The world’s most influential living composer turns 90-years-old today.

Renowned composer and conductor Pierre Boulez celebrates his 90th birthday today. The French musician is arguably the most influential living composer in the world, both in his seismic impact on the course of contemporary composition over the past 70 years and via his stimulation of some the highest regarded institutions of modern music, such as Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Parisian electronic music research centre IRCAM. He was also instrumental in lobbying for the construction of the newly opened Philharmonie de Paris concert hall.

In addition to his own personal contribution to contemporary music, Boulez has been a key champion for the works of many of the past century’s most significant compositional voices, including Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, John Cage, György Ligeti and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

A student of Oliver Messiaen, Boulez was among one of Europe’s strongest advocates of serial twelve-tone composition. Perhaps Boulez’s most significant musical contribution, and by far one of the greatest examples of serial technique in canon of 20th century music, is Le Marteau sans Maître. This landmark piece, premiered in 1955, was revolutionary in its adoption of seemingly disparate musical influences, such as jazz, Balaniese Gamelan and...