Book Description

Despite her chronic illness, the French composer Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) was able to overcome great obstacles and to achieve an unusual degree of both artistic success and public acclaim during her very short lifetime. This phenomenon is the more remarkable in that her chosen field is one in which, even today, women find it difficult to be evaluated solely on artistic merits. At the age of nineteen she was the first woman to win the prestigious Premier Grand Prix de Rome in composition, an award carrying with it extended residence at the famous Villa Medici in Rome. Even before this recognition was accorded her, some of her compositions had been performed by outstanding artists of the day and had received critical praise. This first full-length study of the life and works of Lili Boulanger is based almost entirely on sources that have hitherto been unavailable, such as family photographs, records, and documents in the possession of her only surviving relative, the eminent music pedagogue Mlle Nadia Boulanger, as well as on personal reminiscences both of Nadia Boulanger and of friends of the Boulanger family. Further information was secured from newly discovered library and archival sources in addition to the young composer's personal memorabilia, correspondence, and manuscript scores, which have never before been made available for study. In order to describe accurately the ambience of the places visited by Lili Boulanger during her life, the author not only undertook the necessary archival research, but also personally retraced the travels of the composer through six European countries, using the same means of transportation that the young composer had used. Born into a family with a long tradition of artistic accomplishment, surrounded during her twenty-four years by a devoted family and friends, Lili Boulanger became a creative, productive human being. The best of her works--especially those she wrote after winning the Prix de Rome in 1913--display firmness, delicacy, strength, and mastery of compositional technique. Lili Boulanger's musical style ranges from impressionism, to a Wagnerian vocabulary, to post-impressionism and growing chromaticism in her last compositions. As Debussy observed, her music "undulates with grace." The author's analysis of the 91 musical examples from the oeuvre of Lili Boulanger, and the 53 illustrations, many drawn from among old family photographs and other privately held manuscript sources, provide two of the many highlights of this superior biography.