the episodic character of Sergei Prokofiev’s classic score, Maillot structured the action in a manner akin to cinematic narrative. Rather than focusing on themes of political-social opposition between the two feuding clans, this Romeo and Juliet highlights the dualities and ambiguities of adolescence.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 2008, Krzysztof Pastor presented his version by the Scottish Ballet at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. The Polish premiere of this version was by the Polish National Ballet in Warsaw, and the United States premiere was by the Joffrey Ballet in 2014.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: On July 4, 2008, with the approval of the Prokofiev family and permission from the Russian State Archive, the original Prokofiev score was given its world premiere. Musicologist Simon Morrison, author of "The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years", unearthed the original materials in the Moscow archives, obtained permissions, and reconstructed the entire score. Mark Morris created the choreography for the production. The Mark Morris Dance Group premiered the work at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in New York state. The production subsequently began a year-long tour to include Berkeley, Norfolk, London, New York, and Chicago.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In 2011, the National Ballet of Canada premiered a new choreography of "Romeo and Juliet" by Alexei Ratmansky in Toronto, with plans to take it on tour in Western Canada in early 2012.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: In addition to a somewhat standard instrumentation, the ballet also requires the use of the tenor saxophone. This voice adds a unique sound to the orchestra as it is used both in solo and as part of the ensemble. Prokofiev also used the cornet, viola d'amore and mandolins in the ballet, adding an Italianate flavor to the music.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: Prokofiev reduced selected music from the ballet as "Romeo and Juliet: Ten Pieces for Piano", Op. 75, which were performed in 1936 and 1937.


title: Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)

