Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was born in Paris on 16 September 1887. Her father, Ernest Boulanger, a composer, singing professor at the Conservatoire and former Prix de Rome winner, was seventy-two; her mother, Raissa Myshetskaya, of Russian origin, was forty-four years younger than him. As a child Nadia at first hated music and hid when she heard the piano, then, around five, suddenly became passionate about it. Her father died in 1900. In 1893 her little sister Lili was born; Nadia was her godmother and took care of her all her life.

In 1897, aged ten, she entered the Paris Conservatoire, where she studied harmony, organ with Alexandre Guilmant and Louis Vierne, and composition with Charles-Marie Widor and Gabriel Fauré. In 1904 she won first prizes in organ, accompaniment and fugue. From the age of sixteen she gave lessons to help her family. She also became deputy organist at the Madeleine church, where Fauré was titular organist.

Nadia Boulanger competed several times for the Prix de Rome. In 1908 she caused controversy by submitting an instrumental fugue instead of the vocal fugue required by the rules; she nonetheless won the Second Grand Prix with her cantata La Sirène. She composed songs, a Fantaisie variée for piano and orchestra (1912) and, with the pianist Raoul Pugno, an opera, La Ville morte, after Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose premiere was prevented by the war and Pugno’s death in 1914. She also wrote the Three Pieces for cello and piano (1914).

In 1913 her sister Lili became the first woman to win the Premier Grand Prix de Rome. Nadia, who considered her far more gifted, gradually decided to give up composing, judging her own music “useless”. Lili’s death in 1918, at twenty-four, devastated her. From then on she devoted herself to promoting her sister’s work and to teaching, which became the great work of her life.

From 1921 she taught at the newly founded American Conservatory at Fontainebleau and in her flat on the rue Ballu in Paris, where her Wednesday group classes became legendary. Demanding, immensely cultured and with a prodigious memory, she trained hundreds of composers from all over the world, especially from America: Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla — whom she advised to stay true to tango — and the producer Quincy Jones. She was known as “Mademoiselle”.

Nadia Boulanger was also a pioneering conductor. She helped revive Renaissance and Baroque music, notably Monteverdi’s madrigals, which she recorded in 1937. That same year she became the first woman to conduct a complete concert of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, and in 1938 the first woman to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra, followed by the New York Philharmonic. In 1938 she premiered the “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto by her friend Stravinsky.

During the Second World War she took refuge in the United States, teaching at several universities. Back in France in 1946, she taught at the Paris Conservatoire and from 1949 directed the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. She continued teaching to the end of her life, despite having almost lost her sight. She died in Paris on 22 October 1979, aged ninety-two. She is regarded as the greatest music teacher of the twentieth century.