Gregorian Chant, so different from other music

Haaretz runs a fascinating article on the life and work of Pierre Boulez:

Boulez became familiar with contemporary non-European music through his teacher, pathbreaking composer Olivier Messiaen, at the Paris Conservatoire, where Boulez enrolled in 1942 against the wishes of his father, who had wanted him to attend a technical college. It was there that Boulez encountered the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok and the highly innovative Edgard Varese. The sudden acquaintance with these composers shook up the 19-year-old Boulez.

“In Messiaen’s regular class, we studied harmony, the way one does at any music academy, but he would pick five or six of his best students for courses in composition and analysis that took place outside regular hours,” Boulez said, recounting what can now be found in books about the history of new music.

“We would get together in someone’s house, and study the evolution of music from Mozart to Schumann to Debussy and the new music of that period,” he said. “Messiaen showed us how the genius composers created their own rules. He was the only one; the other teachers were academics, unimaginative, who taught tricks but not the secrets of style and evolution. This is the way I began to understand composition.”

Music wasn’t something Boulez could pick up at home, though there was a piano in the house. “My family wasn’t musical,” he said. “I played and I sang in the choir at school. Because it was a religious school, we sang religious music. I mostly remember Gregorian chant, because it was so different from the other music, and I like it to this day.”