Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger (1887 – 1979) had a profound impact on the world of music in her day, “when she rose to the top of her profession in a field dominated by men, and without herself engaging in a career as a composer” (Star-Gazette, September 3, 1967, p. 30). Following Boulanger's death in October 1979, her executor, Annette Dieudonné, distributed all the objects and documents in her apartment between several institutions: The Lili and Nadia Boulanger Foundation; the Harvard University Library; the Polish Library in Paris; the Musée de la Musique; the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Lyon; and the Bibliothèque nationale (BnF).
Toward the end of her life and after her death, she was celebrated in film and books alike. Bruno Monsaingeon’s film, “Nadia Boulanger: Mademoiselle,” which came out in 1977, was followed ten years later by Dominique Parent-Altier, “Mademoiselle: A Portrait of Nadia Boulanger” (1987). Several biographers, mostly musicians themselves, wrote on her life’s work – prominent among them are: Alan Kendall (1976); Léonie Rosenstiel (1982), Don G. Campbell (1984). Since then, and especially in recent years, a plethora of biographical accounts have flourished, in France but even more so in the United States.
Much of Boulanger’s success can be attributed to her contact with American students and her ascension in the American musical arena. On the American newspaper digital platform, newspapers.com alone, there are over 23,000 mentions of her name, accomplishments, and the musicians whom she coached. Identified as the high priestess of composition teachers, she is lauded for having influenced more of America’s established composers than all other European teachers put together. The roster of American students who went on to have stellar careers as composers, orchestra leaders, teachers, or performers is astounding, reading like a veritable who's who in American musical circles, including such luminaries as Phillip Glass, Elliot Carter, Daniel Barenboim, and even the jazz musician Quincy Jones – all with a broad range of musical styles.
Her relationship with American students is said to have begun in 1921 with the creation of the American School for Music in the Château of Fontainebleau. Founded by American composer, conductor, and director of the New York Symphony Orchestra, Walter Damroch and Robert Casadesus, French pianist and composer, it operated during the summer months in the Louis XV wing of the Château de Fontainebleau, where students and professors alike resided for the duration of the training. Boulanger taught there from 1921 through the end of her life, becoming its director in 1949. In the summer of 1921, Copland attended the school in Fontainebleau, where, on the recommendation of a friend, he attended Boulanger’s class, after having been assigned the class of “some old dodo” (cited in Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald, January 2, 1970, page 13). Persuaded by Boulanger’s technique, he pursued his studies under her tutelage for three years, remaining in close contact with her for the rest of his life. The same is true for many of the Americans who enrolled in her classes on composition and harmony, counterpoint and orchestration. Like Copland, countless summer students continued to study with Boulanger through the private lessons and collective courses she dispensed in her Paris apartment on rue Ballu, near Pigalle. Here, she also introduced them to other aspiring or confirmed musicians and composers. Indeed, her home had become the epicenter of the musical elites of the time, like Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, Francis Poulenc, Yehudi Menuhin, to name but a few of those who frequently visited or attended her receptions.
From all accounts, Boulanger made great demands on her students: hard to please, she was neither indulgent nor accommodating. As she said of herself: “So long as I am exacting, you can have hope. If I am nice, that is a bad sign.” (cited in The Ottawa Citizen, September 16, 1967, p. 19). To her mind, music had to be unavoidable: “Can you live without music?” she would ask her incoming student… and then immediately reply, “If you can live without music, thank the Lord and goodbye” (cited in The Boston Globe, September, 19, 1987, p. 100.)
Those who managed to go the distance regarded her as a "tender tyrant" (as one of her biographers titled his book) whose outward severity was offset by an infinite humanity – a “severity that represented an endless tenderness,” as she qualified her mother’s iron-fisted discipline (cited in Parent-Altier). A music critic illustrated this idea through the lens of a friend who had studied with Boulanger: “I [...] got the impression that he would climb the tower of Chartres Cathedral if she asked him to, not out of fear but because he respected and admired her (cited in The Vancouver Sun, November 3, 1979, p. 47) Noted organist Charles Fisk best expressed her impact on her students:
What impressed me still more than her fantastic discipline and accomplishment, was her presence, the way she looked at people, the way she stood, the deep conviction in everything she said, which moved me even when I disagreed with her. And the way she played – the way she could make a chattering room fall silent with two pianissimo chords, and her rhythmic sense which seemed to achieve perfectly a balance of dynamism and response (cited in The Boston Globe, October 28, 1979, p. 143).
