A musical asteroid

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) was a remarkable musician of great sensitivity but a sadly short life. Her older sister, Nadia, was a famous and outstanding teacher and conductor of composers as varied as Stravinsky and Monteverdi. Lili Boulanger’s works are, for me, totally memorable, both deeply moving and poetic.

She was of mixed French and Russian parentage (her mother was a Russian princess who married her teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, Ernest Boulanger.) She was a student of the great French composer, Gabriel Fauré, who was the master of the lyrical line. Her father was already 77 when she was born and she was deeply affected by his death when she was six. Most of her music concerns itself with loss, sadness and death and is of singular power.

All of her life she was troubled by illness (first bronchial pneumonia, which weakened her immune system, and then by intestinal tuberculosis – Crohn’s Disease) which eventually killed her at the age of 24.

In 1913, at the age of 20, she won first prize in the Prix de Rome with her cantata. “Fauste et Hélène”, and in the five short tears remaining to her wrote some remarkable orchestral and vocal pieces, such as “Psalm 24” (1916) for tenor, choir, organ and orchestra with its vigorous and vivid quality, all the more remarkable, considering her fragile health.

“Psalm 130” is one of her finest works and it took her seven years to complete and it was not finished until the year before her death.

“Pie Jesu” was her last, profoundly moving piece, and as one critic said, is beyond criticism as it was dictated on her deathbed. She was buried with her sister, Nadia, at Montmartre Cemetery.

There are astronomical associations with Lili Boulanger as the asteroid, 1181 Lilith, was named in her honour. Perhaps like an asteroid, her neglected music will dazzle and explode into the public consciousness in the future. KR