Lili Boulanger

Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger (Paris, August 21, 1893 - March 15, 1918), better known as Lili Boulanger, was a French composer.

Biography

Lili Boulanger showed great musical abilities from an early age, fostered by the musical environment of the home where she grew up. Her grandmother was the singer Julliette Boulanger, and her father, Ernest Boulanger (who won the Prix de Rome in 1835) was a composer and professor of voice at the Paris Conservatoire, where he taught Lili's mother, Raissa Mischetsky. Her sister Nadia already stood out as a composition student at the same conservatory when she entered Lili in 1912, also specializing in composition, with Professor Paul Vidal. Although this was her great calling, she also played the violin, cello, harp, piano and organ.

At the age of two, Lili suffered pneumonia that caused her immune system to be permanently impaired, being repeatedly affected by gastrointestinal diseases, which completely conditioned her life and her musical production.

It was Gabriel Fauré, a family friend, who gave Lili her first piano lessons. She also loved to sing, so Fauré, fascinated by the girl's musical gifts, would bring her songs to read together.At the age of 6 she was already taking harmony classes and her sister Nadia introduced her to the art of fugue. After her sister reached the final of the prestigious Prix de Rome twice with the cantatas Selma and Roussalka, Lili decided to present herself in 1912, and, in addition to entering the Conservatory in Paul Vidal's composition class, he received classes from Professor Georges Caussade to prepare. After falling ill and having to withdraw on the first try, she applied again in 1913, winning and becoming the first woman to win this important award. She did it with the cantata Faust et Hélène , composed for the occasion and dedicated to her sister. The work was publicly released on November 16 of the same year, with a good reception from the public and critics.

Lili was the first woman to win the Rome Prize, with which she won a one-year contract with the Ricordi publishing house. She moved to the Villa Medici, a large architectural complex in the city of Rome where prize winners stayed. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, she had to return to Paris. Knowing that due to the state of her health she could not be a war nurse, she decided to found the Franco-American Committee of the National Conservatory, an organization in charge of giving moral support to the combatant musicians in the Great War, to keep them in communication with each other and to help their families. He also edited and reviewed works by these musicians. The committee involved musicians such as Charles Widor, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, Gustave Charpentier, Théodore Dubois, Émile Paladhile and Paul Vidal, who participated as honorary members.

In 1916 he returned to Rome for a few months, and after a diagnosis that revealed that he only had two years to live, he rushed to try to finish some of his most important compositions, such as Psalms 24 and 129 and the opera La princesse Maleine, which unfortunately fails to finish. However, her compositional activity was interrupted by her deteriorating health, forcing her to return to Paris, where she spent her last two years. She died at the age of 24 from what is now known as Crohn's disease (a chronic intestinal disease) and was buried in the Montmatre cemetery, where she, too, Nadia lies.

Throughout her life she received the unconditional support of her sister, without whom she probably would not have been able to achieve so much in such a short time of life. In 1939 Nadia founded the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund, in Boston, with the goal of keeping Lili's memory and legacy alive and supporting promising young musicians.

Style and works

Her sister Nadia explains that due to the close relationship between Lili and her father, his death in 1900 is the origin of the need to express herself through musical writing. She writes her first work, Lettre de mort , in 1906, possibly in memory of his father. His short life expectancy may be the reason why many of his works are religious or biblically inspired. The war also influences the choice of texts for his works, as can be seen in La princesse Maleine, based on the work of Maeterlinck, or Vieille prière bouddhique, whose text is a Buddhist prayer that prays for peace and goodness. Faust et Hélène, the cantata that led her to win the Rome Prize, bases its plot and libretto on a fragment of the adaptation of Goethe's Faust by the writer French Eugene Adenis.

On many occasions his works reflect his state of mind, marked by many moments of depression, such as Dans l’immense tristesse.

It received influences from Fauré, Massenet and Debussy, especially in formal matters, but in addition to the typically French style of the turn of the century it also has avant-garde tendencies, being a reference for composers such as Messiaen or Honegger. His language stands out for its contrapuntal strength, the tendency to modality (with a fixation on the Phrygian mode) and an extraordinary maturity, above the norm for a person his age. Despite the short years of his life, he had time to experiment and move away from tonality. In his latest work, Pie Jesu, he explores polytonality. It was composed in 1918 and dictated to her sister Nadia hers, as Lili's illness was so advanced that she was not able to transcribe it on paper by herself. It is considered one of her most important works, along with psalms 24, 129 and 130 and Vieille prière bouddhique .

The works and work that we know of Lili today were maintained and lasted thanks to her sister Nadia, who was in charge of making them known. However, many of them were lost or destroyed by the composer herself, and of others only her sketches remain.

Catalog of works

Instrumental music

• Prelude in Si, for piano (1911)
• Prelude to Bemol, for piano (1911)
• D’un garden clair, for piano (1914)
• D’un vieux garden, for piano (1914)
• Morceau de piano, thème et variations, for piano (1911-14)

• Piècefor violin or flute and piano (no title)
• Cortègefor violin or flute and piano (1914)
• Nocturnefor violin and piano (1911)
• D'un matin de printempsfor violin, cello or flute and piano or orchestra (1917-18)
• D’un soir sadfor violin or cello and piano or orchestra (1917-1918)

Choral music

• Sous-bois, for choir to 4 voices and piano (1911)
• Soleils of septembrefor mixed choir with 4 voices and piano or organ
• Les Sirènes, for choir to 3 female voices and piano or orchestra (1911)
• Le soir, for choir to 4 voices and piano or orchestra (1912)
• La tempête, for choir to 3 male voices and piano or orchestra (1912)
• The sourcefor choir and piano or orchestra (1912)
• Hymne au soleil, for contralto, mixed choir and piano or orchestra (1912)
• La nef légère, for choir to 4 voices and piano
• Pour les funérailles d’un soldatfor baritone, mixed choir and piano or orchestra (1912-13)
• Soir sur la plaine, for soprano, tenor, mixed choir and piano or orchestra (1913)
• 2 leaks for four voices (1912 and 1913)
• Faust et Hélène, cantata for mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, choir and orchestra (1913)
• Psaume 24: La terre appartient à l’Éternelfor tenor, mixed choir, organ and orchestra (1916)
• Psaume 129: Ils m'ont assez opprimé dès ma jeunessefor baritone, male choir and orchestra (1910-16)
• Psaume 130: Du fond de l’abîme, for contralto, tenor, mixed choir and orchestra (1910-17)
• Vieille prière bouddhiquefor tenor, mixed choir and piano or orchestra (1914-17)
• The Princesse Maleineopéra in 5 acts based on the eponymous drama of Maurice Maeterlinck (inacabada)

Vocal music

• Renouveau, for choir to 4 mixed voices and piano or orchestra (1911-13)
• Maïa, sing for soprano, tenor, bass and piano
• Frédégonde, sing for soprano, tenor, bass and piano
• Attractivefor voice and piano (1909)
• Refletsfor voice and piano (1911)
• Le retourfor voice and piano (1912)
• Clairières dans le ciel, cycle of thirteen melodies for voice and piano (1913-14)
• Dans l’immense sadssefor voice and piano (1916)
• Pie Jesufor soprano, string quartet, harp and organ (1918)