Boulez’s prolific writings, of which Stocktakings, Orientations and Music Lessons are representative in English (originally in French, 1966, 1981 and 2005, respectively), show his preoccupation with the dialectical and the deductive, his passion for creativity in all its forms and his focus on the craft of ‘écriture’ (‘writing’ in the sense of composing). He detested archaism, hence his notorious critique of Schoenberg’s dodecaphony, and rejected the concept of schools of composition or interpretation. In the mid 1960s, he turned to ‘formalism’ in all his activities, aiming at the comprehensibility of transitory truths, including music – analytically in his commentaries covering a century and a half of musical works by others. The dialectic between system and idea infuses all his writings. Challenging though it is to embrace such a large collection of outputs, Boulez’s unity of thought and purpose is evident throughout.