Boulez’s music—and even more so, his conducting—reflects this worldview with eerie precision. His interpretations are crystalline, surgical, thin. Every note is accounted for, every line etched in glass. There is no indulgence, no rubato, no ritual pacing, no metaphysical sweep. The score is treated not as a sacred text but as a matrix. The result is perfectly intelligible but oddly uninhabited.

revolutions age quickly in commercial cultures. By 1962, the aftershocks of that eruption had begun to fade. Elvis had entered the army, been softened by Hollywood, and emerged safer. Chuck Berry was mired in legal trouble. Little Richard had briefly retreated into the pulpit. And Jerry Lee Lewis — yes, by then