In the annals of music history, few figures have dominated the discussion of virtuosity as much as Franz Liszt. A flamboyant performer whose hair-raising technical feats at the piano created a sense of awe-inspiring excitement andan icon whose star power radiated far beyond the realm of music, Liszt was, along with his early model, Paganini, among the first major performer-composers to define himself principally by virtuosity.Featuring new essays by an international group of preemi...

Pierre Boulez was appointed to the Collège de France in 1976, with the chair devoted to 'Invention, technique and language in Music', and he held his position until 1995. The publication of his extraordinary Collège de France lectures, his most significant writings from the 1970s to the 1990s, will make a major contribution to the discussion in English about Boulez's aesthetic legacy. His goal in Leçons de musique is to express his conception of musical language, laid out over th...