Early life and education Juliette Nadia Boulanger was born in Paris on 16 September 1887, to French composer and pianist
Ernest Boulanger (1815–1900) and his wife Raissa Myshetskaya (1856–1935), a Russian princess, who descended from
St. Mikhail Tchernigovsky. Ernest Boulanger had studied at the Paris Conservatoire and, in 1835 at the age of 20, won the coveted
Prix de Rome for composition. He wrote comic operas and incidental music for plays but was most widely known for his
choral music. He achieved distinction as a director of choral groups, teacher of voice, and a member of choral competition juries. After years of rejection, in 1872 he was appointed to the Paris Conservatoire as professor of singing. Raissa qualified as a home tutor (or
governess) in 1873. According to Ernest, he and Raissa met in Russia in 1873, and she followed him back to Paris. She joined his voice class at the Conservatoire in 1876, and they were married in Russia in 1877. Ernest and Raissa had a daughter, Ernestine Mina Juliette, who died as an infant before Nadia was born on her father's 72nd birthday. Through her early years, although both parents were very active musically, Nadia would get upset by hearing music and hide until it stopped. In 1892, when Nadia was five, Raissa became pregnant again. During the pregnancy, Nadia's response to music changed drastically. "One day I heard a fire bell. Instead of crying out and hiding, I rushed to the piano and tried to reproduce the sounds. My parents were amazed." After this, Boulanger paid great attention to the singing lessons her father gave, and she began to study the rudiments of music. Her sister, named Marie-Juliette but known as
Lili Boulanger, was born in 1893, when Nadia was six. When Ernest brought Nadia home from their friends' house and before she was allowed to see her mother or Lili, he made her promise solemnly to be responsible for the new baby's welfare. He urged her to take part in her sister's care. From the age of seven, Nadia studied in preparation for her
Conservatoire entrance exams, sitting in on classes and having private lessons with the teachers. Lili often stayed in the room for these lessons, sitting quietly and listening. In 1896 the nine-year-old Nadia entered the Conservatoire. She studied there with
Fauré and others. She came in third in the 1897
solfège competition and subsequently worked to win first prize in 1898. She took private lessons from
Louis Vierne and
Alexandre Guilmant. During this period, she also received religious instruction to become an observant
Catholic, taking her
First Communion on 4 May 1899. The Catholic religion remained important to her for the rest of her life. In 1900 her father Ernest died, and money became a problem for the family. Raissa had an extravagant lifestyle, and the
royalties she received from performances of Ernest's music were insufficient to live on permanently. Nadia continued to work hard at the Conservatoire to become a teacher and be able to contribute to supporting her family. In 1903 Nadia won the Conservatoire's first prize in
harmony. She continued to study for years, although she had begun to earn money through organ and piano performances. She studied composition with
Gabriel Fauré and, in the 1904 competitions, she came in first in three categories: organ,
accompagnement au piano, and
fugue (composition). At her
accompagnement exam, Boulanger met the renowned French pianist, organist, and composer,
Raoul Pugno, who subsequently took an interest in her career. In the autumn of 1904, Nadia began to teach from the family apartment at 36 rue Ballu. In addition to the private lessons she held there, Boulanger started holding a Wednesday afternoon group class in analysis and sight singing. She continued these almost until her death. This class was followed by her famous "at homes", salons where students could mingle with professional musicians and Boulanger's other friends from the arts, such as
Igor Stravinsky,
Paul Valéry, Fauré, and others. With the advent of war in Europe in 1914, public programs were reduced, and Boulanger had to put her performing and conducting on hold. She continued to teach privately and to assist Dallier at the Conservatoire. Nadia was drawn into Lili's expanding war work, and by the end of the year, the sisters had organised a sizable charity, the
Comité Franco-Américain du Conservatoire National de Musique et de Déclamation. It supplied items such as food, clothing, money, and letters from home to soldiers who had been musicians before the war. Weakened by her work during the war, Lili began to suffer ill health. She died in March 1918.
