Lili Boulanger (real name Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger) was born on August 21, 1893 in the apartment of 30 rue La Bruyere in Paris, France. Her mother, Ra�ssa, was Princess Mychetsky of Russia. Her father Ernest Boulanger was 77 at the time and was a violin professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Unfortunately, Lili would not know her father for long. In 1894, he developed a serious respiratory infection, and died later on April 14th, 1900. In 1895, Lili developed the same infection and it became even worse. Bronchial pneumonia and Crohn�s disease (inflammation of the small intestine) were among diseases that she picked up.
Lili still moved on though. When she was five, she began auditing, and at six, studied organ with Lois Vierne. In 1901, at the age of eight, Lili had played the violin for her first public performance. From 1900 to1909, she kept herself busy whenever her health allowed. All too often, illness prevented her from finishing projects she had started. Nevertheless, Lili learned violin, cello, piano, organ, and harp to varying degrees of success.
The year 1909 was a major turning point in Lili Boulanger�s life. After her sixteenth birthday Ra�ssa asked her daughter what she planned to do with her life. Lili replied that she wanted to master music composition and win the Premier Grand Prix de Rome just as her father had done in 1835. As soon as she had decided on her life�s goal, Lili Boulanger began a fast-paced, intensive study schedule. Georges Caussade, harmony professor at the Conservatoire and close family friend of the Boulangers, was hired to teach Lili privately on a regular basis. Being mostly in good health during this time allowed her to follow the same plan as the students of the Conservatoire, using the standard harmony texts of Dubois and Reber. With daily lessons, even on weekends and holidays, Lili made astonishingly quick progress. Even if Lili happened to be out of town, she would still send her homework to Caussade for correction. In spite of the assumption that Nadia taught everything Lili knew, the only time Lili studied with her sister on a regular basis was from July through October of 1911.
By February, 1910, only a few months after her decision to study composition, Lili had completed an entire harmony notebook; in April she started the third notebook; and, by March of 1911, after eight notebooks filled, she finished the Dubois text and moved on to the more difficult Lenepveu workbook. While studying harmony during these months, Lili also worked on counterpoint and even composition. By the summer of 1911 she began working on fugues, an important element of the Prix de Rome. She set poetry to music to prepare for the cantata of the final round. Lili completed in a matter of months what normally took years. Meanwhile, she also continued to audit classes at the Conservatoire to extend the knowledge gained in her private lessons.
After so many years as an auditor at the Paris Conservatoire, it finally came time for Lili to apply as an official student. With a little more than a year of private tutoring she passed the admission examination on January 10th, 1912, and was welcomed by longtime family friend Gabriel Faure, then director of that institution. Even though she was now officially admitted and joined the composition class of Paul Vidal, she nevertheless continued with her private lessons with Georges Caussade.
Lili insisted on entering the Prix de Rome in 1912 even though her health was beginning to fail again. With the assurance from her professors that she was now technically advanced enough to compete, she went into isolation for the first round in May of 1912. As much as she must have felt prepared emotionally and intellectually for the task ahead, her body was just not physically capable of enduring the strain. She finished the required compositions for the first round but was forced to withdraw soon afterwards due to illness. Illness also forced Lili to miss the spring examination in Vidal�s class at the Conservatoire.
Health problems continued to plague Lili throughout 1912. By September, she was suffering from pains in her legs and feet because of a bicycle accident during the summer. Over the next few months her condition further deteriorated, requiring physical therapy at a beachside hospital in Berck.
Lili�s hard work finally began to pay off when she was awarded the Prix Lepaulle for her high achievement at the Conservatoire examinations in February, 1913. The next few months after that lead up to the 1913 Prix de Rome competition. It found Lili engrossed with performances of her works and additional last-minute Prix preparations.
On Tuesday, May 6th, 1913, nineteen-year-old Lili entered the Prix de Rome. Though this was only her second attempt, the chances of winning were higher this year. Since the top award had not been given in the previous year, the empty slot was carried over, making two First Grand Prizes available in 1913. A week later, the two required compositions, a vocal fugue and an orchestrated choral work, were judged for each of the thirteen contestants. One of the five that went on was Lili Boulanger.
