All hail the music teachers.
No, seriously.
You’re all out there juggling schedules; buying and distributing sheet music; teaching string fingering patterns over and over; navigating online lessons despite patchy Wi-Fi; reminding singers to stand up straight; soothing parental anxieties; and—let’s be honest––serving as part-time therapists to angsty student teens on a regular basis.
That’s a lot.
Plus, not only are you veritable solfège-wielding superheroes, you’re also fearlessly claiming your rightful place in a rich and storied history of hardworking music teachers. A history that includes all those who came before you: some legitimate legends, some largely unsung.
We thought you deserved to meet a woman who, until relatively recently, was both.
Profiles in music educator courage
Over the coming months, we’re hoping to introduce you to some of your illustrious colleagues by profiling educators past and present who’ve contributed to musical pedagogy in enduring and immeasurable ways.
First on our list? Perhaps the most consequential Western music teacher of the 20th Century:
Nadia Boulanger.
No doubt many of you will have heard of her, but we felt this Parisian powerhouse deserved her own special shoutout, just in case readers were unfamiliar with her work or happened to miss some of the more astonishing chapters of her extensive bio.
Read on for a quick overview of Boulanger’s life, followed by a list of standout highlights from her undeniably amazing career.
Introducing Mademoiselle Boulanger…
Name: Juliette Nadia Boulanger, known as “Nadia”
Dates: 1887-1979
Nationality: French
Fields: Composition, harmony, organ, orchestration, and more
Studied at: Paris Conservatoire
Taught at: Paris Conservatoire, Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau, Conservatoire Femina-Musica, École Normale de Musique, Wellesley, Julliard, Radcliffe, Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music, Yehudi Menuhin School
Intrigued? Here are our picks for the top 10 things you may or may not know about this famous pedagogue from Paris:
#1: Music was practically in her DNA.
You might’ve heard Nadia’s sister, Lili, was a hugely talented composer in her own right…but did you know the Boulanger siblings descended from a long line of musicians?
Nadia and Lili’s father, Ernest, was a composer, music teacher, and the winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1835. His parents came from a similar pedigree: Ernest’s father was a Paris Conservatoire professor, while his mother was a headliner at the celebrated Opéra-Comique. With so much music in her blood, it’s no wonder Nadia landed a spot at the Paris Conservatoire herself at just about 10 years old (!). Once there, she promptly excelled in areas such as counterpoint and harmony under the tutelage of heavy musical hitters like Gabriel Fauré and organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor. By the time she left the Conservatoire in 1904 at 17 or so, she’d had more musical exposure than most of us could hope to get in a lifetime.
#2: She taught lessons at home.
Though Boulanger is renowned for her work at the international Conservatoire Américain at Fontainebleau (where she would ultimately become director), she also held numerous posts at institutions like the Royal Academy of Music, Julliard, Radcliffe, and Wellesley.
Still, one of her favorite classrooms was right in her very own home.
Boulanger gave private lessons and conducted smaller-scale courses in her Paris apartment at 36 Rue Ballu, making her a true studio music teacher (just like so many of you). Over the years, number 36 became a musical meeting place in the grand tradition of the 19th-century salon, attracting names like Bartók, Menuhin, Stravinsky, and Poulenc to its doorstep.
#3: Lots of soon-to-be-famous names wanted to work with her…
Between World Wars I and II, American musicians interested in studying abroad shifted their general focus from Germany to France. Aaron Copland seems to have led the migration, and, once he started work under Nadia Boulanger in 1921, lots of composers and performers followed suit. In the ensuing decades, many of Boulanger’s students would go on to achieve legendary status in a variety of musical genres.
The lineup of Boulanger alums, nicknamed the “Boulangerie” (after the French word for “bakery”), included some eye-popping names from the US and beyond. In addition to Copland and Glass, there were:
•Daniel Barenboim
•Leonard Bernstein
•Elliott Carter
•John Eliot Gardiner
•Quincy Jones
•Darius Milhaud
•Astor Piazzolla
•Virgil Thomson
…and more.
Boulanger’s uncanny ability to appeal to so many different kinds of musicians can perhaps be attributed to one of her greatest pedagogical techniques: she was fierce about fundamentals but encouraged each student’s individual voice. She once said, “…[P]upils must always be taught to accept themselves, for the only part a teacher can play is to help whatever lies hidden within him to come to light.” Maybe that’s why her musical influence can be traced to such disparate works as a Piazzolla tango, a Bernstein aria, or a Quincy Jones pop hit.
#4: …Some didn’t make the cut.
Sorry, George Gershwin, no Boulangerie lessons for you.
Not everyone was deemed ready for Nadia Boulanger’s studio. Rumor has it that just 10 minutes with George Gershwin was enough to convince Boulanger he wouldn’t fare well in her classes.
But it wasn’t all bad news for the beloved composer.
