Nadia Boulanger (September 16, 1887 – October 22, 1979) was an influential composer, conductor, and music professor. She taught many of the most important composers and conductors of the 20th century.

Family Influences

Nadia Boulanger's grandmother was the singer Juliette Boulanger . Her grandfather, Frédérick Boulanger won first prize in violoncello in his fifth year (1797) at the recently founded Paris Conservatoire. Her father, Ernest Boulanger , later studied at the same conservatory, and won the Prix de Rome in 1835. He later taught there, where he met Nadia's mother, the Russian Princess, Raissa Myshetskaya .

Boulanger's life was largely centered around her love for her sister, Lili Boulanger, who was six years younger. Lili was one of Nadia's first composition students, and it was under her guidance that Lili became the first woman to ever win the Prix de Rome (1913).

Musical Influences

Boulanger entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten. It was here where she studied organ with Charles-Marie Widor and composition with Gabriel Fauré. After winning first prize in organ, accompaniment, and fugue, she won the Deuxième Grand Prix de Rome in 1908.

Impact

Nadia was the first woman to conduct several major symphony orchestras, including New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

She became a professor at the American Conservatory of Music in Fontainebleau in 1921, and eventually became its director in 1950. She also taught at the Longy School of Music, the Paris Conservatoire and the École Normale de Musique .

Many of her students from the 1920s, including Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, and Virgil Thomson, are often credited as having advanced the level of concert music available in America.

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.

• Daniel Barenboim
• Robert Russell Bennett
• Marc Blitzstein
• Elliott Carter
• David Conte
• Aaron Copland
• Clifford Curzon
• David Diamond
• Jean Françaix
• John Eliot Gardiner
• Philip Glass
• Roy Harris
• Quincy Jones
• Wojciech Kilar
• Dinu Lipatti
• Douglas Stuart Moore
• Ginette Neveu
• Astor Piazzolla
• Walter Piston
• Harold Shapero
• Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
• Charles Strouse
• Henryk Szeryng
• Virgil Thomson
• David Ward-Steinman
• Egberto Gismonti
• Howard Swanson
• Igor Stravinsky

References

• Kendall, Alan. The Tender Tyrant: Nadia Boulanger. Wilton, CT: Lyceum Books, 1977.
• Monsaingeon, Bruno. Mademoiselle: Conversations with Nadia Boulanger. Translated by Robyn Marsack. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1985.
• Spycket, Jérôme. Nadia Boulanger. Translated by M. M. Shriver. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992.
• Walters, Teresa. “Nadia Boulanger, Musician and Teacher.” D.M.A. diss., Peabody Conservatory of Music, Johns Hopkins University, 1981.