Today is the anniversary of the birth of Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), pedagogue and Patron Saint of American – some might argue “20th Century” – Music. Certainly, her influence continues to be felt into our own time.
Among Boulanger’s hundreds of pupils: Daniel Barenboim, Idil Biret, Elliot Carter, Aaron Copland, John Eliot Gardiner, Philip Glass, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Quincy Jones, Robert Kapilow, Dini Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Astor Piazzolla, Walter Piston, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Virgil Thomson and George Walker.
Writes Ned Rorem (the rare American who did not study with Boulanger), “Myth credits every American town with two things: a 10-cent store and a Boulanger student.”
Here is Rorem writing about Boulanger in the New York Times in 1982:
PHOTO: Boulanger with one of her pupils, the composer Jean Françaix