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36 Rue Ballu, 75009 Paris, France
Montmartre Cemetery, 20 Avenue Rachel, 75018 Paris
Juliette Nadia Boulanger (16 September 1887 – 22 October 1979) was a French
composer, conductor, and teacher. She is notable for having taught many of the
leading composers and musicians of the 20th century. She also performed
occasionally as a pianist and organist.[1]
From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Conservatoire
de Paris but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer,
she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she
influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United
States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were those who
became leading composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Aaron
Copland, David
Diamond, Igor
Markevitch, Virgil
Thomson.
A number of composers who were both Jewish and gay had something else in
common. In their youth, they had been to Paris to study composition under
Nadia Boulanger: Aaron
Copland in the early 1920s, Virgil
Thomson in the mid-1920s (while there he met his lover, the painter
Maurice Grosser),
Marc Blitzstein in the late 1920s (his
Russian-born lover, the conductor
Alexander Smallens
accompanied him to Europe in 1924), David
Diamond in 1936 (his Psalm, an orchestral piece of that year, was inspired
by a visit to Oscar Wilde’s grave in Père
Lachaise and dedicated to André Gide).
Boulanger taught in the US and 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.
Her sister, named Marie–Juliette Olga but known as Lili
Boulanger,
was born in 1893, when Nadia was six. When Ernest brought Nadia home from
their friends' house, before she was allowed to see her mother or Lili, he
made her promise solemnly to be responsible for the new baby's welfare. He
urged her to take part in her sister's care.[8]
From the age of seven, Nadia studied hard in preparation for her Conservatoire entrance
exams, sitting in on their classes and having private lessons with its
teachers. Lili often stayed in the room for these lessons, sitting quietly
and listening.[9]
In the autumn of 1904, Nadia began to teach from the family apartment
at 36, rue Ballu.[15] In
addition to the private lessons she held there, Boulanger started holding
a Wednesday afternoon group class in analysis and sightsinging. She
continued these almost to her death. This class was followed by her famous
"at homes", salons at which students could mingle with professional
musicians and Boulanger's other friends from the arts, such as Igor
Stravinsky, Paul
Valéry, Fauré, and others.[15][16]
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.[20] Still
hoping for a Grand Prix de Rome, Boulanger entered the 1909 competition
but failed to win a place in the final round.[21] Later
that year, her sister Lili, then sixteen, announced to the family her
intention to become a composer and win the Prix de Rome herself.[22]
With the advent of war in Europe in 1914, public programs were reduced,
and Boulanger had to put her performing and conducting on hold. She
continued to teach privately and to assist Dallier at the Conservatoire.
Nadia was drawn into Lili's expanding war work, and by the end of the
year, the sisters had organised a sizable charity, the Comité
Franco-Américain du Conservatoire National de Musique et de
Déclamation. It supplied food, clothing, money, letters from home, etc. to
soldiers who had been musicians before the war.[26]
Weakened by her work during the war, Lili began to suffer ill health. She
died in March 1918.
In 1919, Boulanger performed in more than twenty concerts, often
programming her own music and that of her sister.[27] Since
the Conservatoire Femina-Musica had closed during the war, Alfred
Cortot and Auguste
Mangeot founded a new music school in Paris, which opened later that
year, the École
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.[14]
Mangeot also asked Boulanger to contribute articles of music criticism to
his paper Le
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.[28]
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.[29] 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."[30]
Leaving America at the end of 1945, she returned to France in January
1946. There she accepted a position of professor of accompagnement au
piano at the Paris Conservatoire.[57] In
1953, she was appointed overall director of the Fontainebleau School.[58] She
also continued her touring to other countries. 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.[59] In
1958, she returned to the US for a six-week tour. She combined
broadcasting, lecturing, and making four television films.[60]
Also in 1958, she was inducted as an Honorary Member into Sigma
Alpha Iota, the international women's music fraternity, by the Gamma
Delta chapter at the Crane
School of Music in Potsdam, New York.[61]
In 1962, she toured Turkey, where she conducted concerts with her young
protégée Idil Biret.[62] Later
that year, she was invited to the White
House of the United States by President John
F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline,[63] and
in 1966, she was invited to Moscow to jury for the International
Tchaikovsky Competition, chaired by Emil
Gilels.[64] While
in England, she taught at the Yehudi
Menuhin School. She also gave lectures at the Royal
College of Music and the Royal
Academy of Music, all of which were broadcast by the BBC.[64]
Her eyesight and hearing began to fade toward the end of her life.[14] On
August 13, 1977, in advance of her 90th birthday, she was given a surprise
birthday celebration at Fontainebleau's English Garden. The school's chef
had prepared a large cake, on which was inscribed: "1887–Happy Birthday to
you, Nadia Boulanger–Fontainebleau, 1977". When the cake was served, 90
small white candles floating on the pond illuminated the area. Boulanger's
then-protégé, Emile
Naoumoff, performed a piece he had composed for the occasion.[65][66] Boulanger
worked almost until her death in 1979 in Paris.[14] She
is buried at the Montmartre
Cemetery, with her sister Lili and their parents.
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