Life after Lili's death, 1918–21 Nadia struggled with the death of her sister and according to Jeanice Brooks, "[t]he dichotomy between private grief and public strength was strongly characteristic of Boulanger's frame of mind in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Privately, Nadia kept a shrine of her sister in her home. This was likely influenced by the resurgence of spiritism, the interest in a person’s spiritual existence after death and communication with lost loved ones. It may have also been influenced by her involvement in Catholicism, which utilizes objects, figures, and rituals as mediators between the living and the dead. Guilt at surviving her talented sibling seems to have led to determination to deserve Lili's death, which Nadia framed as redemptive sacrifice, by throwing herself into work and domestic responsibility: as Nadia wrote in her datebook in January 1919, 'I place this new year before you, my little beloved Lili–may it see me fulfill my duty towards you–so that it is less terrible for Mother and that I try to resemble you. In 1919, Boulanger performed in more than twenty concerts, often programming her own music and that of her sister. Since the Conservatoire Femina-Musica had closed during the war,
Alfred Cortot and Auguste Mangeot founded a new music school in Paris, which opened later that year as the
École normale de musique de Paris. Boulanger was invited by Cortot to join the school, where she taught classes in
harmony,
counterpoint,
musical analysis, organ and composition. Mangeot also asked Boulanger to contribute articles of music criticism to his paper
Le Monde Musical, and she occasionally provided articles for this and other newspapers for the rest of her life, though she never felt at ease setting her opinions down for posterity in this way. In 1920, Boulanger began to compose again, writing a series of songs to words by
Camille Mauclair. In 1921, she performed at two concerts in support of
women's rights, both of which featured music by Lili. However, later in life she claimed never to have been involved with
feminism, and that women should not have the right to vote as they "lacked the necessary political sophistication."
American School at Fontainebleau, 1921–1935 In the summer of 1921, the
French Music School for Americans opened in
Fontainebleau, with Boulanger listed on the programme as a professor of harmony. Her close friend
Isidor Philipp headed the piano departments of both the Paris Conservatory and the new Fontainebleau School and was an important draw for American students. She inaugurated the custom, which would continue for the rest of her life, of inviting the best students to her summer residence at
Gargenville one weekend for lunch and dinner. Among the students attending the first year at Fontainebleau was
Aaron Copland. Boulanger's unrelenting schedule of teaching, performing, composing, and writing letters started to take its toll on her health; she had frequent
migraines and toothaches. She stopped writing as a critic for
Le Monde musical as she could not attend the requisite concerts. To maintain her and her mother's living standards, she concentrated on teaching which was her most lucrative source of income. Fauré believed she was mistaken to stop composing, but she told him, "If there is one thing of which I am certain, it is that I wrote useless music." In 1924,
Walter Damrosch,
Arthur Judson and the New York Symphony Society arranged for Boulanger to tour the USA. She set sail on the
Cunard flagship on Christmas Eve. The ship arrived on New Year's Eve in New York after an extremely rough crossing. During this tour, she performed solo organ works, pieces by Lili, and premiered Copland's new
Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, which he had written for her. She returned to France on 28 February 1925. Later that year, Boulanger approached the publisher
Schirmer to enquire if they would be interested in publishing her methods of teaching music to children. When nothing came of it, she abandoned trying to write about her ideas.
