Customer Reviews

Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music

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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.

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.

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.