Concerning the contributions of my ‘arch-disciple’ [Pierre Boulez], on the other hand, may I say that it would be strange indeed if we had not put words into, or helped to get them out of, each other’s mouths; after all, we have been working together for twenty-three years. What he is guilty of, however, is having introduced me to almost all of the new music I have heard in the past two decades (Boulez’s included, for which I am ill-disposed to forgive him, my extravagant advocacy of it at one time having brought me nothing but criticism); and not only to the new music but to the new everything else – which is why ‘disciple’, arch or ordinary, is hardly apt. The plain truth is that anyone who admires my Agon, my Variations, my Requiem Canticles, owes some gratitude to the man who has sustained my creative life these last years.