Nadia Boulanger

Juliette Nadia Boulanger (; 16 September 188722 October 1979) was a French music teacher and conductor. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist.

She grew up in a musical family. Her first success was when she was at the Conservatoire de Paris. She believed, that she had no talent as a composer, she gave up that path. She became a teacher instead. As a teacher, she had a large influence on many young copmosers of the 20th century. Most of them were from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were people who later became important composers, soloists, arrangers and conductors. Some of them were  Grażyna Bacewicz, Burt Bacharach, Daniel Barenboim, Lennox Berkeley, İdil Biret, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, John Eliot Gardiner, Philip Glass, Roy Harris, Quincy Jones, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Astor Piazzolla, and Virgil Thomson.

Boulanger taught in the US and England. She worked  with music academies including the Juilliard School, the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Longy School, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. For most of her life, she was in her family's flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92.

Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and Europe, including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Hallé, and Philadelphia orchestras. She conducted several world premieres, including works by Copland and Stravinsky.

 Honours and awards 

 1932 Chevalier to the Légion d'honneur
 1934 Order of Polonia Restituta
 1962 Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 1962 Howland Memorial Prize
 1975 Médaille d'Or of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France
 1977 Grand officier to the Légion d'honneur
 1977 Order of the British Empire
 1977 Order of St. Charles of Monaco
 1977 Order of the Crown of Belgium

 Notes 

 References 



  (subscription or UK public library membership required)



 Other websites 


 www.nadiaboulanger.org
 The American Conservatory at Fontainebleau

 Songs by Nadia Boulanger at The Art Song Project
 Free scores by Nadia Boulanger at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
 http://www.openculture.com/2018/04/meet-nadia-boulanger.html

Category:French Roman Catholics
Category:Burials at Montmartre Cemetery, Paris
Category:Musicians from Paris
Category:1979 deaths
Category:1887 births
Category:Articles with hAudio microformats