Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) turned to music in 1942, entering the Conservatoire de Musique Paris in 1943, studying analysis under Olivier Messiaen. In 1953, he founded series of concerts Domaine musical with aim to make better known the works of reference for modernity and contemporary production, giving premieres of new works. With Hans Rosbaud as mentor, he acquired a growing reputation as conductor during the 1960s, leading major orchestras (London, New York) then Paris Opéra and Bayreuth. Mid 1970s, he founded and directed Ircam in Paris, a research institute dedicated to the exploration of computer music and psychoacoustics, and the Ensemble intercontemporain, an orchestra specializing in the interpretation oftwentieth-centuryworks like creation of new works.

Pierre Boulez also taught at Darmstadt, Basel,Harvard, before Collège de France (1977 -1995). Author of just under fifty works, several of which have been expanded and re-elaborated according to the work-in-progress principle he brilliantly theorized. He initially conceived his creative activity as a systematic break with tonal language and the formal constructs associated with it. From 1980 his research focused on the mastery of large-scale forms and the use of new technologies from Ircam, for computer sound processing and real-time dialogue between performer and machine.