The other finalists knew what to expect from the final round, having at least survived it once before; for Lili, however, this would be her first attempt at the month-long isolation. On May 22nd, the five finalists entered isolation, with the goal of completing an orchestral score and piano reduction of a cantata. Already weakened from the other rounds, Lili became ill again but managed to finish the piano score of her cantata by June 15th, leaving one more week to write the orchestration. After finishing her scores, the Acad�mie kindly allowed Marcel Dupr�, a fellow contestant and Lili�s friend, to help her make clear copies of her scores for the jury since she was by this time too weak to finish them by herself. The judging of the cantatas would be on Saturday, July 5th, 1913.
Lili Boulanger�s fame was beginning to grow. She had already been mentioned in the press over the years as the gifted �little sister� of Nadia Boulanger, but as a result of her admittance into the final round, photos of Lili were now appearing in popular music magazines throughout France. Lili�s achievements were now being recognized on her own account. And, for just being admitted into the final round, Lili and the other finalists had received an award from the Fondation Yvonne de Gouy d�Arsy.
Lili Boulanger was awarded the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for her cantata Faust et H�l�ne by a landslide of votes: thirty-one out of the thirty-six attending members of the Acad�mie des Beaux-Arts. �Intelligence of subject. Correctness of declamation. Sensitivity and warmth. Poetic feeling. Intelligent and colorful orchestration. A remarkable cantata.� These were the reasons they felt Lili deserved the top prize. Lili Boulanger would become the first female composer to enter the Villa Medici in its 110-year history. In less than four years since her decision to study composition, she had achieved her goal. Over the next few months, Lili attended many concerts, dinner parties, and public appearances in addition to the numerous glowing reviews that accompanied these events. Lili Boulanger was at the height of her fame.
It was time to head toward Rome to receive her prize, but she was not strong enough to go quite yet. The meeting was postponed to February 20. People started rumors that Lili was just faking her illness to get special attention. When she finally did arrive in Rome on March 12, she couldn�t even get out of bed. A man named Albert Besnard, the director of Villa Medici, wrote a letter to Academie headquarters saying that Lili didn�t need any special favors. The Academie headquarters disagreed and continued to help Lili through this rough time.
When her health recovered, Lili lived in Villi Medici. There she wrote many pieces and became friends with the other great composers that lived there. In June1917, Lili was taken back to Paris. She was now suffering from constant pain and was severely weak. To help ease her suffering an appendectomy was performed in July, but its effects were minimal at best. The doctor who had done the operation was amazed that Lili had lived this long; her intestines had seriously deteriorated. Even as she weakened further and further, she insisted on being carried to the piano to do her work as often as she could. Princesse Maleine was her primary concern, which she would never finish. However, she did manage to finish D�un soir triste, a small chamber work. Finally, too weak and in too much pain, Lili no longer had the strength to leave her bed. Towards the end of January she dictated to Nadia �note by note, line by line the work that had been conceived inwardly.� That work was the Pie Jesu, her final composition.
In early 1918 it became necessary to move from Paris to escape the German bombardments, so friends and family supplied Lili with medical supplies. That must have not been enough, for on March 15, 1918, Lili Boulanger died in Mezy, France at the age of twenty-four. Lili�s many friends, professors, and fellow students attended her funeral at the Eglise de la Trinit�, shocked at her early death. Her Pie Jesu was performed, finished only days before while on her deathbed. Lili�s final wish for her family was �I offer to God my sufferings, so that they may shower down on you as joys.�
Nadia Juliette Boulanger was born in 1887 in Paris, France. From the start, Nadia also showed great talent in music. Her first music lessons came from her mother, Ra�ssa, who was a singer, and from her father, Ernest. Then she moved onto the Paris Conservatoire, taking organ lessons from Guilmant and Vierne, and composition from the French composer Gabriel Faue. In 1906 she began composing her own works.
