A one-act opera written jointly with her teacher Raoul Pugno, after a Gabriele D'Annunzio play, left unstaged when he died (1914)
La ville morte — her largest composition; the collaboration ended with Pugno's death in 1914
Music
Nadia Boulanger
1887–1979 · French
20th-century France — the teacher of a century of composers
Nadia Boulanger was the most influential composition teacher of the 20th century, whose pupils at the Paris Conservatoire, the École Normale and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau included Copland, Carter, Piazzolla, Glass, Quincy Jones and Thea Musgrave. She gave up composing early, judging her own music useless beside her sister Lili's, and became instead a conductor of firsts, the first woman to lead the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the Philharmonia.
How to spot them
- ▸Named as a teacher rather than a composer — a roll-call of famous pupils is the standard question shape
- ▸Fontainebleau: the American Conservatory in the Palace outbuildings, where generations of Americans spent their summers
- ▸She taught from the figured bass and from Bach chorales, and made pupils sing every line of what they analysed
- ▸Questions often pair her with her younger sister Lili, the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, who died at twenty-four
Key works — listen
The cantata with which she took the second Grand Prix de Rome in 1908, having already scandalised the jury by submitting an instrumental fugue (1908)
La sirène — the prize that made her name in Paris, five years before her sister won the competition outright
A set of three pieces for cello and piano of 1914, among the last works she wrote (1914)
Trois pièces pour violoncelle et piano — still her most played composition
The 1937 recordings that brought a forgotten Italian madrigalist back into the repertoire, made with her own vocal ensemble (1937)
Her pioneering recordings of Monteverdi madrigals for HMV, credited with starting the Monteverdi revival
A set of piano-and-orchestra variations of 1912, among the last orchestral music she wrote before giving up composing (1912)
Fantaisie variée for piano and orchestra
The premiere she conducted in Washington in 1938 of a chamber concerto Stravinsky wrote for a wealthy couple's wedding anniversary (1938)
Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, commissioned by Robert and Mildred Bliss
Quick-fire facts
- •She was born in Paris on 16 September 1887 to a French composer father and a Russian mother who claimed to be a princess
- •She won second Grand Prix de Rome in 1908 with the cantata La sirène, having caused a scandal by submitting an instrumental fugue instead of a vocal one
- •Her sister Lili won the Prix de Rome outright in 1913, the first woman to do so, and died in 1918 aged twenty-four
- •She largely gave up composing by 1920, saying her music was 'useless'
- •She taught at the École Normale de Musique from 1920 and directed the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau from 1949
- •Her pupils included Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Astor Piazzolla, Philip Glass, Thea Musgrave, Quincy Jones, Daniel Barenboim and Lennox Berkeley
- •In 1937 she became the first woman to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Society in London; in 1938 the Boston Symphony; in 1939 the New York Philharmonic
- •She conducted the premiere of Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto in 1938 and was a lifelong champion of his music
- •She was the first woman to teach at the Paris Conservatoire's accompaniment class and later held a professorship there
- •She died in Paris on 22 October 1979, aged 92, having taught almost to the end
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Léonie Rosenstiel — Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music
- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Boulanger, Nadia
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Nadia Boulanger