Fundamentally, she was not interested in only training her students; she wanted them to develop their own voice; she wanted to help them reveal their innermost selves. From her perspective, “No teacher can train a pupil she does not fully understand. […] pupils must always be taught to accept themselves, for the only part a teacher can play is to help whatever lies hidden within him to come to light” (cited in The Gazette, October 27, 1979, p. 95).
But Boulanger’s success cannot only be judged by the number of composers she taught, and their subsequent acclaim. It is also measured by the performances she gave, the orchestras or choirs she conducted (often singing along, or playing the piano with one hand and directing with the other), and the institutions where she taught or performed.
In 1924, one of the founders of the Fontainebleau school, American composer, conductor, and director of the New York Symphony Orchestra, Walter Damroch invited Boulanger to play Aaron Copland’s organ symphony, which she did in 1925. Thus began her long love affair with the United States, where she sought refuge through WWII. Then, and even late in life, she regularly toured the country as guest professor, conductor, lecturer, organist, recitalist, becoming the first woman to conduct the symphonic orchestras of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. In doing so, she completely upended deeply-rooted gender-based biases. From her perspective, gender differences were absolutely irrelevant: “I’ve been a woman for over 50 years,” she told a reporter, “and I’ve gotten over my original astonishment.” (The Transcript, October 31, 1979, p. 6). In another interview, she boldly stated: “I forget that I’m a woman; I’m only interested in my job” (cited in The Boston Globe, October 23, 1979, p. 55). As a conductor, she forged ahead with confidence despite visible resistance, and she made it quite clear that her sex had nothing to do with the job at hand:
None of us, singers or instrumentalists, had ever played with a woman conductor before, and we didn’t expect the approach which was soon to be evident. Nadia Boulanger looked more like one of our school teachers, hair pulled back, slight of figure, and only the slightest hint of a smile. Our relaxed attitude was quickly put in its place by just a few piercing glances and the look of anguish caused by some of the sounds. It didn’t take long to realize that the person on the podium was a musician and conductor of rare talent and we would live longer if we reacted with the same approach to the music she was rehearsing (The Transcript, October 31, 1979, p. 6).
When she began teaching at Radcliffe College in 1938, she was also the first woman to succeed in overcoming the gender segregation that then existed at Harvard University, with men studying at Harvard College and women at Radcliffe. Her teaching became so popular that Harvard authorized men to enroll in her classes at Radcliffe – “five years before Harvard and Radcliffe students began sharing classes, and ten years before the first woman became a full professor at Harvard” (Carol J. Oja, “Time Travel with Nadia Boulanger,” Harvard Library Bulletin, vol. 18, nos. 1-2, Spring/Summer 2007, p. 55). Boulanger also taught at Wellesley, the Longy School of Music at Bard College, and the Juilliard School of Music, and a host of other musical centers between the east and west coasts of the United States.
Given her extensive ties with the United States, and with women’s colleges in particular, it comes as no surprise that she was a guest of honor at Reid Hall, although her passage here is mostly unrecorded and scattered in news snippets or correspondences that reveal only partial information. It seems she first lectured at Reid Hall in 1927, when 4 rue de Chevreuse was an American University Women’s Club, governed by the dean of Barnard College, Virginia C. Gildersleeve, and Barnard alumna Dorothy F. Leet. At the time, the Club hosted numerous scholars, painters, and musicians as speakers for the residents and members of the American Colony. Boulanger was again invited to speak in 1937 (“L’amateur et la musique”), 1938 (guest speaker at a luncheon at a Club, where she spoke of her teaching experience and her visit to the U.S.), and 1939.
Boulanger’s presence at Reid Hall was more frequent between 1950 and 1963, when the Women’s Club had morphed into an educational center welcoming groups of young men and women who had come to study French language and civilization classes in tailor-made programs on-site or at the Sorbonne. In those very years, several Reid Hall board members offered one or two music scholarships for a year-long study stay in Paris. Over the years, recipients of this award mainly came from Radcliffe, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, and the Oberlin School of Music. Most attended Boulanger’s collective classes at rue Balu and her summer classes at the American School at Fontainebleau.
Year in and year out, Boulanger was also a guest lecturer at Reid Hall, accompanying her talks with illustrative piano selections. Some of her favorite themes included:
- “L’amateur et la musique” (1937)
- “Quand la musique est-elle d’aujourd’hui, d’hier ou de toujours” (1958)
- “Simplicité et complexité” (1959)
- “Musique et poésie” (1960)
- “A propos de Debussy et Stravinsky” (1962, with Turkish concert pianist Idyl Biret)
- “A propos de la musique et de notre temps” (1963)
- “Comment écouter la musique” (1950, 1952, 1956)
From time to time, Nadia Boulanger also performed at Reid Hall, often including one or another student in the performance. In 1954, she performed with Yolanda Rio (whose identity is difficult to determine); in 1955, she staged a recital with Swedish-born Russian violinist Paul Makanowitzky who would later teach at Juilliard, the Curtis Institute, Meadowmount, before going on to the University of Michigan and other music centers in the U.S. In 1959, she organized a tribute to her lifelong collaborator and friend Igor Stravinsky, performing his “Canticum Sacrum,” and in 1961, and she arranged an homage to Theodore Chanler, the noted American composer, music critic, and teacher who had been her student and had died in July of that year. In 1963, she organized a concert that honored John F. Kennedy.
At each talk or musical presentation, students, scholars, and the general public were transported, not only by what he said, but above all by her performances, which, in their view, went far beyond interpretation, going so far as to embody the composers themselves.
In 1964, Reid Hall went through yet another transformation, when Helen Rogers Reid gifted the entire property to Columbia University. Boulanger did not return to 4 rue de Chevreuse until May 1972, when the newly appointed director, Danielle Haase-Dubosc, staged a concert in her honor, with her students performing works by Aaron Copland, Theodore Chanler, Chopin, Shubert, and Stravinsky. The concert also included compositions by two of Boulanger’s students at the time, José de Almeida Prado, who became Brazil’s number one composer, and Allen Evan Shawn, who earned notoriety in the United States as composer, pianist, and educator.
A few months before her 90th birthday and two years before she died in 1979, Reid Hall organized a concert in her honor, under the auspices of the Sterling-Currier Foundation. Boulanger was reunited with many of her students, as well as with her faithful colleague Dorothy Leet, former president of Reid Hall. The program was introduced by Columbia University President William James McGill, followed by an introduction by Léon Barzin, renowned conductor, teacher and founder, among others, of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris. Both spoke of Boulanger's impressive career, especially as a teacher, and her indomitable courage to persevere. The concert itself featured: Aaron Copland’s 1930 piano variations, Elliot Carter’s 1948 Sonata; Arthur Berger’s String Quartet, and vocal texts by Virgil Thomson, Hubert Doris, and Louise Talma. The performers included the French Bernède Quartet (1963-1991); pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize prize in 2017, and Brazilian Anna Stella Schic, who recorded the complete works Gershwin, Villa-Lobos, and Mendelssohn; cellist Ina-Esther Joost, who later joined the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra; and soprano Anna Maria Bondi, reputed pedagogue who taught at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, among others.
Nadia Boulanger died at the age of 92, on October 22, 1979.
I never think of age,” she had said to a reporter at the age of 80, “I’ve no time. I work. Retirement? I don’t know what that is. One works or… one cannot work – that would be death (cited in The Times Record, October 23, 1979, p. 19).
Today, she can no longer work, but she lives on through those she inspired and those who, in retracing her career, sense an unmistakable breath of eternity in her life’s path.