Nadia and Lili Boulanger (review)

In 2009, the Bibliothèque nationale de France will unseal containers of documents belonging and related to Nadia and Lili Boulanger that have been kept under wraps since the death of the former in 1979. Scholars of the two sisters' lives and works are more than eager to discover the contents of those boxes, and it is perhaps with this interest in mind that Caroline Potter and Ashgate decided to publish Potter's new book, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, late last year. Unfortunately for readers and scholars looking for new material or insights to tide them over until that momentous day in 2009, they will find little original work in this slight book save for some brief analyses of the sisters' compositions.

Organized into six chapters, Potter's book attempts to cover the lives of Nadia and Lili Boulanger, albeit briefly; the music both composed as part of their preparations for taking part in the Prix de Rome; Nadia Boulanger's compositions; Lili Boulanger's work after 1913, the year in which she won the Prix de Rome; Nadia Boulanger's teaching methods; and the lasting reputations of each woman. There are also two appendices, providing catalogs of each composer's works.

The downfalls of Potter's book are its heavy reliance on previous biographies and books about the sisters, some of them of questionable repute; its lack of primary sources; and the level of analysis provided in the discussions of individual works. It also neglects a considerable amount of recent research on the Boulangers, including materials from the American Music Research Center/University of Colorado's symposium on "Nadia Boulanger in America" (held in 2004), leading to a datedness in its approach.

In her chapter on Nadia and Lili's lives, Potter draws primarily from Léonie Rosenstiel's two books on the sisters (The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger [Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978] and Nadia Boulanger: a Life in Music [New York: W. W. Norton, 1982]) and Jérôme Spycket's paean to Nadia Boulanger (Nadia Boulanger [Lattès: Payot Lausanne, 1987]) and more recent book on Lili Boulanger (A la recherche de Lili Boulanger: essai biographique [Paris: Fayard, 2004]). While Potter does include some newly-translated quotations from Lili's diaries, the result is a traditional account of Nadia's and Lili's upbringing and early music training, including time-honored anecdotes about the young Nadia's initial dislike of music and Lili's prodigal abilities. Although Potter makes a note of stating that her intention in this book is to focus on the musical connections between the two Boulanger composers rather than their lives, she omits a significant amount of biographical and contextual material that illuminates both Nadia's and Lili's musical works and professional spaces. She writes that the "gender issue cannot be avoided in any discussion of the sisters' musical activities" (p. xi), but rarely discusses the atmosphere of the compositional or musical world they inhabited, offering only a few comments on the topic. It is a crucial omission, as the musical profession at the time of both Boulangers' composition careers was one saturated with debate and turmoil as to the proper position and privileges of women as professional musicians. The account is factual and straightforward, with little analysis of the important events in Lili's or Nadia's lives; again the lack of contextualization prevents readers from fully understanding the weight of countless life-shaping details. The coursework that both sisters underwent at the Paris Conservatoire and that influenced Nadia so heavily in her own teaching is only lightly discussed; the actual studies, repertoire, and musical philosophy taught there are not mentioned. Potter mentions briefly that both Boulangers frequently attended concerts of music by new and established composers, but leaves the reader wondering what they heard; she states that Nadia and Lili worked during World War I to forward...