Pierre Boulez

Born in France, Pierre Boulez didn't immediately gravitate towards music. When he was of age to go to college, he went to study mathematics and engineering.

It was only on the side that he started to get consumed by music composition. In the mid-1940s, Boulez studied music at the prestigious Paris Conservatory, which led to the composition of his first pieces, all for piano, in 1945.

After studying under Olivier Messiaen and Arnold Schoenberg, Boulez set off on his own, mostly focusing on the music style serialism, which employed his background in math to make structured compositions. However, after some critiques of his serial work, Boulez was less rigid about his music, allowing for greater freedom and as time wore on, greater critical acclaim.

By the late 1960s, Boulez added conducting to his repertoire, and over the next decade, he conducted the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and more. In 1967, he won his first Grammy Award, and over the course of the next 30+ years, he would tally more than 20 Grammy wins, culminating in a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

With his growing recognition in the 1970s, Boulez was contacted by then-French President Georges Pompidou to found a modern music institute, which eventually opened in 1977 as IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic/Music). He was the head of IRCAM until the early 1990s.

Boulez still composed and conducted well into his 80s, helping further the development of modern and postmodern musical composition as well. He died at the age of 90 in early 2016.