Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger in 1925

(Juliette) Nadia Boulanger ([ʒy.ljɛt na.dja bu.lɑ̃.ʒe]; 16 September 1887–22 October 1979) was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many of the leading composers and performers of the 20th century.

From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger sister Lili, she gave up composing and became a teacher. In that capacity she influenced generations of young composers, including many from the U.S., beginning with Aaron Copland. Among her other students were those who became leading soloists and conductors, including Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch and Ástor Piazzolla.

Boulanger taught in the U.S. and in England, working with music academies including the Juilliard School, the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Longy School, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, but her principal base for most of her life was her family's flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92.

Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and Europe, including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Hallé, New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia orchestras. She conducted several world premieres, including works by Copland and Stravinsky.

Biography

Ancestry and early years

Boulanger’s father, Ernest (1815-1900), was a composer and pianist who studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won the coveted Prix de Rome for composition in 1835. He wrote comic operas and incidental music for plays, but was most widely known for his choral music – he also achieved distinction as a director of choral groups, teacher of voice and a member of choral competition juries. After years of rejection, he was appointed to the Paris conservatoire as professor of singing in 1872.

Her mother, Raissa (1856-1935), qualified as a home tutor (or governess) in 1873. According to Ernest, he and Raissa met in Russia in 1873 and she followed him back to Paris. She joined his voice class at the Conservatoire in 1876 and they were married in Russia in 1877.

Boulanger was born on 16 September 1887, an older sister having died in infancy.

Through her early years, and despite both parents being very active musically, she was very upset by hearing music and would hide till it stopped. When Boulanger was five, Raissa became pregnant again. During the pregnancy, Boulanger’s response to music changed drastically. “One day I heard a fire bell. Instead of crying out and hiding, I rushed to the piano and tried to reproduce the sounds. My parents were amazed.” After this, Boulanger paid great attention to the singing lessons her father gave, and began to study the rudiments of music.

(Marie-Juliette Olga) Lili was born in 1893 while Boulanger was staying with family friends. When Ernest brought Boulanger home, and before she was allowed to see her mother or Lili, he made her promise solemnly to be responsible for the new baby’s welfare and to take an active part in its care.

From the age of seven, Boulanger studied hard in preparation for her Conservatoire entrance exams, sitting in on Conservatoire classes and having private lessons with teachers from the Conservatoire. Lili would often be in the room for these lessons, sitting quietly and listening.

Boulanger entered the Conservatoire in 1896 at the age of nine. She came third in the 1897 solfège competition, and subsequently worked hard to win first prize in 1898. She also took private lessons from Vierne and Guilmant. During this period she also received religious instruction to become an observant Catholic, taking her First Communion on 4 May 1899. The Catholic religion remained important to her for the rest of her life.

When Ernest died in 1900, money became a problem for the rest of the family. Raissa had an extravagant lifestyle, and the royalties they received from performances of Ernest’s music were insufficient to live on permanently. Boulanger continued to work hard at the Conservatoire with the aim of becoming a teacher and supporting the family.

She won the Conservatoire’s first prize in harmony in 1903 and she remained there for another year although she had begun to earn money through organ and piano performances. She studied composition with Fauré and in the 1904 competitions she came first in three categories: organ, accompagnement au piano and fugue (composition). At her accompagnement exam, Boulanger met Raoul Pugno, a renowned French pianist, organist and composer, who subsequently took an interest in her development.

In autumn of 1904, Boulanger began to teach from the family apartment at 36, rue Ballu.

36, rue Ballu, Paris

In addition to her private lessons that she gave at the family apartment, she started holding a Wednesday afternoon group class in analysis and sightsinging which she maintained almost till her death. This class was followed by her famous ‘at homes’, at which students could mingle with Boulanger’s friends such as Stravinsky, Valéry, Fauré etc.

Professional life

Boulanger was a keen composer in the years after she left the Conservatoire, encouraged by both Pugno and Fauré. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians says of Boulanger's music, "Her musical language is often highly chromatic (though always tonally based), and Debussy's influence is apparent.” Her goal was to win the First Grand Prix de Rome as her father had done, and she worked tirelessly towards it in addition to her increasing teaching and performing commitments. She first submitted work for judging in 1906, but failed to make it past the first round. In 1907 she progressed to the final round but again did not win.

In late 1907 she was appointed to teach elementary piano and accompagnement au piano at the newly-created Conservatoire Femina-Musica, and she was also made assistant to professor of harmony Henri Dallier at the Conservatoire.

