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Biography of Nadia BoulangerName: Nadia BoulangerBirth Date: September 16, 1887 Death Date: October 22, 1979 Place of Birth: Paris, France Nationality: French Gender: Female Occupations: music teacher, conductor, pianist, organist, composer Nadia Boulanger One of the major influences on modern classical music was the strong-willed French music teacher, Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979). She bagan her career as a composer, but gave it up at the age of 33 to devote her time to teaching. Her students included more than 1,200 musicians, including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, and Walter Piston.Juliette Nadia Boulanger was born on September 16, 1887 in the famed Paris neighborhood of Montmartre to a Russian mother, Raissa Myschetsky Shuvalov, and French father, Ernest Boulanger. The couple had four daughters, two of whom died in infancy. Nadia, as she was called, was the second daughter. Her surviving sister, Marie Juliette (known as Lili), was born in 1893.Background and SchoolingMusic was in Boulanger's blood. Her father was a composer, conductor, and professor at the Paris Conservatory. Her mother had taken voice lessons at the Conservatory after seeing Ernest perform in St. Petersburg. Among their acquaintances were Gounod, Massenet, …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…to Fontainebleu.Boulanger had been awarded the Legion of Honor as far back as 1932, and on February 9, 1977, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing made her a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. For the next two and one-half years her health deteriorated. In the final months of her life, too frail to teach, her students at Fontainebleu consoled her by singing Schubert, Schumann, and Mozart. Leonard Bernstein visited her on her ninety-second birthday. On October 5 she was transported by ambulance back to Paris where she died on October 22, 1979. A newspaper headline announcing her death simply read: "Mademoiselle is no more." Further Reading Kendall, Alan. The Tender Tyrant: Nadia Boulanger, A Life Devoted to Music. Lyceum Books, 1977. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan, 1980.Rosenstiel, Leonie. Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music. W. W. Norton & Co., 1982.Spycket, Jerome, Nadia Boulanger. Pendragon Press, 1992.The Washington PostOctober 23, 1979. |