Only a few months after the death of her father, Nadia entered accompagnement au piano, the most difficult course at the Conservatoire. She was a thirteen-year-old in a class where the average age was twenty. Since Conservatoire rules did not allow students to work and earn money while enrolled, Nadia used what little free time she had to attend concerts (either as performer or audience member), to run errands for fellow musicians and teachers, such as Vierne and Faure, and to take extra lessons. In addition to being a student in Faure�s composition class by 1903, Faure appointed Nadia as his substitute at the organ of the Madeleine, one of the most important churches in Paris. It was also during this time that Faur� was losing his hearing. Trusting Nadia to be as distinct as possible, Faur� would send her free concert tickets in exchange for her perceptive analysis of performances he could no longer hear accurately. While in his class, Nadia met Alfred Cortot, Roger-Durcasse,Georges Enesco , Raoul Laparra, Charles Koechlin, Maurice Ravel , and Florent Schmitt. Finally, in July of 1904, Nadia Boulanger won the prizes she needed to leave the Conservatoire. She swept the field, winning a first prize in harmony, organ, piano, and accompagnement au piano. She was sixteen years old. During one of these final examinations Nadia met a man, one of her jurors, who would change the lives of the Boulangers. Raoul Pugno was his name.
Internationally famous since the 1870s as a pianist, composer and organist, the fifty-two year old Pugno quickly became a musical mentor for Nadia as well as a close family friend. Instead of spending their holidays in Trouville as they normally did, after 1904 the Boulangers followed Pugno to the small village of Hanneucourt-par-Gargenville to be around him and his cultured friends. In 1908 they purchased a group of three buildings very close to Pugno�s called �les Maisonnettes�. They fit in perfectly, as if they had always belonged there, and made many good friends.
As soon as Nadia left the Conservatoire, she began teaching in the Boulanger apartment. Even though she was younger than many of her first students, Nadia�s grave appearance created by the steel-rimmed glasses, the formal black tailored suits, and the tightly drawn hair more than conveyed an older impression. She was merciless in making sure her students paid attention at all times, even going so far as to pull the long ponytails of her distracted female students. From 1906 through 1909, Nadia had competed for the Prix de Rome four times. She did not win a first prize during any of these attempts, but, in 1908, received the Second Grand Prize. Many believed that she deserved the First Grand Prize, but because of prejudice by the all-male jury, especially from Camille Saint Saens, she was short-changed. Society, also, was still too male-dominated at that time to easily accept changes in women�s role in society so that whether her appearance played a part or not, the fact still remains that women were still not welcomed as composers.
In 1909, she began teaching privately at the Paris Conservatory, and would continue there until 1924. At the same time, she also taught at the Ecole Normale de Musique and, starting in 1921, at the American Conservatory, a school which she would later direct. In 1918, her sister, Lili, died from Crohn's disease, and this event seemed to signal the end of her compositional career.
Her teaching at the American Conservatory is of particular importance, for there she trained some of the most important names in American music, most notably Aaron Copland. Copland began his studies with her in 1921 and continued until 1924. Copland had such admiration for her that he asked her to perform on the organ at the premiere of his 'Symphony for Organ and Orchestra' in 1925. She also taught many other notable American composers, such as Roy Harris, Marc Blitzstein, David Diamond and Elliot Carter.
Nadia also had a string of firsts as a conductor, being the first woman to conduct orchestras in New York, Paris, London, Boston and Philadelphia. She did all this before WW II. At the onset of the war, Nadia moved to the United States and taught at Wellesley and Radcliffe colleges in Massachusetts. In 1946, she returned to Paris, and became director of the American Conservatory shortly after. She lived and taught in Paris privately for the remaining years of her life, and died there in 1979 at the age of 92.
Nadia Boulanger was the leading teacher of American music composition in the 20th century. Living such a long, productive life allowed her to teach scores of music students, and her legacy lives on to this day in the compositions of some of America's leading composers. She was a French teacher, composer, and conductor, who influenced a generation of American composers.