Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), French teacher, composer, and conductor, who influenced many distinguished composers, particularly from the United States. Born in Paris, she studied under the French composer Gabriel Fauré. In 1918 she stopped composing, after the death of her sister Lili Boulanger, who was also a gifted composer. Boulanger taught privately and at the Paris Conservatoire (1909-1924 and after 1946), at the École Normale de Musique, Paris (1920-1939), and at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau (beginning in 1921; director, 1949). During World War II she taught at various US colleges. Her students include the American composers Marc Blitzstein, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Philip Glass, Roy Harris, Quincy Jones, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, and Virgil Thomson, the French composers Jean Françaix, Pierre Henry, Michel Legrand, and Darius Milhaud, the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, the South African composer Priaulx Rainier, the Argentine composer Ástor Piazzola, and the British composers Sir Lennox Berkeley and Thea Musgrave. As a teacher she promoted no specific style of composition, and wrote no theoretical texts; rather, she identified and then developed each composer's particular style by exposing them to a wide range of aesthetic influences—an approach reflected in the wide range of styles amongst her pupils.

As a conductor, she was among the first to revive the works of Monteverdi (in the 1930s) and was the first woman to conduct a complete concert for the Royal Philharmonic Society, London (1937), the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1938), and the New York Philharmonic (1939).