Lili Boulanger was the first woman ever to win the Rome Prize of the Paris Conservatory – at the age of 19. The composer died in 1918 at the age of only 24, but left behind more than 50 works.
by Christiane Irrgang
Nadia is eight years old. While she is practicing her scales on the piano, she can hear the adults chatting in the next room at one of her mother’s soirées. Right next to her, her two-year-old sister lies in bed and sleeps all the time. That is, when she’s not coughing and crying. Then Nadia’s father comes, sits down next to her at the piano, strokes her hair and says quietly and seriously: “Promise me that you will always take good care of little Lili!”
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Strong creative urge: Lili Boulanger composed over 50 works in her short life.
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Neither of them knows that the pneumonia that Lili fights in her sleep will weaken her for life. Nor do they know that Lili will become an unequaled child prodigy. That she will start her training at the Paris Conservatory at the age of five, together with Nadia, and that she will learn the piano, violin, cello, harp and organ. And that she will die a tragically early death at 24. Lili Boulanger’s life was shaped by two themes: her extraordinary talent and her illness. She managed to compose over 50 works, including piano trios, hymns, choral works and the cantata “Faust and Helene”. For this she was the first woman ever to win the Rome Prize of the Paris Conservatory in 1912 – at the age of 19.
Support from Sister Nadia Boulanger
But Lili Boulanger’s music is characterized by something else: her sister Nadia. If Nadia Boulanger hadn’t dedicated a large part of her adult life to Lili and supported her physically, mentally and financially, then we might never have gotten to know this music. Nadia Boulanger, herself a composer and highly regarded music teacher, established the Lili Boulanger Memorial Foundation in 1939 to ensure that her younger sister’s works would never be forgotten. And Lili also dictated her works to her in the last years of her life, when she was too weak to write them down herself. The “Pie Jesu” is one of them.
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Lili Boulanger was born in Paris in 1893. Her father Ernest was a composer. Her mother, Raissa, a Russian countess, had studied singing with him at the conservatory. The Boulanger family was extremely active in the Parisian musical life. Raissa organized evening parties where she herself appeared as a singer, alongside pianists such as Camille Saint-Saëns. A family friend, Gabriel Fauré, was the first to notice that the younger Boulanger daughter had perfect pitch. She impressed him and he began to work on songs with her when he visited. When Lili won the Rome Prize, she also received a scholarship for a three-year study visit to the Villa Medici in Rome. Her doctors tried to stop her from going on this trip. But for Lili there was no doubt: she had to experience this.
Death affects final works
The head of the Villa Medici was hostile to her. He was convinced that a woman at the academy would disrupt the discipline of the other students. And Lili didn’t get a chance to convince him otherwise, because with the outbreak of World War I she had to return to Paris. There she and Nadia began to correspond with musically interested soldiers at the front. Lili was 22 when the doctors told her there was nothing more they could do for her. That had an immediate effect on their music. The patient began to compose works with a religious character, including hymns and texts from the Old Testament. In 1918 Lili Boulanger died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. Nadia outlived her sister by 61 years.
As part of the “Women in Music” series, NDR Kultur introduces women composers who have received far too little attention in history.
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