In the 1908 Prix de Rome competition, Boulanger caused a stir by composing an instrumental fugue rather than the required vocal fugue. The subject was taken up by the national and international newspapers, and was only resolved when the French Minister of Public Information decreed that Boulanger’s work be judged solely on its musical merit. She went on to win the Second Grand Prix for her cantata La Sirène.

In 1908, as well as performing piano duets in public concerts, Boulanger and Pugno collaborated on composing a song cycle Les Heures claires, which was well-received enough to encourage them to continue working together.

Still hoping for the First Grand Prix de Rome, Boulanger entered the 1909 competition but failed to place in the final round. Later that year, the sixteen-year-old Lili announced to the family that she intended to be a composer and to win the Prix de Rome herself.

In 1910, Annette Dieudonné became a student of Boulanger’s and remained as such for the next fourteen years. When her studies ended, she began teaching Boulanger’s students the rudiments of music and solfège, and remained Boulanger's close friend and assistant for the rest of her life.

Boulanger attended the premiere of Diaghilev’s ballet ‘The Firebird’ in Paris, with music by Stravinsky. She immediately recognised the young composer’s genius and subsequently met the young composer at a luncheon and began a lifelong friendship with him.

In January 1912, Lili was accepted to the Conservatoire as a composition student and the following year – at the age of nineteen – Lili became the first woman to win the First Grand Prix de Rome for Music.

In April 1912, Boulanger made her debut as a conductor, leading the Société des Matinées Musicales orchestra in her 1908 cantata La Sirène, two of her songs and then Pugno’s Concertstück for piano and orchestra with the composer as soloist.

With the advent of war in Europe in 1914, Boulanger’s performing and conducting was put on hold and she continued only her private teaching and assisting Dallier at the Conservatoire. She was drawn into Lili’s expanding war work, and by the end of the year the two sisters had organised a sizable charity, the Comité Franco-Américain du Conservatoire National de Musique et de Déclamation, which existed to supply food, clothing, money, letters from home etc. to soldiers who had been musicians before the war.

Lili’s health, which had never been strong, began to suffer from the amount of effort she had been putting into her war work, and she died in March, 1918.

Life after Lili’s death

In 1919, Boulanger performed in more than twenty concerts, often programming her own music and that of her sister. Since the Conservatoire Femina-Musica had closed during the war, Alfred Cortot and Auguste Mangeot opened a new music school in Paris, which opened later that year, the Ecole normale de musique de Paris. Boulanger was invited by Cortot to join the school, where she ended up teaching classes in harmony, counterpoint, musical analysis, organ and composition.

Mangeot also asked Boulanger to contribute articles of music criticism to his paper the Monde Musical, and she occasionally provided articles for this, and other newspapers, for the rest of her life, though she never felt at ease setting her opinions down for posterity in this way.

In 1920, Boulanger began to compose again, writing a series of songs to words by Camille Mauclair. In 1921, she performed at two concerts in support of women’s rights, at both of which music by Lili was programmed. Later in life she claimed never to have been involved with feminism, and that women should not have the right to vote as they “lacked the necessary political sophistication.”

The American School at Fontainebleau

In the summer of 1921 the French Music School for Americans opened in Fontainebleau, with Boulanger listed on the programme as a professor of harmony. She inaugurated the custom, which would continue for the rest of her life, of inviting the best students to her summer residence at Gargenville one weekend for lunch and dinner. Among the students attending the first year at Fontainebleau was Aaron Copland.

Boulanger’s unrelenting schedule of teaching, performing, composing, writing letters etc. started to take its toll on her health – migraines were frequent, as was toothache. This caused her to cease her activities for Monde Musical as a critic as she was not well enough to attend the requisite concerts. In order to maintain the quality of life that she and Raissa had been enjoying, Boulanger had to concentrate on teaching, her most lucrative source of income.

Fauré believed she was mistaken to stop composing, but she told him, "If there is one thing of which I am certain, it is that I wrote useless music."

In 1924, Walter Damrosch, Arthur Judson and the New York Symphony Society arranged for Boulanger to tour the US towards the end of the year. She set sail on the Cunard flagship RMS Aquitania on Christmas Eve, and arrived in New York after an extremely rough crossing on New Year’s Eve. During this tour, she performed solo organ works, pieces by Lili, and premiered Copland’s new Symphony for Organ and Orchestra which he had written for her. She returned to France on the 28th February 1925.

Later that year, Boulanger approached the publishers Schirmer to enquire if they would be interested in publishing her methods of teaching music to children. When nothing came of this, she never again considered setting her ideas down in print.

