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The Overbearing Teacher

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She taught many of the 20th century’s great composers. Nadia Boulanger had an extraordinary ability to assess and nurture the work of her students. In a way she was too effective for her own good.

During a teaching career that centered in Paris and spanned the years from the 1920’s through the 1970’s, Boulanger’s students included Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Jean Francaix, Darius Milhaud, Walter Piston, Virgil Thornson, and Roy Harris.

She could see immediately how a student’s composition fit into musical tradition. Boulanger could analyze a piece of music down to the smallest detail and show how other composers had handled similar compositional problems. Whether evaluating a simple harmony exercise or a complex symphony, she could make comparisons by drawing from the vast store of music she had memorized.

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She would occasionally play her students’ work on the piano and change one element– often the bass line — to see if the aspiring composer noticed. If the student raised no objection to the alteration, Boulanger would scold him for a lack of artistic integrity.

When she complimented a student outright, it was an event worthy of celebration.

Effective as her teaching was though, it had a way of backfiring. The case of Roy Harris was typical. In 1929 the 31-year-old American broke with Boulanger, complaining that she had become incapable of letting him run his own life — artistic or personal. After Harris had separated from his wife, Boulanger had played the matchmaker, going so far as to convince one of her unmarried students to accompany Harris to Switzerland for a weekend in the hope that he would marry her.

In his farewell letter to his teacher, Harris thanked Boulanger for her rigorous harmony and counterpoint and analysis lessons and blamed himself for his need to be independent.

Like Roy Harris, sooner or later almost all of Boulanger’s long-term students rebelled. But they never disputed her enormous influence on twentieth-century music.

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