Biographies of the great composers in music history are often bursting with the names of musicians, teachers, muses and countless minor characters who played a role in their life’s work. In the twentieth century, there is one name that appears unusually often in the life stories of others: Nadia Boulanger. Lessons with this French composer and educator were crucial to the careers of dozens of composers. This is why she is remembered above all as a teacher, although she had composed a varied and impressive oeuvre of her own by the age of 35. She herself believed that her talent was inferior to that of her younger sister Lili, which is why she eventually opted for a career as a performing musician and teacher.

A musical family

The sisters grew up in privileged surroundings. The Boulanger family belonged to the wealthy, Parisian bourgeoisie and had already produced more than one generation of musicians. Nadia and Lili’s grandparents were the cellist Frédéric Boulanger and mezzo soprano Marie-Julie Hallinger. They passed on their musical genes to Ernest; at the age of 62, he married the Russian singer Raissa Mychetsky, 41 years his junior. Their eldest and youngest daughters died in infancy; the two middle sisters would go on to write musical history. Because Lili and Nadia had no children of their own, their musical pedigree ended with them.

Nadia received a thorough musical education as a child, and her talent emerged early on. She was admitted to the conservatoire at the age of nine, which was far from self-evident for girls at the time. She won first prizes for the piano and organ, and also in harmony and fugue. What is striking is that she started teaching before the age of 20, an activity that she would continue with until the end of her life and one which would secure her a permanent place in music history, even more than her work as a composer, performer or conductor. She studied composition with Gabriel Fauré and Charles-Marie Widor, pioneering names in early 20th century France. Nadia Boulanger participated in the Prix de Rome four times in total. The second time, in 1908, she was awarded second prize. The reason she didn’t win first prize was all down to Camille Saint-Saëns, a member of the jury. He objected to the fact that her entry to the competition was an instrumental fugue rather than a vocal one. That Nadia, a woman, was aiming for the highest musical accolade, doubtless played a role as well.

The ‘boulangerie’

Leonard Bernstein was one of the many composers who visited Nadia Boulanger. In a documentary, he recollects that the group of students who studied with her were sometimes called the ‘boulangerie’. It is a mildly joking name for an unusually inspiring environment, where Nadia Boulanger analysed the greatest masterpieces of music history at the piano. She had a profound love of early music, particularly Monteverdi, and of recent developments in composition. She was an especially passionate admirer of Gabriel Fauré’s music, which she always defended. She was immensely charmed by the perfect simplicity, refinement and pure beauty and clarity of his music.

Her teaching method was hermeneutic. A few film clips have been preserved in which we see an elderly Boulanger working with her students. It is immediately clear that she is always able to ask the right questions, with a fundamental attitude that is almost philosophical and a great reverence for the composer’s work. What does the score say? Why is it written that way? And why is that the best option for what the composer wants to express with the music? 

Les Heures Claires - Nadia Boulanger and Raoul Pugno

In 1909, Nadia Boulanger composed Les Heures Claires, a cycle of 8 songs for the voice and piano. The modest setting and intimate character of this music was a welcome change from the obligation to compose a grand cantata for the Prix de Rome. It is noteworthy that the songs are not only a product of Boulanger’s imagination, but also the work of one of her teachers: Raoul Pugno. Pugno was a pianist and composer who would go on to play a significant role in Nadia Boulanger’s career. The two were very good friends, and it is unsurprising that the press speculated about more than a purely musical partnership. However, Pugno was married, and as a woman from the respectable echelons of society, Boulanger had a reputation to maintain. 

As for the facts, we can only be certain of a musical bond between them, but it was marked by an unusual synergy. It is almost impossible to see, either in the final score or the original manuscripts, who was holding pen to paper at any given moment. Les Heures Claires is the work of two like minds who set the poetry of Emile Verhaeren to music together. The fact that these are love poems doubtless fed the rumours of a suspected amorous relationship. 

Emile Verhaeren was a Belgian writer and art critic with a great interest in Symbolism, who counted Maeterlinck among his friends. In Les Heures Claires, he sings of his love for his wife, but the texts are highly universalist: the beauty of nature symbolises human emotions.

Later on, Boulanger and Pugno composed the opera La Ville Morte together. In her sketches, Nadia notes something that also applies to Les Heures Claires:

“The voice will follow the meaning of the words intimately and emphasise every intention, while preserving a simplicity, a kind of gravity, which is not without energy. The rhythm will be clearly defined.”

Besides the clear setting of the text, in which the music does indeed correspond very closely to the natural diction of the French words, the impressionist sound is striking. Fauré was not the only one to make a profound impression on Boulanger: so did Debussy. The result is atmospheric, musical poetry, with music that often lends an unobtrusive yet effective weight to the emotions. The minor key of the first song flows almost imperceptibly into a final major chord. The end of the third song, on the word tombeau, seems unassuming at first, but it is no coincidence that the bass notes on the piano seek out the darkest regions of the keyboard.

This music is clearly the work of someone who perused every score in search of depth, musical meaning, and the best way to tell stories in sound.

On 8 March at 2.30pm, Anne de Fornel will give a lecture-recital on Nadia Boulanger, followed by the documentary Mademoiselle.