Lili Boulanger
Lili Boulanger was born in 1893 in Paris. It was clear to her family and teachers that she possessed extraordinary musical gifts at a young age. Born into a highly musical family, her childhood and adolescence were abuzz with music and arts, and she reached compositional mastery at a young age. Her life had its share of trials, too, in the form of long-term illness and tragic familial circumstances. Her sister, composer Nadia Boulanger, in a discussion with Bruno Monsaingeon said:
“...I believe her whole talent was rooted in her first knowledge of grief. When our father died, she was six years old. And at six she understood what death was; that it is the grief of surviving someone you love. She never forgot that up to her own death.”
The illness which we now know as Crohn’s Disease was ultimately responsible for her early death at 25 years old. It may have been that Lili always sensed her own mortality, and poured her whole self into her music, so that she could say as much as she could before she was stolen from the world.
She was the first woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome prize in 1913, and signed an exclusive contract with Ricordi. She took up residence at Villa de Medici, but her time there was cut short, due to the outbreak of WWI, so she returned to Paris. Her increasingly poor health prohibited her from a standard education. She audited her sister Nadia’s classes at the Paris Conservatoire, and was taught privately by Nadia and also by Gabriel Fauré, who was a friend of the family. She