This chapter focuses on the use of spatial technique in key works that span a great deal of Pierre Boulez’s career: Poésie pour pouvoir (1958) for orchestra and tape, Domaines (1968) for clarinet and ensemble, Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna (1974–5) for orchestra in eight groups and Répons (1981) for six soloists, live electronics and ensemble. These works are then compared with spatialised instrumental music by his contemporaries, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Karel Goeyvaerts, Iannis Xenakis and Luigi Nono, which will shed light on Boulez’s specific approach to this artistic practice. Boulez’s unique contribution to the history of spatialisation lies in the strong articulatory function he ascribed to this performance practice. He created a typology of sonic movements that clarify the structural relationships of his spatialised works.

The twentieth century was a period of radical transformation in the materials, resources and technologies available for music. Pierre Boulez was at the forefront of these developments, yet at the same time he displayed a curious ambivalence towards them. This chapter shows how, as a powerful cultural figure committed to the project of modernity, Boulez embraced the technologies of the new age, particularly through his guiding of the programme of activities undertaken at the music/scientific research centre IRCAM, which he helped to found in Paris in the 1970s. It also shows how, in his own compositional work, he displayed an ambivalent and musically conservative attitude towards new technological developments, leaving the details to others, while maintaining a quite traditional view of musical composition and performance. The chapter explores the conceptual, historical and cultural contexts for Boulez’s engagement with technology, and examines some of the works he composed using the technological resources developed at IRCAM.

Through the mediation of Messiaen and Leibowitz, Boulez became acquainted with the repertoire of modern music during his student years, leading him to conceive of its synthesis at an early stage. First with Cage, then with Stockhausen, he maintained a fruitful dialogue, linked to the construction of a coherent language. Nevertheless, he was suspicious of Darmstadt and critical of the music he heard there, such as that of Nono. From the 1960s onwards, he pursued his compositional approach in a more solitary fashion, while interpreting the music of his contemporaries as a conductor. Open to the influences of writers and painters but an adept of absolute music that produced its own meanings, Boulez drew close to contemporaries such as Berio, Carter and Ligeti, who admired his work and his commitment to creation. In his writings, however, he relies essentially on his predecessors, making almost no reference to his contemporaries.

This chapter examines the way in which the idea of a European avant-garde is formed in the wake of Messiaen’s thought and the ways in which this reflexively informed Messiaen’s own work. It focuses in particular on the theoretical achievements of Ligeti, Stockhausen, and Xenakis and how formed a new ways of thinking about music.