Pierre Boulez's most startling creative work came early, climaxing in the violent beauty of Le Marteau sans maître (1952–4), for a septet of dissimilar instruments including the contralto voice. Many later works he left unfinished (e.g. his Third Piano Sonata, 1955–7), disclaimed or recomposed: Pli selon pli, for soprano with an orchestra rich in chiming percussion, he began in 1957, first presented whole in 1960 and went on revising until the end of the 1980s. Meanwhile he gained and maintained acclaim as a conductor and forthright musical presence.

at sixty

Modern music grows old alarmingly. Pierre Boulez now is sixty, and the opportunity was taken to celebrate with a long weekend of concerts and an exhibition in Baden-Baden, which has been his home town since 1959. This solidly respectable spa, this German Cheltenham, survived having Berlioz and Brahms as summer visitors in the 1860s, but perhaps has never quite got used to housing a master of the avantgarde. After one lady had patiently explained to her elderly husband about this ‘Hommage à Pierre Boulez’ he turned swiftly to her: ‘Er ist tot oder?’

In truth there were moments when it was a bit like that. The nature of exhibitions is to seem commemorative rather than jubilant, and the long glass cases in the Kunsthalle, containing scores, sketches, letters, postcards and photographs, did convey a funereal solemnity not altogether alleviated by the reverberating sound of the Ring being eternally replayed in some part of the building.