A detailed, authoritative portrait of a commanding figure in twentieth-century music. Nadia Boulanger's life spanned nearly a century, and at her death she was still director of the American School of Music at Fontainebleau, which she helped found after World War I. Enormously influential, she taught many distinguished performers and composersamong them Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Elliott Carter. She helped American music gain worldwide recognition.
For this first full biography, Lonie Rosenstiel has drawn on papers and records to which Boulanger gave her unprecedented access and also on numerous interviews. The result is a rich portrait of an important woman of our time.

Norton Professional Books

New York: W.W. Norton

United States, United States of America

1st, First Edition, PS, 1998

Illustrated, 2013

March 1998

Nadia Boulanger, whose composition students included such luminaries as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, and Elliott Carter, has been called "the leading music teacher of the twentieth century" (The New Grove Dictionary of Music). Holding court at her American School of Music in Fontainebleau and the nearby Paris Conservatoire, demanding no less from her pupils than perfect musical form and masterly compositional technique, Boulanger helped them gain worldwide recognition and respect for American classical music.At the age of twenty, Boulanger earned an impressive second place in the Prix de Rome competition for her cantata La sirene, but she subsequently gave up composing and devoted herself to teaching and performing. She became the first woman to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.Boulanger published little during her lifetime, but toward the end of her life she chose Leonie Rosenstiel to write her biography, providing Rosenstiel with her personal papers. From these sources--and from interviews with colleagues, former pupils, and close friends of Boulanger--Rosenstiel has woven a vivid account of Boulanger's life and music and her role as mentor to some of the greatest musicians of our time.

PARIS IN THE mid-1880s was a bustling small metropolis, hugging both banks of the Seine, surrounded by a collection of villages, each with its own distinct personality.

<p>a Detailed, Authoritative Portrait Of A Commanding Figure In Twentieth-century Music.</p>

ix, 427 p. : 24 cm
Includes index

2024-11-05