The 1913 cantata on a scene from Goethe, which made its nineteen-year-old composer the first woman to take the Prix de Rome outright (1913)
Faust et Hélène, to a text by Eugène Adenis
Music
Lili Boulanger
1893–1918 · French
Late Impressionism and Symbolism
Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome outright, taking the prize in 1913 at nineteen with the cantata Faust et Hélène. Chronic illness from a childhood bout of bronchial pneumonia left her an invalid, and she died at twenty-four, leaving a small body of work of remarkable darkness and assurance, much of it dictated to her sister Nadia in her last weeks.
How to spot them
- ▸Very short career, very dark music: psalm settings of crushing weight, modal harmony and heavy low brass and organ
- ▸The three big psalms — the 24th, the 129th and De profundis, the 130th — are her calling card
- ▸Questions pair her with 1913, the Prix de Rome and the Villa Medici, and with her sister and teacher Nadia Boulanger
- ▸Fauré spotted her perfect pitch as a small child; she was taught by Gabriel Fauré's circle and studied with Paul Vidal at the Conservatoire
Key works — listen
A setting of the psalm beginning 'Out of the depths I have cried unto thee', her largest and bleakest work (1917)
Psaume 130, 'Du fond de l'abîme' — for alto, tenor, chorus, organ and orchestra
A song cycle of thirteen settings of Francis Jammes, tracing a love affair from meeting to loss (1914)
Clairières dans le ciel ('Clearings in the sky')
A bright, fluttering piece for violin or flute and piano, paired with a much darker companion written in the same months (1918)
D'un matin de printemps; its twin is D'un soir triste, both among her last completed works
A setting of the psalm 'Ils m'ont assez opprimé dès ma jeunesse', for baritone, chorus and orchestra (1916)
Psaume 129
A choral setting for bass solo, chorus and orchestra of a Musset poem about a soldier's burial (1912)
Pour les funérailles d'un soldat
The unfinished opera after a Maeterlinck play about a blind princess, dictated to her sister on her deathbed (1918)
La Princesse Maleine — left incomplete at her death
Her last completed work, a short setting of the closing couplet of the Dies irae, dictated to her sister weeks before her death (1918)
Pie Jesu, for soprano, string quartet, harp and organ
Quick-fire facts
- •She was born Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger in Paris on 21 August 1893; her father, the composer Ernest Boulanger, was in his late seventies at her birth
- •A bout of bronchial pneumonia at two left her with a weakened immune system and lifelong intestinal illness, probably Crohn's disease
- •Gabriel Fauré, a family friend, discovered her perfect pitch when she was two
- •She won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in July 1913 with Faust et Hélène, the first woman ever to do so outright
- •She was able to take up her residency at the Villa Medici in Rome in 1914, but the First World War cut it short
- •During the war she and Nadia founded the Comité Franco-Américain du Conservatoire National to support musicians at the front
- •Her Faust et Hélène score was published by Ricordi, who signed her to a contract after the prize
- •She dictated her last work, the Pie Jesu, to Nadia while too weak to write
- •She died at Mézy-sur-Seine on 15 March 1918, aged 24, and is buried in Montmartre Cemetery
- •Nadia Boulanger promoted her sister's music for the remaining sixty-one years of her own life
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Boulanger, Lili
- Caroline Potter — Nadia and Lili Boulanger
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Lili Boulanger