Gershwin visited Boulanger in 1927, asking for lessons in composition. They spoke for half an hour after which Boulanger announced “I can teach you nothing.” Gershwin took this as a compliment and repeated the story many times.

Days after the Stavisky riots in February 1934, and in the midst of the general strike, Boulanger resumed conducting and made her Paris debut with the orchestra of the Ecole normale in a programme of Mozart, Bach and Jean Françaix. Boulanger’s private classes continued regardless of any external factors – Elliott Carter recalled that students who did not dare to cross Paris through the riots only showed that they did not “take music seriously enough”. By the end of the year she was conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with a programme of Bach, Monteverdi and Schütz.

Raissa died in March 1935, after a long decline. This freed Boulanger from her ties to Paris which had prevented her from taking up teaching opportunities in America in the past.

Life after Raissa’s death

Boulanger with Igor Stravinsky

In 1936, she substituted for Alfred Cortot in some of his piano masterclasses, providing the students insights into the performance of Mozart’s keyboard works. Later in the year she travelled to London to broadcast her lecture-recitals for the BBC as well as conducting acclaimed performances of works including Schütz, Fauré and Lennox Berkeley, becoming the first woman to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the process.

Boulanger’s long-held passion for Monteverdi culminated in her recording six discs of madrigals for HMV in 1937 which brought his music to a new audience. Though received very well in most quarters, some reviewers took issue with her use of modern instruments.

When Hindemith’s The Craft of Musical Composition was published, Boulanger asked the composer for his permission to translate the text into French and to add her own comments. Hindemith never responded to her offer, and his flight from Nazi Germany effectively ended the matter.

Late in 1937, Boulanger returned to Britain to broadcast for the BBC and hold her popular lecture-recitals. In November, she became the first woman to conduct a complete concert of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, which included Fauré’s Requiem and Monteverdi’s Amor (Lamento della ninfa). Describing her concerts, Mangeot wrote “She never uses a dynamic level louder than mezzo-forte and the takes pleasure in veiled, murmuring sonorities, from which she nevertheless obtains great power of expression. She arranges her dynamic levels so as never to have need of fortissimo…”

In 1938, Boulanger returned to the US for a longer tour. She had arranged to give a series of lectures at Radcliffe, Harvard, Wellesley and the Longy School of Music, and to broadcast for NBC. During this tour, she became the first woman to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In her three months there, she gave over a hundred lecture-recitals, recitals and concerts, one of which was the world premiere of Stravinsky’s concerto Dumbarton Oaks.

In addition to the Monteverdi, HMV issued two further sets of her recordings in 1938: the Piano Concerto in D by Jean Françaix, which she conducted; and the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, in which she and Dinu Lipatti were the duo pianists with a vocal ensemble, and (again with Lipatti) a selection of the Brahms Waltzes, Op. 39.

During Boulanger’s tour of America the following year, she became the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, as well as giving 102 lectures in 118 days across the US.

Second World War

As the Second World War loomed, Boulanger helped her students leave France, and made plans to do so herself. Stravinsky joined her at Gargenville, where they awaited news. Waiting to leave France till the last moment, Boulanger arrived in New York (via Madrid and Lisbon) on 6 November 1940.

After her arrival, Boulanger travelled to the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., to give classes in harmony, fugue, counterpoint and advanced composition. In 1942, she also began teaching at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, giving classes in music history, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, orchestration and composition.

Later life

Leaving America at the end of 1945, she arrived back in France in January 1946 to take up the position of professor of accompagnement au piano at the Conservatoire nationale. In 1953, she was appointed overall director of the Fontainebleau School.

As a long-standing friend of the family (and officially as chapel-master to the Prince of Monaco), Boulanger was asked to organise the music for the wedding of Prince Rainier of Monaco and the American actress, Grace Kelly, in 1956.

In 1958, she again went to America for a six-week tour, broadcasting, lecturing and making four television films.

In 1962, she toured Turkey giving concerts with her young protégée Idil Biret, and later in the year was received at the White House in America by president John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy.

In 1966, she travelled to Moscow to sit on the jury of the International Tchaikovsky Competition, chaired by Emil Gilels.

In England she taught at the Yehudi Menuhin School and gave lectures at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, which were broadcast by the BBC.

Even though her eyesight and hearing began to fade toward the end of her life, Boulanger worked almost until her death in 1979.

