Nadia Boulanger, That Woman Down the Hall by Don Campbell
/ November 1, 2000
Version française...
"So far as
musical pedagogy is concerned–and by extension of musical
creation–Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever
lived. Ned Rorem, 1979
In the forty years that have passed since I first met Nadia
Boulanger in Fontainebleau in the summer of 1960, I have continued to
be astonished at her penetrating and far-reaching influence on music
today. Present pedagogical systems, techniques in composition and the
computer as a notation master have all changed and modified the way
we compose, orchestrate and organize our musical expression. Yet,
Nadia Boulanger and her remarkable skill as a teacher for over 70
years still can direct and inspire students of future generations.
"One can never train a child carefully enough," she
said. "If you take general education, one learns to recognize
color, to recognize words, but not to recognize sound. So the eyes
are trained, but the ears very little. This is not because someone
taught me that red is not blue that I pretended to become a painter.
But most people hear nothing because their ears have never been
trained and many musicians hear very badly and very little."
Boulanger was a master of sonic precision. She insisted the
muscles of the ear and the focus of the mind be so acutely developed
that intervals, rhythmic patterns and harmonic progressions be
ingrained deeply, not only within the conscious mind, but also within
the well of melodic and harmonic archives resting in the memories of
music heard throughout a lifetime.
Born into a family of musicians, Nadia as well as her sister
Lili were the fruition of four generations of teachers and performers
at the National Conservatory in Paris. Born on Sept. 16, 1887, her
father’s 72nd birthday, she
became a musical phenomenon. Sound was far too potent for her young
ears, and it was not until she was five years old that she was able
to withstand listening to music. She usually ran away from music with
her hands over her ears. One day, while a fire engine passed her
apartment in Paris, she screamed a loud pitch in unison with the
sound and suddenly got up and touched the same note on the piano
keyboard. From that day forward, she stayed at the piano and
recognized the unison of sounds that came from the musical and
non-musical world around her. By the time she was sixteen, she had
won most of the first prizes at the Paris Conservatory and the grand
second prize of the Grande Prix de Rome.
Her younger sister, Lili, a brilliant visionary within the
impressionist style, in 1913 became the first woman to receive the
Grande Prix de Rome. Lili died on March 15, 1918, at the age of
twenty-four. Nadia declared at that time she would never compose
again and began her extraordinary journey as mentor to young
composers and performers until 1979 when she died at age 92 in
Fontainebleau.
It was at the first session of the American Conservatory in
Fontainebleau in 1921 that Boulanger began to establish her
reputation as an astonishing teacher who remembered every chord
progression in Bach’s Preludes and Fugues and how they relate to
modern music.
When Aaron Copeland arrived for that first summer school, he
could not fathom studying with a woman. But after a few weeks, one of
his classmates insisted that he attend a class with "That Woman
Down the Hall." In two hours, his life changed. He found his
mentor, colleague and friend. Within a few years, dozens of promising
musicians moved to Paris to study with her, and in the course of her
career, thousands of students from abroad were captivated by her
skill and yet exhilarated and intimidated by her knowledge and
inspired by her deep, manly-voiced philosophical statements.
In one striking pronouncement, she said, "Sight Reading
is like life. The important purpose is to come from the beginning and
go to the end. Never stop. Never stop life. It must continue, even
with a mistake, even if we think we repeat."
Throughout her long career, the ability to demonstrate musical
examples was so vast, it seemed as if a whole concordance of Western
harmony and tonality was at her fingertips. In preparing my book,
Master Teacher, Nadia Boulanger, (Pastoral Press, 1983) I
remember one student telling me the amazing story of how Nadia looked
at the score of a new string quartet movement for a few seconds, then
said, "My dear, these four measures have the same harmonic
progression as Bach’s F Major Prelude and Chopin’s in
certain measures of his F Major Ballad." Then she asked,
"Can you not come up with something new and
interesting?"
As a thirteen year-old, I entered a world of solfège,
counterpoint and keyboard harmony. It was all brilliantly complicated
and I knew no better than to dive into the remarkable world of rigor
and focus. At one of our first lessons, I recall her saying to me,
"Don, you are so young and now everything will be so easy for
you. Can you memorize one measure a day?" I responded,
"Yes, of course." She said, "Good, you can be my
student for two years. Today we begin with this first measure."
She then opened the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One and asked me to
play the simple C Major Prelude. I thought, "Oh, music will be
simple by just memorizing a few beats a day!" Needless to say,
every thirty days or so, my mind was racked with challenge. I did not
pass her high expectations, but I began the long and inspiring road
toward musical literacy.
It is easy to romanticize such an influential and powerful
teacher. Many students left her classes defeated, depressed and
exhausted. "I am your highest degree of tension. Listen to it in
your self," she said. Rigor, focus, accuracy and attentiveness
were just the first requirements for a successful life as a
musician.
As for the kinds of students she taught, she explained,
"There are three classifications of applications from students:
those without money and without talent, those I do not take; those
with talent and without money, those I take, and those with talent
and money, those I do not get."
In one of her last articles for Music Journal, she
wrote, "Some think the young composers of today try to avoid
consonance. But what do we call consonance? Debussy as a boy offered
his explanation when one time the secretary of the conservatory came
to him and asked, "Have you finished poisoning the ears of your
friends with all his dissonance?" And Debussy, only 12 years
old, answered, "Oh Mr. Secretary, dissonance is today.
Consonance is tomorrow."
I often wonder what "That Woman Down the Hall" would
think about both the consonance and dissonance of the twenty-first
century. A visionary based on the most conservative traditions, she
loved Bach and Debussy. She brought Monteverdi to life after
centuries of sleep. She seeded and tuned the overtones of thought
into music.
As she declared: "Nothing is better than music. When it
takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right
to hope for. It has broadened the limits of our sorrowful lives; it
has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the
pettinesses that diminish us. It brings us back to the pure and the
new."n
Don Campbell is author of nine books in fifteen languages,
including The Mozart Effect, The Mozart Effect forChildren
and Master Teacher, Nadia Boulanger. He serves on the boards
of the Boulder Philharmonic and the American Music Research Center.
He can be reached at www.mozarteffect.com
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