French composer, conductor and writer Pierre Boulez was BOTD in 1925. Born in Montbrison to a middle-class family, he studied mathematics and music at the Collège de Saint-Étienne, before studying with avant-garde composer Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire de Paris. His compositions Le Marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli and Répons, inspired by Messiaen, Arnold Schoenberg and indigenous Balinese and Japanese music, became highly influential on the development of avant-garde 20th century music. He developed a highly successful six-decade career as a conductor, holding posts as music director of the New York Philharmonic, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. Typically favouring the works of Messiaen, Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky, he helped popularise integral serialism, controlled chance music and early experiments in electronic music. In 1972, he conducted the highly-praised centenary production of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen opera cycle, with a radical restaging by director Patrice Chéreau. He and Chéreau reunited in 1979 for the world premiere of the three-act version of Berg’s opera Lulu. With the support of the French government, Boulez created and directed the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and founded and directed the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a chamber orchestra specialising in contemporary music. Later in life, he also co-founded the Cité de la musique concert hall in suburban Paris and the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland. A connoisseur of contemporary art, he wrote monographs about the painter Paul Klee, collected works by his friends Joan Miró, Francis Bacon and Nicolas de Staël, and became friends with (gay) philosophers Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. His prodigious career garnered him numerous prizes (including 20 Grammy Awards for his musical recordings) and lifetime achievement awards. Widely admired for producing a lean, athletic sound from orchestras, he was also infamously confrontational and known to bully his colleagues. Highly secretive about his personal life, he never married or had children. In 1972, he engaged a young German, Hans Messner, as his personal assistant, who lived and travelled with him until his death. Biographers continue to speculate about whether their relationship was romantic or sexual, noting that Messner called Boulez “Monsieur” when in public. Boulez died in 2016, aged 90.