PIANO
Influential music teacher Nadia Boulanger considered her music worthless
Chateau de Fontainebleau
By Serg Childed
Juliette Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) was conductor, composer, and one of the most influential teachers of musical composition of the 20th century.
For two generations, Boulanger’s family had been associated with the Paris Conservatory: her father Ernest Boulanger was a vocal teacher and her grandmother, Marie-Julie Boulanger, was a celebrated singer at the Opéra Comique.
It was Boulanger's younger sister, Lili, who made history when in 1913 she became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, the most prestigious French award in arts at that time. After Lili—whose health had always been fragile—died in 1918, Boulanger deemed her own music "worthless" and stopped composing. Musical teachings became Boulanger's primary focus.
"If there is one thing of which I am certain, it is that my music is worthless."
Lili and Nadia Boulanger:
Boulanger had a profound impact on a large number of musicians and composers, particularly during her work at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France. The well-known figures who learned from her—all of them forming a sort of following affectionately nicknamed 'Boulangerie'—include Aaron Copland, Quincy Jones and Philip Glass.
Her influence as a teacher was always personal rather than pedantic: she refused to write a textbook on theory. Her aim was to expand the students' aesthetic comprehensions while developing individual gifts.
"You need an established language and then, within that established language, the liberty to be yourself. It's always necessary to be yourself - that is a mark of genius in itself."
Listen to Boulanger's Fantaisie variée for piano and orchestra which she wrote for Raoul Pugno:
Boulanger remains one of the most ignigmatic and underestimated musical geniuses of the 20th century. Producer of such polar extremes as Aaron Copland and Quincy Jones. My piano Prof. had a piano Prof. who studied with Boulanger. He told me two stories that exhibited her style and philosophy. 1) An American student entered her studio for lessons of which she forthright presented an orchestral score for the student to reduce on the piano at sight. The bewildered student exclaimed " Madame Boulanger it is too much!" Indignantly she replied with "Ugh! You Americans are so lazy! Get out!" As the dejected student left, he heard Boulanger reducing the score on the piano perfectly. 2) Boulanger presented a master class in counterpoint. As example she present her 9 y.o. student playing various Bach fugues. At random she would call out "alto", "bass", "tenor", "soprano", and her student would drop the voice while continuing the other three voices perfectly!