Quick Facts
French Celebrities Born In September
Also Known As: Juliette Nadia Boulanger
Died At Age: 92
Family:
father: Ernest Boulanger
mother: Raissa Myshetskaya
Born Country: France
Composers Conductors
Died on: October 22, 1979
place of death: Paris, France
Notable Alumni: Conservatoire De Paris
Ancestry: Russian French
City: Paris
More Facts
education: Conservatoire De Paris
awards: Henry Howland Memorial Prize (1962)
Childhood & Early Life
She was born as Juliette Nadia Boulanger to Ernest Boulanger and his wife Raissa Myshetskaya. Ernest was a renowned composer and pianist who himself came from a family of famous musicians. She had one younger sister.
Both her parents were musically very active and little Nadia was irritated with music playing around her all day long. However, her attitude towards music changed when she was five and she began displaying her inherent musical talents.
She began receiving musical lessons and joined the Conservatoire in 1896 when she was nine. She also took private lessons from Vierne and Guilmant.
Her elderly father died in 1900 leaving behind a young wife and two daughters to fend for themselves. Her mother lived an extravagant lifestyle and thus Boulanger was determined to study well so that she could support her mother and little sister.
Even as a student she began giving organ and piano performances and earned money. She studied composition under Faure.
Career
She began giving private lessons from her home in 1904 though she herself was just a teenager. She also conducted weekly classes in analysis and sight singing.
In 1907, she became a teacher of piano at the newly created Conservatoire Femina-Musica and an assistant to Henri Dallier, the professor of harmony at the conservatoire.
She began performing piano duets with Pugno and in 1908 the two composed a song cycle, ‘Les Heures claires’ which was well received by the public.
She made her debut as a conductor in 1912 and led the Société des Matinées Musicales orchestra where she also performed as a soloist.
The 1910s was a period marked by political unrest and wars. Due to the war, public programs were reduced and she had to put her performing career on hold. She continued her work as a teacher.
Her younger sister Lili was deeply involved in war work and inspired by her she too joined her. Working together the two sisters created a charity that supplied food, clothing and money to soldiers who had been musicians before the war.
The French Music School for Americans opened in 1921 and she joined the program as a professor of harmony. By now she had a very hectic schedule that comprised teaching, performing and composing. She decided to focus more on the teaching job as it paid better than the others and she needed the money to take care of her mother and herself.
The New York Symphony Society along with Walter Damrosch and others arranged for her to tour the U.S. in 1924. She played solo organ pieces written by Lili and premiered Copland’s new Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. She returned to France in 1925.
She resumed conducting during the mid 1930s and made her Paris debut with the orchestra of the Ecole normale in a programme of Mozart, Bach and Jean Francaix. She also continued with her private classes.
She recorded and released six discs of madrigals for HMV in 1937. This helped reach her music to a more wide spread audience and she received very good reviews from critics though some objected to the use of modern instruments.
She moved to New York in 1940 where she taught harmony, fugue, and advanced composition at the Longy School of Music. A couple of years later she began teaching at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.
Over the 1950s she continued conducting and teaching, and also make four television films. She organized the music for the wedding of Prince Rainier of Monaco and the American actress Grace Kelly.
During her later years her eyesight and hearing began to fail though she remained active until the end of her life.
Major Works
Nadia Boulanger was a highly influential teacher of music and also a very talented composer who became the first woman to conduct many major orchestras including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic orchestras.
Awards & Achievements
She was presented with the Henry Howland Memorial Prize in 1962 in recognition of her achievement of marked distinction in the field of fine arts.
Personal Life & legacy
She was born into a family of great musicians and thus music was a passion she shared with her younger sister, Lili. The sisters were very close and Nadia deeply loved and admired Lili who unfortunately died young.
She lived a long and productive life over the course of which she tutored several pupils of whom many became her good friends. She was highly revered and loved by her students. She died in 1979 at the ripe old age of 92.
Facts About Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was the first woman to conduct major symphony orchestras in the United States, breaking barriers in the male-dominated field of classical music.
She was known for her exceptional memory, able to recall intricate details of musical scores after only a single hearing.
Boulanger had a strong influence on many prominent composers, including Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and Quincy Jones, who studied under her tutelage.
Despite her strict teaching methods, Boulanger had a reputation for being incredibly supportive and encouraging of her students’ creative endeavors.
In addition to her musical talents, Boulanger was also fluent in several languages and had a deep passion for literature and philosophy.
