Finding a Passion with Lili Boulanger’s Three Pieces for Piano
Lili Boulanger
I’ll never forget how I felt when I first played the opening measures of Lili Boulanger’s Three Pieces for Piano. The beautiful harmonies immediately take a surprising turn, revealing the composer’s boundless imagination, poetic beauty and vivid character. I thought then that there must be countless more hidden gems like this composed by women, just waiting to be uncovered. This discovery was the beginning of my journey to championing female composers, one that began in France almost simultaneously with my discovery of Messiaen (which I have written about), because both happened at the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau in 2010.
I went to France looking for something new: new music and deeper knowledge and understanding of the French tradition. One of the founding faculty members of this French festival that changed my life in so many ways was Nadia Boulanger, the legendary composition teacher who taught a generation of composers including Aaron Copland, Astor Piazzolla, Elliot Carter, and Philip Glass. I wanted to learn more about this woman so well-respected in a field historically dominated by men, which led med straight to her talented sister Lili. All it would take was those first few chords to get me hooked on her music and start my quest to find more.
When I started my project of performing female composers only a few years ago, works by women were not programmed regularly. It is a testament to how far we have come that, I have recently been seeing the music of Lili and many other great women on concert programs. It was especially fulfilling to perform Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra last October, on a program that also featured an orchestral piece by Lili. It is encouraging that I am not alone in my quest, and I am eager to find more “Lili Boulangers” waiting to be rediscovered.
I often perform Lili’s Three Pieces for Piano in recitals, and I composed the following program notes for the piece, in case you want to dig in deeper on Lili and this fascinating work.
Lili Boulanger was a trailblazer. She was the first woman composer to win (at the age of 18) the Rome Prize, an important competition for French composers who received an invitation, and funding to live and compose in Rome. Following the success at the Prix de Rome, Lili stayed at the Villa Medici, where she composed the Trois morceaux pour piano. These short pieces are charming and meticulously crafted musical moments. Her serious composition background is evident in her masterful use of harmony and texture.
The first piece “D’un jardin clair” (“Of a Bright Garden”) is based on a single melodic line whose fragments appear throughout the piece. The parallel fourths and fifths create the unmistakably French sound world, with the serene accompaniment of the melody evocative of Satie, an episode of calm and contemplation. The second piece, “D’un vieux jardin” (“Of an Old Garden”) is another musical episode closely related in style. The elegant melody of the opening measures becomes intertwined in fuller harmonic textures, leading into a series of cascading intervals of fourths that spans every register. The third piece “Cortège” (“Procession” or “March”) is a solo piano transcription of a violin and piano duo, written in the same year. The piece, less than two minutes long, is a cheerful and energetic musical episode. Lili gives this piece a positive meaning to the word “cortège,” ending the morceaux with a jubilant celebration. Lili Boulanger, at the peak of her creativity and promise, tragically died at the young age of 24. Composer Henry Baraud wrote: “The oeuvre of Lili Boulanger is a monument realized. It is not simply the promise of great work to come, but the achievement of an exquisite body of work by a composer of accomplished style, firmly rooted in a classicism which owes nothing to a School but solely to the natural perception which stems from a penetrating intelligence and talent.”