Pierre Boulez Centenary in Cleveland

Call for Papers

Cleveland State University: November 13 to 16, 2025

In partnership with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the School of Music at Cleveland State University celebrates Pierre Boulez’s centenary on the weekend of November 13 to 16, 2025. Planned are a scholarly conference, a chamber music concert dedicated to Boulez’s music, an exhibition displaying manuscripts, letters, and photographs, and a panel discussion with musicians and colleagues who had worked with Boulez.

Cleveland is the ideal place to celebrate Boulez's life and his work, as Cleveland deemed to be a pivotal city in North America for his career. Boulez cultivated close ties to Cleveland, especially to the Cleveland Orchestra of whom he was the Principal Guest Conductor from 1969 to 1971. He further held annual residencies at the Cleveland Orchestra from 1992 to 2006, debuted his conducting career in the United States with this orchestra in 1965, and completed with the Cleveland Orchestra a series of legendary recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. He was further awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2005.

For the scholarly conference, which will take place at Cleveland State University from Thursday, November 13 to Saturday, November 15, we invite contributors to submit papers on any topics concerning Boulez. While papers on sketch studies and score analyses are welcomed, we are especially interested in receiving proposals with historical and socio-cultural approaches shedding light, in a broader sense, on "Boulez in America." Contributors are thus invited to investigate such topics as:

Boulez as a composer

• Music by Boulez performed in North America during his lifetime and after
• Boulez and the difference of New Music and experimental music in North America
• Boulez and the entanglement of different traditions, particularly in the light of cultural appropriation, post-colonialism, and exoticism
• Boulez, IRCAM, and electronic and digital music in North America

Boulez as a conductor

• Boulez as a conductor in a North American context: Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles
• Performances of the Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) in North America
• Boulez and the Monday Evening Concerts (MEC) in Los Angeles

Historical reception of Boulez's music

• Historical reception of Boulez as a composer and conductor in North America
• Boulez from the perspective of a North American audience
• Boulez as seen by North American music critics, theorists, and musicologists

Boulez biography

• Audio-visual documents of Boulez and the careful staging of his persona
• The role of Adele Siegal, Boulez's personal secretary in the United States

Boulez and his contemporaries

• Boulez's relationship to North American composers, such as John Cage, Earle Brown, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Augusta Read Thomas, Virgil Thomson, Henry Cowell, Frank Zappa, and others
• Boulez and Leonard Bernstein as educators, composers, and conductors
• Boulez and Charles Rosen, Leonard Stein, Robert Craft, as well as other American performers
• Boulez in relation to fellow European composers in North America: Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others
• Boulez and North American music theory and theorists

Boulez and the North American art scene

• Boulez's interest in the works of Alexander Calder, E.E. Cummings, Frank Lloyd Wright, among others

Boulez as an intermediary

• Boulez as a bridge between the activities of contemporary music on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century
• The antagonistic angle: Boulez as an operator in North America

We invite proposals for a 20-minute conference paper, followed by a 10-minute discussion period. Apart from paper presentations, we also encourage the submissions of proposals for lecture recitals. Hence, alternatively, you may submit a proposal for a 30-minute lecture recital, followed by a 10-minute discussion period. Abstracts should not exceed 350 words. Beyond the abstract, proposals should include:

• Title of presentation
• Name(s), contact details, and affiliation(s)
• Short biography/ies (maximum 100 words)
• List of equipment (including piano) that is required

The conference language will be English or alternatively French. Proposals should be sent, as an MS-Word-compatible or pdf file, to boulezcsu2025@gmail.com. 

The submission deadline is May 15, 2025. All authors will be notified by June 15, 2025 regarding the status of their submission.

Program Committee:

• Michael Baumgartner (Host, Cleveland State University)
• Andrew Rindfleisch (Host, Cleveland State University)
• Edward Campbell (University of Aberdeen)
• Angela Ida De Benedictis (Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel)
• Pascal Decroupet (Université Côte d'Azur)
• Robert Piencikowski (Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel)