Nadia Boulanger (September 16, 1887 – October 22, 1979) was an influential French composer, conductor, and music professor. An outstanding music educator at the highest level, she taught many of the most important composers and conductors of the 20th century. September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years). ... 1887 (MDCCCLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. ... October 22 is the 295th day of the year (296th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 70 days remaining. ... For the song by the Smashing Pumpkins, see 1979 (song). ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... A conductor conducting a band at a ceremony A conductors score and batons Conducting is the act of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. ... For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ... Music education comprises the application of education methods in teaching music. ...

Ancestors

Music was in Nadia Boulanger's blood. Her grandmother was the singer Marie-Julie Boulanger. Her grandfather, Frédérick Boulanger won first prize in violoncello in his fifth year (1797) at the then recently founded Paris Conservatoire. Her father, Ernest Boulanger, later studied at the same conservatory (his teachers included Charles-Valentin Alkan), and won the Prix de Rome in 1835. He later taught there, where he met Nadia's mother, the Russian Princess, Raissa Myshetskaya, who was the first music teacher Nadia and her sister ever had. Conservatoire de Paris, or Paris Conservatoire, has been central to the evolution of music in France and Western Europe. ... Charles-Valentin Alkan (November 30, 1813–March 29, 1888) was a French composer and one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his day. ... The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for art students. ... | Come and take it, slogan of the Texas Revolution 1835 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Raissa Myshetskaya was a Russian princess and mother of the famed composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger and composer Lili Boulanger. ...

Biography

Nadia Boulanger was born in Paris. Her emotional life was largely centered around her love for her sister, Lili Boulanger, who was six years younger, and who’s care Nadia had been entrusted with by their father. Lili was one of Nadia's first composition students, and it was largely under her guidance that Lili became the first woman ever to win the Prix de Rome, in 1913. City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Floating not submerging) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Lili Boulanger (Marie-Juliette Olga Lili Boulanger, 21 August 1893–15 March 1918) was a French composer, the younger sister of the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. ...

Nadia Boulanger entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten. It was here that she studied organ with Alexandre Guilmant and Louis Vierne. She also studied composition with Gabriel Fauré and Charles-Marie Widor and accompaniment with Paul Vidal. After winning almost every prize available at the conservatory (including organ, accompaniment, and fugue), she won the Deuxième Grand Prix de Rome in 1908, which was a long-term goal of hers. She had tried two times before this, making it to the final round, but not placing. Her composition for the 1908 Grand Prix caused quite a scandal. Instead of the required vocal fugue asked for by the judges, Boulanger composed a string quartet. While some of the judges, including Camile Saint- Saëns, objected, Boulanger was awarded the second place prize. Usually, the runner-up would receive the grand prize the following year, but Boulanger received no such honor. She never competed in the Prix de Rome again. Alexandre Guilmant (Boulogne-sur-Mer 1837 - Meudon 1911) was an French organist and composer. ... Louis Victor Jules Vierne, (October 8, 1870–June 2, 1937) was a French organist and composer. ... Gabriel Urbain Fauré (May 12, 1845 – November 4, 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist, and teacher. ... Charles-Marie Jean Albert Widor (February 21, 1844 – March 12, 1937) was a French organist, composer and teacher. ... Paul Antoine Vidal (Toulouse, June 16, 1863 - Paris, April 9, 1931) was a French composer, conductor and music teacher. ... Charles Camille Saint-Saëns () (3 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer and performer, known for his orchestral works The Carnival of the Animals, Danse Macabre, and Symphony No. ...

Nadia and Lili Boulanger had an interesting relationship. While she loved her sister unconditionally, Nadia always felt overshadowed by her sister’s amazing composition abilities. She once said “If there is anything of which I am very sure, it is that my music is useless.” Ten years passed between when Nadia Boulanger entered the Paris Conservatoire and when she placed second in the Grand Prix. Lili only spent one year in the conservatory before winning the first place prize with an overwhelming landslide vote. The death of their father in 1900 had been very instrumental in Lili’s turn towards composing, and yet, after she died in 1918, Nadia Boulanger never composed again. Lili had asked her to complete her unfinished works, but Nadia did not feel her composing abilities were on par with her sister’s and felt she could not do the compositions justice.

Boulanger’s compositional output includes a large number of vocal compositions (including over 30 songs), a number of pieces of chamber music, and a rhapsody for piano and orchestra. The rhapsody, written for Raoul Pugno, with whom she worked for 10 years, underwent so many revisions by Boulanger herself, stemming from her lack of self-confidence and her extreme self-criticism, that it is virtually unplayable now. Together, Boulanger and Pugno completed a song cycle, La heures claires, and an opera, La ville morte. The opera was scheduled to come to the stage in 1914. However, due to Pugno’s death that same year and the beginning of World War I, La ville morte was shelved and was never performed. The entire vocal score and the orchestration of Acts I and III still survive though. Boulanger was heavily influenced by Claude Debussy and her music was often very chromatic, although always based in tonality, as she was highly suspicious of atonal music. Despite this, she was a huge fan of Stravinsky, and conducted the premiere of his concerto Dumbarton Oaks in 1938 in Washington, D.C. Achille-Claude Debussy (IPA ) (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a French composer. ... In music, chromatic indicates the inclusion of notes not in the prevailing scale and is also used for those notes themselves (Shir-Cliff et al 1965, p. ... Tonality is a system of writing music according to certain hierarchical pitch relationships around a key center or tonic. ... Atonality in a general sense describes music that departs from the system of tonal hierarchies that are said to characterized the sound of classical European music from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. ... Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky () (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a composer of modern classical music. ...

Boulanger, who liked to be known as 'Mademoiselle', made her conducting debut in 1912. She was the first woman to conduct several major symphony orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and in England the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. However, she did not put much stock in this as part of reputation. The New York Philharmonic is the oldest active symphony orchestra in the United States. ... The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the worlds most renowned orchestras. ... The Philadelphia Orchestra, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is one of the Big Five symphony orchestras in the United States and usually considered among the finest in the world. ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem God Save the King (Queen) England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto) Government Constitutional monarchy  -  Queen Queen Elizabeth II  -  Prime Minister Tony Blair MP Unification  -  by Athelstan 967  Area... The Hallé Orchestra is one of Britains longest established orchestras, and is based in Manchester. ... This article is becoming very long. ... The BBC Symphony Orchestra is the principal orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation and one of the leading orchestras in Britain. ...

Her first teaching position was at the Conservatoire Femina-Musica in Paris in 1907. Later, she was one of the first staff members at Alfred Cortot's École Normale de Musique de Paris, beginning in 1920, where she taught a large variety of subjects. After World War I (1921) she was appointed professor of Harmony at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, where she was discovered by a new generation of American composers [see below.] She eventually became its director in 1948. She also taught at the Longy School of Music and the Paris Conservatory. She lived in the United States during World War II and taught at Wellesley College, Radcliffe College, and Juilliard. And even though, towards the end of her life, her eyesight and hearing began to fade, she worked basically up to her death in 1979. Alfred Denis Cortot (September 26, 1877 – June 15, 1962) was a French pianist and conductor. ... École Normale de Musique de Paris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... This article is becoming very long. ... // The Fontainebleau Schools started with the involvement of the United States in the First World War. ... Location within France Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. ... The Longy School of Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Former Conservatoire building (until 1911), still used as Théâtre du Conservatoire The Conservatoire de Paris (full contemporary name Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris) is a music school in Paris, France. ... Wellesley College is a womens liberal arts college that opened in 1875, founded by Henry Fowle Durant and his wife Pauline Fowle Durant. ... Radcliffe College was a liberal arts womens college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, closely associated with Harvard University. ... The Juilliard School is a performing arts conservatory in New York City, informally but definitively identified as simply Juilliard, and most famous for its musically-trained alumni. ...

Many of her students from the 1920s, including Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Roy Harris, and Virgil Thomson, established a new school of composition based on her teaching, and Walter Piston, in addition to his compositions, has produced three superb textbooks, on Harmony, Counterpoint and Orchestration. Virgil Thompson once said that every town in the United States had a post office and a Boulanger pupil. It is probably because of this, and her constant promotion of American music, that she is more valued by composers from outside of France than by those from her native country. Her musical influence was immense throughout most of the Western musical world. She died in Paris. Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer of concert and film music. ... Walter Hamor Piston Jr. ... Roy Ellsworth Harris (February 12, 1898 – October 1, 1979) was an American classical composer who wrote much music on American subjects and is perhaps best known for his . ... Virgil Thomson, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1947 Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 - September 30, 1989) was an American composer from Missouri, whose rural background gave a sense of place in his compositions. ...

Boulanger's teaching methods included traditional harmony, score reading at the piano, species counterpoint, analysis, and mastery of sight singing (using fixed-Do solfège). Her students were also expected to memorize Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2, and to learn to improvise fugues (as Bach often did). One of her students, Geirr Tveitt, even wrote a minuet in her honor, "minuet for Nadia Boulanger". She also gave the premiere performance of Aaron Copland’s Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. In music, solfege (or solmization) is a pedagogical technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfege syllable (or sol-fa syllable). The seven syllables normally used for this practice in the West are: Do, Re... Places in which Bach resided throughout his life Johann Sebastian Bach (pronounced ) (21 March 1685 O.S. – 28 July 1750 N.S.) was a prolific German composer and keyboard virtuoso whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and... Title-page of Das wohltemperirte Clavier A flat major (As-dur) fugue from the second part of Das wohltemperirte Clavier (manuscript) The Well-Tempered Clavier (in the original German: Das wohltemperierte Clavier[1]) is a collection of solo keyboard music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. ...

Students

Here is an incomplete list of her musical students. Neither Boulanger nor Annette Dieudonné, her life-long friend and assistant, kept records of those students who studied with Boulanger. In addition, it is virtually impossible to determine the exact nature of an individual's private study with Boulanger. All in all though, Boulanger is thought to have taught over 600 American composers, in addition to many European composers.

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Discography (currently available)

Women of Note. Women’s Philharmonic, Gillian Benet; Women’s Philharmonic; Louisville Orchestra; English Chamber Orchestra, Nina Flyer; New Zealand Chamber Orchestra, Alexa Still. Koch International Classics B000001SKH, 1997.

Chamber Music by French Female Composers. Martin Ostertag, Dagmar Becker, Werner Genuit. Classic Talent B000002K49, 2000.

External links

• www.nadiaboulanger.org
• The American Conservatory at Fontainebleau
• Grove Music Online