text: Sergei Prokofiev himself made the first recording of music from the ballet, with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in 1938. Since then, there have been recordings of the full score, as well as various excerpts such as the orchestral suites the composer prepared. Leopold Stokowski conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a rare stereo recording in 1954. Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the Symphony Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre recorded the full score in 1959. André Previn with the London Symphony Orchestra and Lorin Maazel with the Cleveland Orchestra both made recordings of the complete score in 1973. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1995, in selections from the score, both for RCA Victor. Georg Solti conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a recording coupled with the Classical Symphony. Valery Gergiev made two recordings with Kirov Orchestra in 2001 and London Symphony Orchestra in 2011.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Ganges river dolphin (Platanista gangetica) is a species of toothed whale classified in the family Platanistidae. It lives in the Ganges and related rivers of South Asia, namely in the countries of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. It is related to the much smaller Indus river dolphin which lives in the Indus River in Pakistan and the Beas River of northwestern India.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: It is also known by the name susu (popular name) or "Sisu" (Assamese language) and shushuk (Bengali). The Ganges river dolphin has been recognized by the government of India as its National Aquatic Animal and is the official animal of the Indian city of Guwahati. Its first occurrence, within the Hooghly River, was documented by William Roxburgh.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Ganges river dolphin split from the Indus river dolphin during the Pleistocene, around 550,000 years ago. This species and the Indus river dolphin, were initially classified as a single species, "Platanista gangetica", but in the 1970s both were split into distinct species. However, in the 1990s, both species were again grouped as a single species. However, more recent studies of genes, divergence time, and skull structure support both being distinct species. The earliest fossil identified as belonging to the species is only 12,000 years old.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The species has multiple common names throughout its range. It is known as susu as a popular name; soons, soans, or soos in Hindi; shushuk in Bengali; hiho or hihu in Assamese; bhagirath (as a reference to the character of the same name from Hindu mythology); and shus or suongsu in Nepali. Its Sanskrit name in medieval times was likely shishumar, and during the Mughal era, it was known as pani suar.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: It lives along the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems of Bangladesh and India, and the Sapta Koshi and Karnali Rivers in Nepal. The Ganges river dolphin favours deep pools, eddy countercurrents located downstream of the convergence of rivers and of sharp meanders, and upstream and downstream of midchannel islands.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Ganges river dolphin has a rectangular, ridgelike dorsal fin and females tend to be larger than males. Ganges river dolphins usually are tan, chocolate brown or light blue. They have an elongated, slender snout with sharp and very pointed teeth, similar to most river dolphins. The river dolphin has a rounded belly which, combined with their rectangular dorsal fin, makes them look particularly stocky in build compared to other dolphins. Their flippers and tail flukes are large and broad. They have a large melon head used for echolocation, because they cannot see well. Their eyes are usually small due to the cloudy water. Ganges river dolphins are usually 2.2-2.6 meters long (7–8 ft). The oldest recorded animal was a 28-year-old male, 199 cm in length, although they are estimated to live up to 30 years old.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Ganges river dolphins usually come in pairs or they're just single and are not known to do acrobatic maneuvers near boats or when they're distressed. Little is known about their behavior because they are usually shy around boats and are hard to observe. They are known to breach; however this is rare.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: This species shows object-avoidance behavior in both the consistently heavily murky waters of its habitat and in clear water in captivity, suggesting it is capable of using echolocation effectively to navigate and forage for prey. Information is limited on how extensively vocalization is used between individuals. It is capable of performing whistles, but rarely does so, suggesting that the whistle is a spontaneous sound and not a form of communication. The Ganges river dolphin most typically makes echolocation sounds such as clicks, bursts, and twitters. Produced pulse trains are similar in wave form and frequency to the echolocation patterns of the Amazon river dolphin. Both species regularly produce frequencies lower than 15 kHz and the maximum frequency is thought to fall between 15 and 60 kHz.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: Echolocation is also used for population counts by using acoustic surveying. This method is still being developed and is not heavily used due to cost and technical skill requirement. Given the dolphin's blindness, it produces an ultrasonic sound that is echoed off other fish and water species, allowing it to identify prey.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The dolphin does not have a specific mating season. When a calf is born, 8–12 months after conception, it will stay with its mother for one year.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: Ganges river dolphins use echolocation to find food. They eat crustaceans such as prawns and fish including carp, mahseer, and even sharks such as the Ganges shark ("Glyphis gangeticus"). They may also take birds and turtles.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Ganges River dolphin has been listed as endangered under the IUCN Red List since 1996. Human activity has played a large role in the reduction of both their native range and population size. The Ganges river dolphin and other freshwater dolphin species have faced declines in population from stressors such as noise pollution, ship traffic, and fishery bycatch. Anthropogenic activity like dam construction and hydroelectric power plants also contribute to their endangered status. They are also endangered due to pollution and overfishing for oil. Entanglement in fishing nets as bycatch can cause significant damage to local populations, and individuals are taken each year by hunters; their oil and meat are used as a liniment, as an aphrodisiac, and as bait for catfish. Poisoning of the water supply from industrial and agricultural chemicals may also have been a contributing factor towards population decline, as these chemicals are biomagnified in the bodies of the dolphins. An immediate danger for the species in National Chambal Sanctuary is the decrease in river depth and appearance of sand bars dividing the river course into smaller segments, as irrigation has lowered water levels throughout their range.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Ganges dolphin is associated with Ganga and is occasionally the depiction of her vahana, the makara.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: A 2017 population assessment estimated that less than 3,500 individuals of "Platanista gangetica" exist throughout the species' range. The underlying surveys are temporally patchy and believed to contain uncertainty.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Ministry of Environment and Forest declared the Gangetic dolphin the national aquatic animal of India. A stretch of the Ganges River between Sultanganj and Kahlgaon in Bihar has been declared a dolphin sanctuary and named Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary, the first such protected area.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The Uttar Pradesh government in India is propagating ancient Hindu texts in hopes of raising the community support to save the dolphins from disappearing. One of the lines being versed from Valimiki's Ramayan, highlighted the force by which the Ganges emerged from Lord Shivji's locks and along with this force came many species such as animals, fish, and the Shishumaar—the dolphin.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: On 31 December 2020, a dead adult dolphin was found at the Sharda canal in the Pratapgarh district in India. A video circulated on social media showing a dozen men beating the dolphin with sticks and an ax. On 7 January 2021, three people were arrested.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: The species is protected from international trade by its listing in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. This makes commercial international trade prohibited.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: On 20 May 2013, India's Ministry of Environment and Forests declared dolphins ‘nonhuman persons’ and as such has forbidden their captivity for entertainment purposes; keeping dolphins in captivity must satisfy certain legal prerequisites.


