This image is the cover for the book Music Lessons

Music Lessons

The eminent French composer’s groundbreaking lectures, available for the first time in English: “a major event” (Alex Ross).

Music Lessons collects the yearly lectures of French composer Pierre Boulez, prepared for the Collège de France between 1976 and 1995. These lectures offer a sustained intellectual engagement with themes of creativity in music by a widely influential cultural figure, who has long been central to the conversation around contemporary music.

In his essays Boulez explores the process through which a musical idea is realized in a full-fledged composition; the complementary roles of craft and inspiration; the degree to which the memory of other musical works can influence and change the act of creation; and other deeply fascinating topics. Boulez also gives a penetrating account of problems in classical music that are still present today, such as the crippling conservatism of many musical institutions.

Woven into the discussion are stories of Boulez’s own compositions and those of fellow composers whose work he championed, as both a critic and conductor: from Stravinsky to Stockhausen and Varèse, from Bartók to Berg, Debussy to Mahler and Wagner, and all the way back to Bach.

This edition includes a foreword by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and a preface by Jonathan Goldman.

Pierre Boulez, Jonathan Dunsby, Jonathan Goldman, Arnold Whittall

Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) was a French composer, conductor, and music theorist. He conducted with major orchestras in the United States and Europe, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Jonathan Dunsby is professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Jonathan Goldman is associate professor of musicology at the University of Montreal.
Arnold Whittall is emeritus professor of music at King’s College London.

The University of Chicago Press