This Women's History Month CapRadio highlights a different woman in music each weekday. Today's classical spotlight is on sisters Nadia and Lili Boulanger.
- Nadia Boulanger was born in Paris 1887 and attended the Paris Conservatory for seven years from age 10 where Gabriel Fauré was one of her teachers and she won first prizes in solfège, counterpoint, fugue, keyboard harmony and organ.
- Nadia's sister, Lili, was born in 1893 and by age two was recognized as a child prodigy. By age five Lili sat in on classes with her sister and later attended Conservatory classes in music theory and organ. Lili also sang and played piano, violin, cello and harp.
- After leaving the Conservatory in 1904, Nadia began to compose, had music published and began to teach with Lili one her first pupils who at age 19 in 1913 became the first female composer to win the Prix de Rome, something Nadia tried four times to win but never did.
- The Prix de Rome funds a composer to live three to five years in Italy where Lili completed several compositions. Lifelong ill health forced her early return to France, where she continued to compose until her early death in 1918 at age 24.
- Lili's premature death changed the course of Nadia's life, who now focused on teaching. One of her first students in the 1920s was Aaron Copland.
- Nadia's greatest legacy is teaching. No record was kept of every student, but she is believed to have taught a huge number of students from around the world including over 600 Americans. For teaching literally hundreds of Americans, Nadia Boulanger's influence on the development of American music is profound, from early 20th century classical to jazz to pop & funk. American composer Virgil Thomson called her “a one-woman graduate school" and the BBC proposed that “She may have been the greatest music teacher ever.” A few of her students include:
Burt Bacharach
Daniel Barenboim (pianist & conductor)
Aaron Copland
John Eliot Gardiner (English conductor)
Philip Glass
Quincy Jones
Michel Legrand (French composer, arranger)
Ástor Piazzolla (Argentine composer notable for evolving the tango)
Joe Raposo (Sesame Street composer)
Stanisław Skrowaczewski (Polish conductor & composer)
Charles Strouse (Broadway musical composer; Bye Bye Birdie, Annie, TV’s “All in the Family” theme)
Virgil Thomson
Antoni Wit (Polish conductor & composer)
Narciso Yepes (Spanish guitarist)
Aaron Copland said of Nadia,
“Nadia Boulanger knew everything there was to know about music; she knew the oldest and the latest music, pre-Bach and post-Stravinsky, and knew it cold. All technical know-how was at her fingertips. More important to the budding composer was her way of surrounding him with an air of confidence.”