title: Ganges river dolphin

text: On the occasion of the 74th Independence Day, 15 August 2020, the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change announced 'Project Dolphin' to boost conservation of both river and oceanic dolphins.


title: Isla Blair

text: Isla Blair Glover (born 29 September 1944) is a British actress and singer. She made her first stage appearance in 1963 as Philia in the London debut of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum".


title: Isla Blair

text: Isla Blair was born in Bangalore, India, on 29 September 1944. Her father, Ian Baxter Blair-Hill, was a British tea planter of Scottish descent. Blair's interest in performing arts first became apparent when, at the age of two, she gave an impromptu singing performance on the boat ride from India to England. She went on to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to prepare for a career in acting.


title: Isla Blair

text: Blair made her first stage appearance at the Strand Theatre on 3 October 1963 playing the part of Philia in the London debut of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for their 1971 season, during which she portrayed Emilia in "The Man of Mode" and Aglaya in "Subject to Fits". In 1973, Blair toured the Middle East with the Prospect Theatre Company in the role of Viola in "Twelfth Night". Other venues at which Blair has performed include the Old Vic and the Nottingham Playhouse.


title: Isla Blair

text: One of Blair's earliest experiences working in film was in a scene with Paul McCartney in the 1964 film "A Hard Day's Night". McCartney offered to drive Blair home after the shoot, but upon exiting the building, the two were swarmed by fans who scratched and kicked Blair in an attempt to reach McCartney. The following day, she declined a second offer of a ride from McCartney. The scene they had been filming, which was Blair's only scene in the movie, was eventually cut and lost.


title: Isla Blair

text: Her first credited film appearance was in the 1965 horror film "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" as an art gallery assistant. Her other film appearances include "A Flea in Her Ear" (1968), "Battle of Britain" (1969), "Taste the Blood of Dracula" (1970), "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989, as the wife of her real-life husband Julian Glover, and credited as Mrs. Glover), "Valmont" (1989), "The Monk" (1990), "The House of Angelo" (1997), "The Match" (1999), "Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War" (2002), "AfterLife" (2003) and "Johnny English Reborn" (2011).


title: Isla Blair

text: Blair guest starred in two episodes of ""; appearing in 1975, along with Anthony Valentine, in "" and in 1976, along with Freddie Jones, in "Journey to Where". In 1976, Blair played Emma Antrobus in the ITV drama series "The Crezz". She played a principal role (Sally) in the BBC's alternative history TV serial "An Englishman's Castle", first broadcast in 1978. One of her best known TV appearances was as Flora Beniform in "The History Man" (1981) alongside Anthony Sher. Blair played Claire Carlsen, Francis Urquhart's Parliamentary Private Secretary, in "The Final Cut" (1995). In 2003, she played opposite John Nettles in an episode of "Midsomer Murders" as a psychological profiler. She played Nanny Langton in "The Star of Jacob", "Father Brown" (S5:E1, 2016).


title: Isla Blair

text: She played the part of a foreign agent, disguised as a bride, in "The Avengers" episode "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Station". (1967)


title: Isla Blair

text: In 2010, she appeared at The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond in "The Company Man" by Torben Betts. She was nominated for an Off West End Award as Best Actress.


title: Isla Blair

text: Blair is married to fellow actor Julian Glover, with whom she has a son, actor Jamie Glover. Along with Prunella Scales, Blair and Glover were involved with the expansion of the Salisbury Playhouse. She was vice president of TACT, the Actors' Children's Trust in 2015 and trustee in 2018.


title: Here Are the Young Men

text: Here Are the Young Men is a 2020 drama film written and directed by Eoin Macken, based on the novel of the same name by Rob Doyle. It stars Dean-Charles Chapman, Finn Cole, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Travis Fimmel and Conleth Hill. The title is a quote from the song "Decades" which closes the album "Closer" (1980) by Joy Division.


