Who was the most influential figure in 20th-century classical music? Stravinsky? Pierre Boulez? What about Bernstein or Britten? John Cage or Karlheinz Stockhausen? Powerful public figures all. But there’s a case to be made for a very different kind of character — less king than kingmaker, a musical éminence grise.With a Who’s Who of pupils that included Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter and Astor Piazzolla, Philip Glass, John Eliot Gardiner and Daniel Barenboim, Nadia Boulanger is the most powerful musician you’ve never heard of, ‘the most important teacher since Socrates’, as one composer only partly joked.
Photographs show us a stern, spectacled, almost invariably elderly figure. Neatly coiffed and tailored, she could be your French grandmother, except for the eminent men who crowd round her, listening with close attention, respect bordering on reverence.
Despite some early success as a composer, including second prize in the all-important Prix de Rome, Boulanger quickly put ambitions of creating her own music aside. Later in life she refused to discuss her works, and it’s only recently that her small catalogue has begun to resurface. Looking into it feels like stealing a glance at your headmistress’s own school report, glimpsing the insecure, unformed young woman behind the inscrutable grande dame.
Composed in collaboration with her mentor Raoul Pugno, the opera La ville morte is Boulanger’s biggest surviving work — almost. The outbreak of the first world war derailed the première, and the complete set of parts was subsequently bombed, leaving only sketches, drafts and a piano-and-voice score. Reconstructed by Mauro Bonifacio, the opera is now performable, and this week Sweden’s Gothenburg Opera became only the second company ever to stage it.
Set to a libretto by Gabriele D’Annunzio, La ville morte is a surprisingly heady affair — Merchant Ivory with added incest.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in