In a 2000 article in The New Yorker, Alex Ross described Boulez as a bully. Boulez did not disagree: "Certainly I was a bully. I'm not ashamed of it at all. The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society." One of the most notorious instance of this is Boulez's declaration in 1952 that "any musician who has not experienced‍—‌I do not say understood, but truly experienced‍—‌the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch."Boulez (1991), 113.
In a 2000 article in The New Yorker, Alex Ross described Boulez as a bully. Boulez did not disagree: "Certainly I was a bully. I'm not ashamed of it at all. The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society." One of the most notorious instance of this is Boulez's declaration in 1952 that "any musician who has not experienced‍—‌I do not say understood, but truly experienced‍—‌the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch."Boulez (1991), 113