Daniel Barenboim (prominent Israeli conductor, pianist), Peggy Glanville-Hicks (prolific Australian composer, NY Herald-Tribune music critic), Elliott Carter (prominent american avant-guard composer), Charles Strouse (american composer of musicals Annie & Bye Bye Birdie), Igor Stravinsky (Russian composer, often credited as one of the greatest ever), Burt Bacharach (one of the greatest pop-song writers of all time), Leonard Bernstein (american composer, conductor, pianist and renaissance man, composer of West Side Story), Aaron Copland (american composer, arguably the creator of the American sound), John Eliot Gardiner (prominent english conductor and period music champion), Philip Glass (one of the creators of Minimalism in music), Quincy Jones (song writer, composer arranger and one of the most well know pop-music record producers), Robert Russell Bennett (american composer, Broadway orchestrator of musicals, such as Oklahoma! and Sound of Music), Michel Legrand (french jazz pianist, composer, song-writer), Darius Milhaud (french composer and highly influential teacher of composers), Astor Piazzolla (Argentinian composer who brought the tango into the concert hall), and Virgil Thomson (divisive american composer and critic).
All these people, and so many, many more, studied with the french composer, conductor and teacher Nadia Boulanger. This blows my mind every time I think about it. One teacher being so influential - touching some of the corner stones of avant-guard music practice of the 20th century, through to american and french pop music, musical theatre, distinctive emerging national sounds of USA, Australia, Argentina, India and some of the great touch stones of 20th century music, minimalism, neo-classicism etc.
When I was in the final years of high school I would write music almost non-stop. Symphonies, musicals, operas, songs, concerti. I had a raw technique and a burning passion to produce work. I would start a note book for all these different endeavours - a note book for an opera or a music, with all my ideas notes and scribblings, a note book for harmony and rhythm exercises, and I also started a note book for influences I gravitated to. In this book I would photocopy pictures or articles I found in my school library and in music text books I usually bought from op or second hand book shops. I would show these to my piano teacher, Ms. Maloney. In our 45 min weekly piano lessons I would play a little bit, but mostly talk about compositions I was writing and composers I was researching. Being at a run-of-the-mill public school with very little interest from the students in classical music, but with a good musical culture these sessions were so important in my sanity of the stressful year 12. Ms. Maloney also taught me harmony and musical theory. One day I brought in this big note book of influences to show her a series of family trees I had started making which tracked the lineage of teachers and their students. With these family trees you could see the influence of certain composers, their teachers and perhaps and insight into their style from their pedagogical lineage. Ms. Maloney and I talked about this a lot. In one conversation we traced back her piano technique back to Beethoven. This bridge to the past has always stayed with me. It is so humbling and inspiring to know that you are apart of this great lineage and gives one an amazing sense of responsibility and community. For example, through my second year VCA composition teacher Kevin March, I can trace my linage to his teacher, William Bolcolm, and through Bolcolm to one of my hero’s, Olivier Messiaen.
During high school, if I wasn’t scribbling away on new music, listening to or researching music or maybe doing some school work, I was in this journal tracing out as many of these family trees as I could. Olivier Messiaen was a favourite of mine, tracing the line of diverse students such as Boulez, Stockhausen and Xenakis and of Messiaen’s teachers to Faure and through him to Saint-Saëns. The one that intrigued me the most was that of Nadia Boulanger, who seemed to have taught everyone. And I mean everyone. The influence was astonishing, not just because of it’s breadth of style, but also nationality, periods and pedagogy in music composition. Her attitude to each the student to follow their intuition, intelligence and taste was far more desirable then the stringent teaching styles I’d read about of more traditional schools where it was based on imitation and a more technical focus. That is not to say Boulanger didn’t provide that, apparently when you would study with her it would be back to basics in terms of harmony. I love the story that Stravinsky would periodically return to her throughout his career to have lessons with her on harmony, beginning with the basics. This method of discover and knowledge learnt through study of works you like, peppered with suggestions of works more out of that ordinary by the teacher was one I experienced at VCA and use with students and for my own practice today.
I would highly recommend listening to the music of her sister, Lili Boulanger who died quite young. Nadia would conduct her work any opportunity she could and was a big champion of it. Its graceful, beautiful and deserves our attention.
Next time you listen to Michael Jacksons Thriller or Why do Birds Suddenly Appear? or Julie Andrews singing A Few of my Favourite Things or the soundtrack to The Hours or Stravinsky’s Soldiers Tale think of the wonderful teacher who had a lasting impact on the creators of these difference music’s.