29 Lili Boulanger

Lili Boulanger died tragically young. One can scarcely imagine what the scope and significance of her works might have been if she had lived longer. Yet the works she created during her brief life are impressive and noteworthy both generally and in connection with the subject of this book.^[1] Although universally referred to by her nickname, “Lili,” her full name was Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger. Lili is almost always mentioned in connection with her sister Nadia. Nadia Boulanger taught music in Paris and mentored a number of famous composers. She taught and impacted the lives of such a large number of students, particularly from the United States, that American composer Ned Rorem has described her as “the most influential teacher since Socrates.”^[2] Another American composer, Virgil Thomson, wrote in a tribute to her that it was a matter of American legend that every town had a “five and dime” store and a student of Nadia Boulanger.^[3] In 1913, Lili became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, one of the world’s most prestigious awards in the arts, which was instituted in the seventeenth century (and abolished in the twentieth). Soon after Lili died at the untimely age of twenty-four, Nadia ceased composing, evaluating her own works as “worthless.”^[4] In comparing their lives as well as considering them together, we get a clearer sense of how each succeeded in navigating a musical world in which there were still many obstacles for female composers.^[5]

Listen to these two psalm settings (Psalm 24, “The Earth Is the Lord’s,” and Psalm 130, “Out of the Depths”) by Lili Boulanger, which would be remarkable under any circumstances but seem all the more so when we consider how young the composer was when she wrote them.^[6]

Robert Dimery writes, “Lili’s Catholic faith imbues her three psalm settings for chorus and orchestra with a fervent intensity. Psalm 24 has a feeling of wondrous joy, the modal harmonies adding a primitive, ancient quality. Her setting of Psalm 130 (aka ‘De Profondis’/‘Du fond de l’abîme’) possesses a sense of mystery fitting for a mystic vision of God’s presence.”^[7]