To be yourself, limit yourself. To limit yourself, be yourself.
This saying is a “double dicho,” an aphorism that says the same thing in two directions. (The concept was introduced to American culture by Ernest Hemingway in “The Old Man and The Sea.”) This particular double dicho could have served as the watchword of a teacher whose influence helped make possible a raft of 20th-century composers with styles so wildly different from each other that it challenges credulity: Aaron Copland, composer of “Appalachian Spring”; Elliott Carter, spearhead of the American avant-garde; Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla; popular song composers Burt Bacharach and Michel Legrand; minimalist icon Philip Glass; jazz musician (and Michael Jackson’s producer) Quincy Jones, and literally hundreds of others.The teacher was Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), a Parisian musician whose family was steeped in music. Known simply as “Mademoiselle” to her legions of students, Boulanger brought focus to generations of composers, including—thanks to France’s establishment of an American conservatory at Fontainebleau in 1921—dozens of Americans.
A Family of Students
While the list of her famous students is long (it also includes American symphonists Roy Harris and David Diamond, France’s Jean Françaix, and Switzerland’s Darius Milhaud), the roll of her obscure students is larger by orders of magnitude. American composer Ned Rorem (who was not a Boulanger student) long ago said, “Myth credits every American town with two things: a 10-cent store and a Boulanger student.” Ten cents have become a dollar, and the Boulanger influence in America continues through such students-of-her-students as Leonard Bernstein and Dave Brubeck, and their students. Today, Boulanger doubtlessly has musical great-great, and even great-great-great-grandchildren across the USA.Sisters in Music
Her father was Ernest Boulanger (1815–1900), composer and professor of voice at the Paris Conservatoire. He came round to the business of fathering very late in life, but when he did the results were spectacular, producing two daughters: Nadia (b. 1887) and Lili (b. 1893), both of whom achieved musical fame beyond his. Both girls aspired to be composers, but it was the frail Lili who won the coveted Prix de Rome, the first woman to do so.Nadia’s projects, including an unproduced opera, came to naught, and when Lili died of intestinal tuberculosis at age 24, Nadia said goodbye to composition, deciding it was her fate to birth the talents of others.
It is necessary to stop and note Lili’s extraordinary talent, which for reasons that escape common sense has yet to be fully recognized. One might think that feminism’s complaint would bring her into the mainstream of composers. It hasn’t, and one can only speculate that the image of sickly Lili dying young has overshadowed her works. Through them runs the dual themes of outrage at her condition and the quest for spiritual beauty. Look up her setting of Psalm 129 for chorus and orchestra and the orchestral version of “D’un Soir Triste” for powerful complaints against fate, coupled with the love of creation.
Nadia Boulanger denied that her sister’s death was the reason for her decision to quit composing. Even so, it surely served as catalyst. Nadia had already begun to doubt her own gifts when little sister won the Prix de Rome, a prize she had failed to win years prior.
The Centrality of Harmony
“I wasn’t interested in harmony. I thought, ‘I’ve had three years of harmony, I’m done with it,’” Copland said in a YouTube video called “Mademoiselle: A Portrait of Nadia Boulanger.” But the “warm way” in which Boulanger taught the subject made harmony “seem the very basis of what music is all about.”Word got out about this amazing teacher, and soon other composers from across the pond were clamoring to study with her. With the inevitability of all good humor, Copland called this new American school of composition the “Boulangerie.”
“You don’t have freedom in music until you have restrictions. When you restrict yourself and establish the periphery then you have freedom. If you can play anything you want, you play nothing.”
Become Who You Are
This strict limitation through mastery of technique was coupled with an insistence of finding the student’s unique voice. The most famous story concerning this comes from Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) in his autobiography. The young tango musician had spent a decade composing scores in emulation of Stravinsky, Bartok, Hindemith, and other 20th-century masters, when he finally went to Boulanger for help:“She (Nadia Boulanger) kept asking: ‘You say that you are not pianist. What instrument do you play, then?’ And I didn’t want to tell her that I was a bandoneón player, because I thought, ‘Then she will throw me from the fourth floor.’ Finally, I confessed and she asked me to play some bars of a tango of my own. She suddenly opened her eyes, took my hand and told me: ‘You idiot, that’s Piazzolla!’ And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds.”
Some of Nadia Boulanger’s compositions are available online. They reveal a savvy musician with a mastery of technique, but without much to say. She might have gone on to be a serviceable composer with a respectable canon. She chose instead to teach, and to become arguably the single most influential person in 20th-century classical music.