Gershwin visited Boulanger in 1927, asking for lessons in composition. They spoke for half an hour after which Boulanger announced, "I can teach you nothing." Taking this as a compliment, Gershwin repeated the story many times. The
Great Depression increased social tensions in France. Days after the
Stavisky riots in February 1934, and in the midst of a general strike, Boulanger resumed conducting. She made her Paris debut with the orchestra of the
École normale in a programme of
Mozart,
Bach, and
Jean Françaix. Boulanger's private classes continued;
Elliott Carter recalled that students who did not dare to cross Paris through the riots showed only that they did not "take music seriously enough". By the end of the year, she was conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris in the
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with a programme of Bach,
Monteverdi and
Schütz. Her mother Raissa died in March 1935, after a long decline. This freed Boulanger from some of her ties to Paris, which had prevented her from taking up teaching opportunities in the United States. Later in the year, she traveled to London to broadcast her lecture-recitals for the
BBC, as well as to conduct works including Schütz, Fauré and
Lennox Berkeley. Noted as the first woman to conduct the
London Philharmonic Orchestra, she received acclaim for her performances. Boulanger's long-held passion for Monteverdi culminated in her recording six discs of
madrigals for
His Master's Voice in 1937, which brought his music to a new, wider audience. Not all reviewers approved her use of modern instruments. When Paul
Hindemith published his
The Craft of Musical Composition, Boulanger asked him for permission to translate the text into French, and to add her own comments. Hindemith never responded to her offer. After he fled from
Nazi Germany to the United States, they did not discuss the matter further. Late in 1937, Boulanger returned to Britain to broadcast for the BBC and hold her popular lecture-recitals. In November, she became the first woman to conduct a complete concert of the
Royal Philharmonic Society in London, which included Fauré's
Requiem and Monteverdi's
Amor (Lamento della ninfa). Describing her concerts, Mangeot wrote, She never uses a dynamic level louder than
mezzo-forte and she takes pleasure in veiled, murmuring sonorities, from which she nevertheless obtains great power of expression. She arranges her dynamic levels so as never to have need of
fortissimo ... In 1938, Boulanger returned to the US for a longer tour. She had arranged to give a series of lectures at
Radcliffe,
Harvard,
Wellesley and the
Longy School of Music, and to broadcast for
NBC. During this tour, she became the first woman to conduct the
Boston Symphony Orchestra. In her three months there, she gave over a hundred lecture-recitals, recitals and concerts These included the world premiere of Stravinsky's
Dumbarton Oaks Concerto. At that time she was seen by American sculptor
Katharine Lane Weems who recorded in her diary, "Her voice is surprisingly deep. She is quite slim with an excellent figure and fine features, Her skin is delicate, her hair graying slightly, she wears pince-nez and gesticulates as she becomes excited talking about music."
His Master's Voice issued two additional Boulanger records in 1938: the Piano Concerto in D by
Jean Françaix, which she conducted; and the
Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, in which she and
Dinu Lipatti were the duo pianists with a vocal ensemble, and (again with Lipatti) a selection of the Brahms Waltzes, Op. 39 for
piano four hands.
Second World War and emigration, 1940–45 As the
Second World War loomed, Boulanger helped her students leave France. She made plans to do so herself. Stravinsky joined her at Gargenville, where they awaited news of the German attack against France. Waiting to leave France till the last moment before the invasion and occupation, Boulanger arrived in New York via
Madrid and
Lisbon on 6 November 1940. After her arrival, Boulanger traveled to the
Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to give classes in harmony, fugue, counterpoint and advanced composition. In 1942, she also began teaching at the
Peabody Conservatory in
Baltimore. Her classes included music history, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, orchestration and composition.
Later life in Paris, 1946–79 Leaving America at the end of 1945, she returned to France in January 1946. There she accepted a position of professor of
accompagnement au piano at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1953, she was appointed overall director of the Fontainebleau School. She also continued her touring to other countries. As a long-standing friend of the family, and as official chapel-master to the
Prince of Monaco, Boulanger was asked to organise the music for the wedding of
Prince Rainier of Monaco and the American actress
Grace Kelly in 1956. In 1958, she returned to the US for a six-week tour. She combined broadcasting, lecturing, and making four television films. Also in 1958, she was inducted as an Honorary Member into
Sigma Alpha Iota, the international women's music fraternity, by the Gamma Delta chapter at the
Crane School of Music in Potsdam, New York. In 1962, she toured Turkey, where she conducted concerts with her young protégée
İdil Biret. Later that year, she was invited to the
White House of the United States by President
John F. Kennedy and his wife
Jacqueline, and in 1966, she was invited to Moscow to jury for the
International Tchaikovsky Competition, chaired by
Emil Gilels. While in England, she taught at the
Yehudi Menuhin School. She also gave lectures at the
Royal College of Music and the
Royal Academy of Music, all of which were broadcast by the BBC. Boulanger worked almost until her death in 1979 in Paris. She is buried at the
Montmartre Cemetery with her sister Lili and their parents. ==Pedagogy==