Reportedly, Boulanger’s rejection wasn’t due to her lack of faith in Gershwin’s talent, but more because she feared her teaching style might compromise his burgeoning flair for jazz. And, hey, his trip to France ended up inspiring the mashup masterwork An American in Paris, so…he could generally call his whole French experience a win.
#5: Philip Glass once wrote an entire piece just to annoy her (kind of).
In 1964, a young Philip Glass moved to Paris expressly to study harmony and counterpoint with Boulanger. He’d soon undergo an artistic transformation––guided by his introduction to Indian music––but not before Mlle. Boulanger had seared a few key precepts of Western music into his brain. Apparently, her lessons on the evils of parallel fifths were so forceful, Glass felt compelled to write a half-mocking, half-affectionate tribute on the same theme.
The resulting piece was Music in Fifths (1969), composed using nothing but parallel fifth motion.
#6: She’s the reason Radcliffe went co-ed.
(Well, sorta, anyway.)
During a teaching tour of the US in the late 1930s, Boulanger set up shop at Radcliffe College, offering courses to enrollees at the famed all-female, “Seven Sisters” school. Word got around quickly, and soon men from Radcliffe’s “brother” institution, Harvard, were clamoring to take part. The college administration obliged, and men were admitted into Boulanger’s classroom…six decades before Radcliffe would officially become part of Harvard University.
#7: Boulanger was a female pioneer, but “feminism” wasn’t really in her vocabulary.
Nadia Boulanger was undoubtedly a woman of many firsts: First female to conduct the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the BBC Symphony, and the Hallé. First musician to conduct or play in premieres of works by both Copland and Stravinsky. First student to challenge the Paris Conservatoire status quo by purposefully ignoring judges’ orders during the Prix de Rome competition.
Still, some of Boulanger’s statements and behaviors indicate she wasn’t a full-throated “feminist” in the way we’d define the term today. Interviews suggest she vacillated between believing women should serve primarily as nurturers and believing gender had no role to play in music whatsoever. One famous Boulanger quotation reads: “I’ve been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that’s a job where I don’t think sex plays much part.” She wasn’t wrong, of course, but her indifference to gender in this context could be read as feminist, anti-feminist, or neutral, depending on the point of view.
#8: She helped ignite a Baroque-era revival.
Did your music education feature a lot of counterpoint and/or teach you a ton about period instruments and tuning?
You may have Nadia Boulanger to thank.
An early 20th-century advocate for “Baroque master” composers, Boulanger helped introduce a generation of musicians to the wonders of then-under-the-radar luminaries such as Schütz and Monteverdi through her performances, lectures, and recordings. In fact, her 1937 recording of Monteverdi madrigals––on which Boulanger herself can be heard at the keyboard––stands as a unique milestone in music history and was a possible inspiration for the widespread Baroque revival that took hold around the 1960s. (Former Boulanger student John Eliot Gardiner even established a Monteverdi Choir specifically to perform the now evergreen Vespers of 1610. The choir celebrated its 60th anniversary this year.)
#9: Baroque wasn’t her only forte.
Despite Boulanger’s passion for all things Baroque, she was far from a single-era specialist. Student Aaron Copland once noted that Boulanger’s expertise spanned centuries, making her a highly nuanced and superbly effective teacher. “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,” Copland is credited as saying. He added: “I am convinced that it is Mlle. Boulanger's perceptivity as a musician that is at the core of her teaching.”
Indeed, throughout her career as both educator and performer, Boulanger never seemed to have a primary concentration, but rather found value in almost any form of Western music from any point in time. Her classes could highlight Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier or Chopin’s études in near equal measure. Her lectures could cover Debussy and Stravinsky or examine music from the distant past. And her performances favored what she called “audacious juxtapositions” of style and era.
A real-life Renaissance woman (though not strictly limited to Renaissance music).
#10: She’s becoming an integral part of Western Music History.
Thankfully, critics and historians alike have shone a brighter spotlight on Boulanger’s life and legacy in recent decades. Curious to learn more about Nadia Boulanger and her teachings? Here are a few resources you may want to check out:
•Jeanice Brooks’s Nadia Boulanger and Her World and James Whipple Miller’s Nadia Boulanger: War Years in America and Her Last Decades, both recent biographies.
•Boulanger’s own musings on music as catalogued in Nadia Boulanger: Thoughts on Music, edited and translated by Brooks and Kimberly Francis.
•An in-depth, unofficial video on Nadia Boulanger’s once-in-a-century career, from Oscar Osicki and the team at Insidethescore.com.
•Excerpts from Boulanger’s Monteverdi recordings.
•The website for Bard College Fisher Center’s 2021 festival: Nadia Boulanger and Her World, for which Brooks served as Scholar in Residence.
Class dismissed for now, teachers.
Remember Nadia the next time a student goes flat and keep fighting the good music ed fight.
