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“So far as musical pedagogy is concerned-and by extension of musical creation-Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived.”

Ned Rorem

As the lesbian opera singer I’m, it feels good to introduce the composer, conductor and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger to ladies and the LGBT viewers. There are only a few that know that classical music’s main affect in the course of the 1900s was a lady. In addition, she was in all probability a dyke and virtually no one is aware of about that! She lived 1887-1979 born of a Russian mom and a French father. Very musical in fact, identical to her sister Lili Boulanger. Very formidable, very proud and really productive. I think, very a lot a lesbian. And very, very trustworthy catholic too… How straightforward was that?

Composers reminiscent of Ned Rorem, Astor Piazolla, Philip Glass, Leonard Bernstein and Quincy Jones are on her roster of well-known pupils. Mostly males, as so typically, not as a result of there have been no ladies, however as a result of ladies usually are not as well-known and you are not speaking about ladies within the phrases of “genius”. Just as you aren’t speaking about most nice tradition bearers of the feminine intercourse after their demise. She might have been ever so well-known throughout her lifetime nonetheless there’s silence as quickly because the coffin is closed. But had it been a person, he stays well-known. However, was it a gay or transgender icon, indirectly that shall be retouched with a practiced hand!

Many ladies composers within the 1800s Europe have been at the very least as profitable as their male colleagues. Unfortunately, they have been excluded and briskly crossed from music historical past after their demise and thus they have been forgotten, shortly faraway from reminiscence, one after the other. So right here we’re, ripped each our ladies’s historical past and our LGBT heritage and to today most individuals consider that there have been no ladies composers earlier than current time. I feel it is as much as us, ladies and non-heteronormative thinkers to speak about La Boulanger and her likes, in any other case she too will sink into the swamps of oblivion.

Also, please, don’t speak about Boulanger dwelling with a lady for 40 years! A lady whose official position was “assistant” and who all the time referred to as her “Mademoiselle,” when anybody was listening. Mademoiselle is receiving now. Mademoiselle will return subsequent Monday. Mademoiselle could be very busy, can I ahead a message? And sadly: “Mademoiselle is asking for the last rites” on her deathbed. Annette Dieudonné, was her identify and in addition Dieudonné was a composer and instructor. How typically do you reside for many years with an individual who then inherit the whole lot you owned and produced, nevertheless it was not in an intimate relationship? Surprisingly typically if it’s a same-sex couple when posterity might decide. Should we snigger or cry about this absurd state of affairs?

Curiously sufficient, she has additionally affected my musical life since I’ve rehearsed and recorded a demo with Nanette Nowels-Stenholm, whom in flip has been her pupil! It feels nice and a bit unreal to have such an enormous that shut, considerably like a musical grandmother.

If you need to know extra, there’s Leonie Rosenstiel’s ebook Nadia Boulanger – A Life in Music or The tender tyrant and Nadia Boulanger: A Life Devoted to Music, a biography by Alan Kendall.

Here can also be an ideal article on the genius of this exceptional lady written by Don Campbell: http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm6-3/nadia-en.html

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Source by Stella Scott