Lili Boulanger

Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger, known as Lili, was born in Paris on 21 August 1893. She was the daughter of Ernest Boulanger, a composer aged seventy-eight, and Raissa Myshetskaya, and the younger sister of Nadia, six years her elder, who was also her godmother. At two, in 1895, a severe bout of pneumonia — perhaps the first sign of the chronic intestinal illness she suffered from all her life — permanently weakened her health. That same year the composer Gabriel Fauré, a family friend, discovered that she had perfect pitch.

Too frail for normal schooling, Lili was educated at home. From the age of five she went with her sister Nadia to classes at the Paris Conservatoire, attending organ and theory lessons. She learned piano, violin, cello and harp, and sang. Her father died in 1900, when she was only six, which marked her deeply. Fauré, a frequent visitor, encouraged her and played his music for her.

Despite her health, at sixteen Lili decided to become a composer and to compete for the Prix de Rome, the most prestigious competition for young French composers, which no woman had ever won. She prepared by studying composition with Georges Caussade and Paul Vidal, and officially entered the Conservatoire in 1912. She competed for the first time that year but, ill, had to withdraw.

In 1913, aged nineteen, she won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome with her cantata Faust et Hélène, by a large majority of the jury. It was the first time a woman had won the award. The event caused a sensation in the press, in France and abroad. Thanks to the prize she signed a contract with the publisher Ricordi. In 1914 she left for the Villa Medici in Rome, but her stay was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War and by her illness.

Back in France she and her sister Nadia founded the Franco-American Committee of the National Conservatoire, which sent letters, parcels and a newsletter to musicians mobilised at the front to support them. Despite the war and periods of great suffering, she composed intensely. In 1914 she completed Clairières dans le ciel, a cycle of thirteen songs on poems by Francis Jammes. She also composed a poetic Nocturne for violin and piano.

Between 1914 and 1917 she wrote three great Psalms for chorus and orchestra, including Psalm 130, “Du fond de l’abîme”, of overwhelming dramatic power, as well as the Vieille prière bouddhique for tenor, chorus and orchestra, a prayer for all humanity. Her music, influenced by Debussy and Fauré, has a very personal language, both luminous and tragic, with bold harmonies. She also worked on an opera, La Princesse Maleine, after Maeterlinck, which she was unable to finish.

In 1918, knowing she would soon die, she composed two pieces for orchestra or trio, D’un soir triste and D’un matin de printemps, one dark, the other bright. Too weak to write, she dictated to her sister Nadia her last song, a Pie Jesu for voice, string quartet, harp and organ. She died at Mézy-sur-Seine on 15 March 1918, aged twenty-four. Nadia devoted the rest of her life to making her work known. Today Lili Boulanger is recognised as one of the most gifted composers of her time.