page_title: Nadia Boulanger
section_title: The American School at Fontainebleau, 1921–1935
hierarchical_section_title: Nadia Boulanger / Biography / The American School at Fontainebleau, 1921–1935
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Grand Escalier en fer-à-cheval (en double fer-à-cheval), Cour du cheval blanc, Château de Fontainebleau, France.
context_page_description: Juliette Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. She is notable for having taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century. She also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist.
  From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Conservatoire de Paris but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer, she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were those who became leading composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Grażyna Bacewicz, Daniel Barenboim, İdil Biret, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, John Eliot Gardiner, Philip Glass, Roy Harris, Quincy Jones, Michel Legrand, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Darius Milhaud, Astor Piazzolla, Lalo Schifrin, Virgil Thomson.
context_section_description: In the summer of 1921 the French Music School for Americans opened in Fontainebleau, with Boulanger listed on the programme as a professor of harmony.  Her close friend Isidor Philipp headed the piano departments of both the Paris Conservatory and the new Fontainebleau School and was an important draw for American students. She inaugurated the custom, which would continue for the rest of her life, of inviting the best students to her summer residence at Gargenville one weekend for lunch and dinner. Among the students attending the first year at Fontainebleau was Aaron Copland.
  Boulanger's unrelenting schedule of teaching, performing, composing, writing letters etc. started to take its toll on her health; she had frequent migraines and toothaches. She stopped writing as a critic for Le Monde musical as she could not attend the requisite concerts. To maintain the living standard for her and her mother, she concentrated on teaching. This was her most lucrative source of income. Fauré believed she was mistaken to stop composing, but she told him, "If there is one thing of which I am certain, it is that I wrote useless music."
  In 1924, Walter Damrosch, Arthur Judson and the New York Symphony Society arranged for Boulanger to tour the US towards the end of the year. She set sail on the Cunard flagship RMS Aquitania on Christmas Eve. The ship arrived on New Year's Eve in New York after an extremely rough crossing.  During this tour, she performed solo organ works, pieces by Lili, and premiered Copland's new Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, which he had written for her.  She returned to France on 28 February 1925.
  Later that year, Boulanger approached the publisher Schirmer to enquire if they would be interested in publishing her methods of teaching music to children. When nothing came of this, she abandoned trying to write about her ideas.
  Gershwin visited Boulanger in 1927, asking for lessons in composition. They spoke for half an hour after which Boulanger announced, "I can teach you nothing." Taking this as a compliment, Gershwin repeated the story many times.
  The Great Depression increased social tensions in France. Days after the Stavisky riots in February 1934, and in the midst of a general strike, Boulanger resumed conducting. She made her Paris debut with the orchestra of the École normale in a programme of Mozart, Bach, and Jean Françaix. Boulanger's private classes continued; Elliott Carter recalled that students who did not dare to cross Paris through the riots showed only that they did not "take music seriously enough". By the end of the year, she was conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with a programme of Bach, Monteverdi and Schütz.
  Her mother Raissa died in March 1935, after a long decline. This freed Boulanger from some of her ties to Paris, which had prevented her from taking up teaching opportunities in the United States.
caption: Château de Fontainebleau
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