Overview
After Nadia Boulanger's death in October 1979, Annette Dieudonné, who acted as will executor, distributed all the artefacts and documents that filled the "Rue Ballu" apartment between several institutions. The Lili and Nadia Boulanger Foundation, the Harvard University Library, the Polish Library in Paris, the Musée de la Musique, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the library of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Lyon were among the recipients.
The set of documents inherited by the CNSMD of Lyon constituted the major part of Nadia Boulanger's study library. This collection encompasses approximately 8,000 scores as well as 950 books about music and musicians.
Nadia Boulanger's grandmother, Marie-Julienne Halligner, better known as Marie-Julie Boulanger (1786-1850), a well-known lyric artist from the Opéra Comique, and her father Ernest Boulanger (1815-1900), winner of the Prix de Rome in 1836, singing teacher at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, composer of Comic operas (whose friends included Gounod, Massenet and Saint-Saëns), established the foundation of this musical heritage, very characteristic of the 19th century in the field of operas, vocal and piano melodies and vocal treatises.
Nadia Boulanger enlarged this collection during her entire life, building up an impressive collection embodying all of the Western scholarly musical tradition, from Pérotin's organa to Petrucci's Harmonices musices Odhecaton, as well as compositions from Iannis Xenakis, Luciano Berio and Ton That Thiet.
Some items are annotated such as, for instance, many of the forty-six volumes of the Johann Sebastian Bach Werke (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1851-1899) which are among a series of collected editions - complete works by François Couperin, Josquin des Prés, Orlando di Lasso, Claudio Monteverdi, Pierluigi da Palestrina, Henry Purcell, Jean-Philippe Rameau (Durand, 1895-1924) - to which should be joined the following corpus : Hispania schola musica sacra (Barcelona : Juan Bta Pujol y Ca, Editores, 1894-1898), the Archives des maîtres de l'orgue des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles published by Alexandre Guilmant in collaboration with André Pirro (Paris : Durand, 1898-1909) or Les maîtres musiciens de la Renaissance française (published by Henry Expert, Paris : A. Leduc, 1844-1908). These major publications reflect Nadia Boulanger's interest in early music. Some of theses items have been digitised and are available online.
Finally, the collection also includes scores of compositions by Lili and Nadia Boulanger (including orchestral scores and parts and autograph manuscripts), as well as scores by Nadia Boulanger's students.
After Nadia Boulanger's death in October 1979, Annette Dieudonné, who acted as will executor, distributed all the artefacts and documents that filled the "Rue Ballu" apartment between several institutions.
The vast music library of "Mademoiselle" was thus split between the National Library of France, the Music Museum (at the Philharmonie de Paris) and the National Conservatory of Music and Dance of Lyon, which received the " study library " component, a collection of about 8,000 scores and 950 music-related books.
In addition to this rich and impressive music library (now almost entirely indexed and open to the public for on-site consultation), several additional boxes were delivered to the CNSMD in Lyon at the end of 1981. This is a collection of archive documents related essentially to Nadia Boulanger's teaching activities : annotated choir parts, annotated concert scores and parts, lectures, exam papers, student assignments and, finally, a set of printed and handwritten scores (autograph and/or copyist manuscripts) of works composed by Nadia Boulanger's students.
This collection of archives, preserved in the CNSMD's archives and only partially recorded, remains until now largely unexploited.
The Library's Nadia Boulanger collection is drawing attention from researchers, particularly from the United States. Here are some of them as they are published.
- Mugmon, M. (2018). An imperfect Mahlerite: Nadia Boulanger and the reception of Gustav Mahler. The Journal of Musicology: A Quarterly Review of Music History, Criticism, Analysis, and Performance Practice, 35(1), 76–103.
- Segond-Genovesi, C. (2018). Fin de règne ? L'enseignement de Nadia Boulanger après la Seconde guerre mondiale. Dans L. Feneyrou, A. Poirier (dir.). De la Libération au domaine musical : dix ans de musique en France (1944-1954). Paris : Vrin
- Prélude (1936), Nadia Boulanger. Manuscript from the Nadia Boulanger Collection
Recorded on the Cavaille-Coll/Gloton-Debierre organ of Notre-Dame d'Auteuil, Paris, 14th of February 2019 by Joy Leilani-Garbutt
Digitised collected editions
Digitised Collected Editions
One part of the Collected editions from the Nadia Boulanger's study Library hars been digitised. Some scores bear handwritten annotations by her own hand : translations, structural analyses, etc.
Les archives
Les archives
Les travaux effectués au sein du Labo de la médiathèque permettent de nourrir un site dédié au fonds d'archives "Nadia Boulanger".
Nadia Boulanger's collection around the world
Nadia et Lili Boulanger International Center
Holding the moral and inheritance rights of the two musician sisters, the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Centre aims to perpetuate their memory by trying to spread as much as possible their works and archives.
Collection de partitions de musique américaine de Nadia Boulanger
Autograph instrumental music scores by American composers Marc Blitzstein, Ross Lee Finney, Douglas Stewart Moore, Walter Piston, and Roger Sessions, who were students of Boulanger, at the Houghton Library, Harvard University
Boulanger, Nadia, Collector. Scores by American Composers: A Guide.
The Nadia Boulanger collection mainly consists of musical scores in manuscript and print format. These scores were submitted toNadia Boulanger by her students during the years she taught at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, which she founded in 1921. Her American students included Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, Virgil Thomson and many other notable composers. Correspondence, programs, greeting cards, sketches and ephemera are also included in the collection, held at the Loeb Music library, Harvard University.
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