1. Oui, Mademoiselle 

With a passionate and rigorous teaching style and a profound knowledge of music, Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) became one of the most highly respected teachers of her time. Her public lectures at the École Normale were attended by crowds of people and discussed afterwards in the press. Understandably, ambitious students were eager for private lessons with ‘Mademoiselle’ – the nickname given to the unmarried Nadia. She taught counterpoint, harmony and composition in her perfect French diction. On Wednesday afternoons, she crammed students – her ‘boulangerie’ – into her apartment to sing cantatas and meet the crème de la crème of the Paris music scene. Before you knew it, you might find yourself shaking hands with Saint-Saëns, Stravinsky or Poulenc

2. She had a passion for early music 

While Schönberg and Berg of the Second Viennese School were tugging hard at the steering wheel of music history, Nadia was looking in the rear view mirror towards the Baroque and Renaissance. When she started conducting more often in the 1930s, early music was invariably on the programme. It is partly thanks to her debut at the Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris that the public rediscovered Bach, Monteverdi and Schütz.  

3. The whole world wanted to be her student  

What do Astor Piazzolla, Aaron Copland and Philip Glass have in common? They all studied with Nadia. In the international melting pot of Paris, it is hardly surprising that Boulanger’s coterie of students came from every corner of the globe. She taught at the summer school in Fontainebleau, and by as early as 1925 she had more than 100 American protégés. She would also invite them on walks and to student parties (where the vodka always flowed). As someone with many connections who also performed their compositions, she launched their careers. In return, her students helped her with errands and correspondence. 

The orchestral music of Boulanger’s musical circle will be brought together on 8 March into one ambitious concert. The BNO will play Poulenc, Stravinsky, Copland and Fauré. The great organ in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula will resound live at Bozar through a brand-new fibre network. 

4. She honoured her younger sister 

Lili Boulanger died in 1918 at the age of 24: a promising composer who left a gaping hole in the French music scene. Nadia committed her entire life to propagating her younger sister’s musical legacy. As an act of devotion, Nadia never composed another note after 1918, focusing on her future as a teacher. As she saw it, Lili was the talented composer in the family. Every year after Lili’s death, Nadia organised a mass in her memory. In the month that followed, she put her social life on hold for a period of mourning. 

Although Boulanger vowed to stop composing, you can hear a work written earlier, Les heures claires from 1909, on 8 March. She wrote this gorgeous song cycle with the pianist Raoul Pugno, and it is one of the twelve works in the Bozar series Echoes of the 20th Century. Musicologist and pianist Anne de Fornel helps you get to know Boulanger’s compositions in depth at a lecture-recital.