Nadia Boulanger and her World
| Author | Jeanice Brooks |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Pages | 320 |
Nadia Boulanger was unquestionably one of the most remarkable figures in twentieth-century music and one of the most influential musical personalities of her time. For many composers, particularly Americans from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass, studying with her in Paris or Fontainebleau was a decisive step in their training and artistic development.
Composer, performer, conductor, and concert organizer, but also a charismatic and inspiring teacher, Boulanger pursued an exceptionally diverse range of activities, in many forms and media: private composition lessons, lectures and lecture-recitals, radio broadcasts, recordings, and public concerts. Yet the exact scope and nature of her influence on the musical world remain difficult to define and to measure.
The collective volume Nadia Boulanger and Her World follows a career that stretches from the late nineteenth century, when most musical careers remained almost entirely closed to women, to the late twentieth century, when women were at last beginning to gain real access to them. The book’s contributors examine Boulanger’s work in composition, music analysis, and teaching, while exploring the transatlantic and international networks of exchange, circulation, and transformation in which her career took shape.
Nadia Boulanger and Her World asks a genuine question: to which worlds did Boulanger belong, and to what extent can any one of these worlds truly be considered “hers”?