title: Here Are the Young Men

text: The film had its world premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh on 11 July 2020. It was released in the United States on 27 April 2021, by Well Go USA Entertainment, and in the United Kingdom on 30 April 2021, by Signature Entertainment.


title: Here Are the Young Men

text: In August 2018, it was announced Dean-Charles Chapman, Finn Cole, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Conleth Hill and Lola Petticrew joined the cast of the film, with Eoin Macken directing from a screenplay by Macken and Rob Doyle, based upon the novel of the same name, written by Doyle. Richard Bolger, Noah Haeussner, Edwina Casey served as producers on the film, while Paul W. S. Anderson, Andrew Davies Gans, Conor Barry and Michael Raimondi served as executive producers under their Hail Mary Pictures and Union Entertainment Group banners, respectively. In September 2018, Ralph Ineson and Susan Lynch joined the cast of the film. In November 2019, it was announced Travis Fimmel had joined the cast of the film.


title: Here Are the Young Men

text: The film had its world premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh on 11 July 2020. In November 2020, Well Go USA Entertainment and Signature Entertainment acquired Irish, UK and US distribution rights to the film respectively. It is scheduled to be released in the United States on 27 April 2021, and the United Kingdom on 30 April 2021.


title: Here Are the Young Men

text: "Here Are the Young Men" holds approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews, with an average of . The critics consensus reads, "Strong acting and good intentions aren't enough to overcome all the obvious turns in Here Are the Young Men's derivative story."


title: Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel song)

text: "Just the Way You Are" is a song by Billy Joel from his fifth studio album "The Stranger" (1977). It was released in September 1977 as the album's lead single. It became both Joel's first US Top 10 and UK Top 20 single (reaching No. 3 and No. 19 respectively), as well as Joel's first gold single in the US. The song also topped the "Billboard" Easy Listening Chart for the entire month of January 1978.


title: Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel song)

text: "Just the Way You Are" garnered two Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1979.


title: Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel song)

text: Joel shared that the melody and chord progression for this song came to him while he was dreaming. In an interview on the "Howard Stern Radio Show" on November 16, 2010, Joel revealed that the inspiration for writing the name of the song and how it sounds in the chorus was directly taken from the last line in the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons song "Rag Doll", which incidentally was also a larger inspiration for Joel's later song "Uptown Girl". The song, which Joel had written for his first wife (and also his business manager at the time) Elizabeth Weber, was not liked by either Joel or his band, and Joel had originally decided against making the track a part of "The Stranger", but at the request of both Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow (both were recording in other studios in the same building at the time), he agreed to put the song on the final mix. However, the album's producer, Phil Ramone, later contradicted Joel's claim, stating in an interview that they could not afford to exclude the song because Joel did not have that much material from which to choose for the album. The song also shares some similarities to "I'm Not in Love" by 10cc, due to the keyboard and background vocal tape loops Joel and Ramone used.


title: Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel song)

text: After Joel and Weber divorced in 1982, Joel rarely performed the song live after 1986 until the 2000s, and Joel has publicly stated that he disliked playing the song live in the wake of his divorce from his first wife. He noted that during performances of the song around the time of his first divorce, his drummer Liberty DeVitto would jokingly parody the lyrics in the chorus as "She got the house. She got the car."


title: Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel song)

text: When "Just the Way You Are" was released as a single, it was shortened by over a minute. The differences are the removal of the second verse and an earlier fade. A live performance of the song was also used as a music video. On February 18, 1978, the song peaked at No. 3, and Joel performed a shorter version of the song as the musical guest that day on "Saturday Night Live" (along with "Only the Good Die Young"). The single version (fading 8 seconds later) was included in the first release of "Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II", but the full album version was restored for the remastered release of that compilation.


title: Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel song)

text: The saxophone solo was played by Phil Woods, a well-known jazz performer and Grammy award winner. Woods' performance here exposed him to a wider audience and introduced his music to rock fans.


title: Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel song)

text: "Cash Box" said that "a slight influence of Stevie Wonder is evident in the melody and light Latin rhythm."


title: Blue Star Ferries

text: Blue Star Ferries is a brand name of Blue Star Maritime S.A. The company operates ferry services from the Greek mainland to the Aegean Islands.