Sigma Alpha Iota

24 Winter 2023 • sai-national.org Reviews NADIA BOULANGER AND HER WORLD Edited by Jeanice Brooks Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2020 N adia Boulanger (1887-1979), an SAI Honorary Member, was a rare musical genius, lauded as a teacher of composers. However, there was much more to her life, and her influence and contributions were wider than many people know. Published in conjunction with the Bard Music Festival, Nadia Boulanger and her World is the first book in that festival's series to focus on a woman in the more than thirty years since its founding. It provides perspective on her life by situating it in its historical context with fifteen essays that address compositions, teaching, influence, and much more. The first two essays of the book have as their subject the opera composed by Nadia Boulanger and Raoul Pugno, La Ville Morte. Pugno was Boulanger's mentor, and they embarked upon this collaboration in 1910. They worked on it off and on for several years, only to have World War I intercede; other setbacks, such as Pugno's death in 1914 inhibited further progress. The first essay deals with "the strange fate" of the opera and goes into some detail about the steps in its creation. The second essay focuses more on Boulanger's progress and methods as a composer, using La Ville Morte to demonstrate the importance she gave to her own compositions early in her life. Of course Boulanger would gain her renown later as a pedagogue and set aside her compositional ambitions; this essay goes some way to demonstrating a cause for regret that Boulanger did not share this aspect of her talent further. Subsequent essays explore Boulanger's institutional pedagogy at Conservatoire américain de Fontainebleau and Ecole Normal de Musique de Paris, as well as the personal list she kept of all her students and disciples. In addition, Boulanger's tour of the United States and promotion of Gabriel Fauré's music in American are covered, as well as the significant role she played in supporting Polish musical culture. Chapters on her lectures on Beethoven, given at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA, as well as her approach to atonality, demonstrate the breadth of Boulanger's knowledge and expertise. Some unexpected things can be found in the book. An essay on Boulanger's lifelong residence at 36 rue Ballu describes the arrangement of her rooms, as well as the art and other objects she owned as a way of exploring the different spheres of influence she held and how this material reinforced her values. Also unusual in a scholarly volume on a musical figure are five poems written by American poet May Sarton for Nadia Boulanger in 1939 and 1945. As can be seen from the partial selection I have provided of topics addressed in the book, editor Jeanice Brooks has compiled a variety of perspectives on the many facets of Boulanger's life. Readers will find that the combination of subjects serves to further illuminate what an exceptional person Nadia Boulanger was and her enduring contributions to music. — Reviewed by Kathi Bower Peterson CHEN YI By Leta E. Miller and J. Michele Edwards Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020 The Women Composers series published by University of Illinois Press aims to "treat the broadest range of women composers, combining concise biographical information with a comprehensive survey of works" (page preceding title page), and Chen Yi, the latest title in the series, is a model example of this. I was only slightly familiar with Chen's music before I found this book, and reading it has given me a deep appreciation and admiration for her compositional skill, as well as for her musical philosophy. The first chapter of the book provides a brief biography of Chen Yi, who was born in 1953 in Guangzhou, China. The authors detail her upbringing as the daughter of two doctors, both of whom had musical training. They also address the effects Mao's Cultural Revolution had on Chen's parents, who were persecuted because of their "intellectual" status, and the family as a whole, who endured lengthy separations from each other. When she was fifteen, Chen was sent to the small village of Shimen, in accordance with Mao's "down-to-the-countryside" orders, which required the children of intellectuals to be sent for work and re-education to emulate the more highly regarded peasant class. Chen's musical training as a classical violinist saved her from a sustained period of farm labor, when she was chosen to play in the orchestra for a Beijing Opera group. Beijing Opera (or Peking Opera) is popular as an art form in China, and combines instrumental and vocal music, dancing, and acrobatics. The skills she utilized during this time have had a lasting impact on her musical life. The book touches on her time at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, as well as her doctoral studies at Columbia University, where she was part of a wave of Chinese composers, including Tan Dun and Bright Sheng, who studied with Chou Wen-chung. In addition, her endeavors following her studies, such as her residency with the Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco, her numerous awards, and her professorship at the University of Missouri--Kansas City (a position she still holds), are touched upon. Remaining chapters in the book explore her compositional processes, solo and chamber music works, works for large instrumental ensembles, and choral and solo vocal works. These chapters include detailed analysis and many musical examples. The authors convincingly illustrate what they feel are the "defining characteristics of her style: [a] mixture of Chinese folk music and Beijing opera influences with a Western twelve-tone row, the use of ostinati, and her preoccupation with mathematical concepts in the layout of phrases and meters" (p. 81). This book is successful in providing an overview of the life and prolific output of a talented composer, both because Chen Yi herself was interviewed extensively in its writing, and because the authors provide a sensitive assessment of her music.

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