Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music [Paperback]

Leonie Rosenstiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 1998

A detailed, authoritative portrait of a commanding figure in twentieth-century music.

Nadia Boulanger's life spanned nearly a century, and at her death she was still director of the American School of Music at Fontainebleau, which she helped found after World War I. Enormously influential, she taught many distinguished performers and composers—among them Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Elliott Carter. She helped American music gain worldwide recognition.

For this first full biography, Léonie Rosenstiel has drawn on papers and records to which Boulanger gave her unprecedented access and also on numerous interviews. The result is a rich portrait of an important woman of our time.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Léonie Rosenstiel was born and educated in New York. She is also the author of The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (March 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317137
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317138
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,254,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I second the motion., May 13, 2008

By 

Robertson Thomas (Hapcheon, Gyeongnam, South Korea) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music (Paperback)

There is a lot to relate to in this book. The description of Boulanger's overbearing mother brings back memories in which I thought my parents were overbearing. The description of Boulanger's problems in growing old frightened me, since I am approaching that stage myself.

Like Mr. Shapiro, I wondered why Boulanger couldn't get along with Ravel. That conflict is mentioned for the first time on page 114, phrased in such a way as to imply that the reader already knows about it. I wonder whether the author forgot to explain this, or whether she herself did not know.

I was disappointed that I did not learn more about how Boulanger came to be the composition teacher for most of the outstanding composers of her time. As an aspiring composer, I would like to take those techniques and apply them to myself. But the author does not promise such a discussion, so I can't hold her guilty.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars melodrama and spite, May 1, 2011

By 

EW - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music (Paperback)

How can any scholar take this book seriously? It reads like a tabloid, suffocating actual events with melodramatic language in order to portray a woman as a much more dramatic character than she probably was. This is clear when you read just about any other published book on Nadia Boulanger. It's also obvious that whoever Leonie Rosenstiel was, she had great distaste for Ms. Boulanger. Detail is given to (probably fabricated) embellishments on Boulanger's appearance and tone of voice rather than what anybody who studies this woman's life wants to know: exactly how and what she taught. Instead "Nadia Boulanger: a life in music" gives the reader a highly untrustworthy depiction of a highly dramatic woman barely recognizable next to all other accounts of Boulanger.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely well documented biography, March 10, 2008

By 

Richard Shapiro "Music Lover" (Los Angeles, CA US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music (Paperback)

This book is a labor of love for author Rosenstiel. It would be impossible to write a better biography. She must have spent much time with Boulanger towards the end of her long life to acquire so much detail. There was so much reverence for her more musically gifted younger sister, Lili, who, tragically, died so young. I started to get bored with names I didn't know or care about but the book was so well written that I hung in there and finished this rather lengthy but meticulously written biography of a most unique and influential pedagogue who had such a profound influence on so many musicians and notable composers including Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. I wonder why she had such a cool relationship with Maurice Ravel who was one of the finest composers of our time. There was no explanation given and I wonder why.