Nadia Boulanger as pedagogue

(Main article: List of students of Nadia Boulanger)

Asked about the difference between a well-made work and a masterpiece, Boulanger replied “I can tell whether a piece is well-made or not, and I believe that there are conditions without which masterpieces cannot be achieved, but I also believe that what defines a masterpiece cannot be pinned down. I won’t say that the criterion for a masterpiece does not exist, but I don’t know what it is.” She enjoyed all ‘good music’, whether it was simple, complex, popular or classical. Lennox Berkeley said “A good waltz has just as much value to her as a good fugue, and this is because she judges a work solely on its aesthetic content”

She insisted on complete attention at all times: “Anyone who acts without paying attention to what he is doing is wasting his life. I’d go so far as to say that life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.”

In 1920, two of her favourite female students left her to marry, and she was deeply upset by this, seeing it as a betrayal both of herself and their duties toward music. Her attitude to women in music was contradictory: despite Lili’s success and her own eminence as a teacher, she held throughout her life that a woman’s duty was to be a wife and mother. According to Ned Rorem she would ‘always give the benefit of the doubt to her male students while overtaxing the females’.

She saw teaching as a pleasure, a privilege and a duty: “No-one is obliged to give lessons. It poisons your life if you give lessons and it bores you.”

Boulanger accepted pupils from any background, her only criteria was that they had to want to learn. She treated students differently depending on their ability: her talented students were expected to answer the most rigorous questions and perform well under stress. The less able students, who did not intend to follow a career in music, were treated more leniently.

She always claimed that should could not bestow creativity onto her students and that she could only help them to become intelligent musicians who understood the craft of composition. “I can’t provide anyone with inventiveness, nor can I take it away; I can simply provide the liberty to read, to listen, to see, to understand.” Only inspiration could make the difference between a well-made piece and an artistic one.

She believed that the desire to learn, to become better, was all that was required to achieve – always provided the right amount of work was put in. She would quote the examples of Rameau, who wrote his first opera at fifty, Wojtowicz who became a concert pianist at thirty-one, and Roussel, who had no professional access to music till he was twenty-five as counter arguments to the idea that great artists always develop out of gifted children.

Her memory was prodigious: by the time she was twelve, she had the whole Well-Tempered Clavier by heart. Students have described has as having every significant piece, by every significant composer at her fingertips. Copland recalls "Nadia Boulanger knew everything these was to know about music; she knew the oldest and the latest music, pre-Bach and post-Stravinsky. All technical know-how was at her fingertips: harmonic transposition, the figured bass, score reading, organ registration, instrumental techniques, structural analyses, the school fugue and the free fugue, the Greek modes and Gregorian chant."

On first sight of a score, it was not unusual for her draw comparisons from a variety of composers: “these measures have the same harmonic progressions as Bach’s F major prelude and Chopin’s F major Ballade. Can you not come up with something more interesting?” Virgil Thomson found this ability frustrating: “Anyone who allowed her in any piece to tell him what to do next would see that piece ruined before his eyes by the application of routine recipes and bromides from standard repertory.”

Copland also recalled that "she had but one all-embracing principle...the creation of what she called la grande ligne - the long line in music."

Each student had to be approached differently “When you accept a new pupil, the first thing is to try to understand what natural gift, what intuitive talent he has. Each individual poses a particular problem.” “It does not matter what style you use, as long as you use it consistently.”

She disapproved of innovation for innovation's sake: "When you are writing music of your own, never strain to avoid the obvious." "You need an established language and then, within that established language, the liberty to be yourself. It's always necessary to be yourself – that is a mark of genius in itself."

The composer Ned Rorem described Boulanger as "the most influential teacher since Socrates."

Boulanger's teaching methods included traditional harmony, score reading at the piano, species counterpoint, analysis, and sight-singing (using fixed-Do solfège).

Murray Perahia recalled being ‘awed by the rhythm and character’ with which she played a line of a Bach fugue. Janet Craxton recalled listening to Nadia playing Bach chorales on the piano as ‘the single greatest musical experience of my life’.

Recordings

• Women of Note. Women’s Philharmonic, Gillian Benet; Women’s Philharmonic; Louisville Orchestra; English Chamber Orchestra, Nina Flyer; New Zealand Chamber Orchestra, Alexa Still, along with Sarah Ravitch. Koch International Classics B000001SKH, 1997.
• Chamber Music by French Female Composers. Martin Ostertag, Dagmar Becker, Werner Genuit. Classic Talent B000002K49, 2000.

References

• Doyle, Roger O. (2003). "Boulanger, Nadia (1887-1979)", in Women Composers 7, ed Martha Furman Schleifer. New York: G.K. Hall & Co. ISBN 0-7838-8194-04

External links

• www.nadiaboulanger.org
• The American Conservatory at Fontainebleau
• Nadia Boulanger Quotes
• Nadia Boulanger at Find a Grave