Lili Boulanger

(Born in Paris in 1893; died in Mézy-sur-Seine, France in 1918)

Pour les funérailles d’un soldat (“For a Soldier’s Funeral”)

Lili Boulanger was born into Parisian musical nobility. Her paternal grandfather, Frédéric, was a distinguished cellist, her grandmother, Juliette, a celebrated singer, her father, Ernest, was a well-regarded composer and teacher, and her mother, Raissa Mychetsk, was of Russian nobility and a gifted singer and vocal teacher. Lili’s older sister, Nadia, approached prodigy status, and indeed, Lili likewise, by age two, was heralded as a prodigy herself by, essentially, any musician who was anybody in Paris. One of those notable musicians was the famous French composer and (soon-to-be) director of the Paris Conservatoire, Gabriel Fauré, also a close family friend. Lili was surrounded by music and musicians of the highest quality before she could walk or speak.

Lili used to accompany her sister, Nadia, to music classes as Nadia took lessons at the Paris Conservatoire with Fauré, and age four, Lili was enrolled there, too. She soon excelled in piano, harp, cello, violin, and organ, but her truest gifts became apparent in composition. A great pedigree does not necessarily make a great composer, but by all accounts, from the very beginning Lili was jaw-droppingly talented. But she was dogged by ill health her entire life. A severe bout with pneumonia at age two weakened her immune system, followed by a near deadly case of measles, and then a lifelong debilitating gastro-intestinal disease (thought to be intestinal tuberculosis, but may in fact have been Crohn’s Disease, which wasn’t a known diagnosis until 1932). That illness would end her life in 1918 at the age of 24. Her sister Nadia would survive her with a long life and became one of the greatest composition teachers in the 20th Century – mentor to hundreds, including the likes of Aaron Copland and Neal Gittleman. But when Lili died, Nadia rarely composed again, saying that the talent died with her sister, and she became a tireless champion of Lili’s compositions for the rest of her life.

It was in the midst of working towards her first entry for the Prix de Rome in 1912 – a composition contest offered by the Conservatoire that was deeply coveted in the Parisian music world – that the 18-year-old Lili collapsed from her illness and had to abandon her entry. Two types of compositions were required for the Prix de Rome, including a cantata (a choral work of several parts with instrumental accompaniment – for example, Bach wrote many cantatas). In preparation, her Conservatoire composition teacher gave her a choral homework assignment to focus on tone-painting, the technique of crafting music to reflect the meaning of the words. In this particular exercise, two stanzas from one of France’s most celebrated Romantic poets, Alfred de Musset (1810 – 1857) were chosen from Act Four of his five-act dramatic poem La Coupe et les Lèvres (“The Cup and the Lips”) (1831,1833). In this portion, Musset describes the aftermath of the death of a soldier, paying homage to the honor and sacrifice of those who served. Boulanger’s cantata version of Musset’s verses was titled Pour les funérailles d’un soldat (“For a Soldier’s Funeral”).

Boulanger would recover enough from her collapse to enter the Prix de Rome again the next year, in 1913, with her superb cantata Faust et Hélène, and became the first woman to win that great prize. But in the meantime, she also orchestrated her homework assignment in 1913 and published her Pour les funérailles d’un soldat. It quickly became celebrated – one critic called it “the noblest inspiration that has been revealed to us since the Funeral March of [Beethoven’s] Eroica Symphony.” Whereas Musset’s verse focused on reverence for the fallen, Boulanger’s Funeral looked more closely at its religious dimensions and the darkness of loss. The works that she would compose in the next five, final, years of her life would return to these aspects repeatedly – nearly all of them works for chorus and orchestra inspired by religious text.

Funeral begins with a sober darkness, as processional drums quietly tap out a long-recognized funeral rhythm. As the orchestra joins, Boulanger creates an uncanny atmosphere of sorrow, almost dread – yet infusing it with an energy, mainly through dramatic harmonic shifts, that accompanies momentous occasions. Those harmonies are rich and darkly hued, and some of Boulanger’s orchestral sound effects are startling, such as the sudden accented notes from muted French horns.

At the first words from the men in the chorus,

Qu’on voile les tambours,

(“Let the drums be covered [silenced],”)

… the drums halt, and the lower strings take up their rhythm. Over them, the male choirsters chant as if in an ancient Latin Mass. As the side drum enters once again, the text commands

Qu’on dise devant nous la prière des morts.

(“Let the prayer of the dead be said before us.”)

At this moment the ancient plainchant, Dies irae, is played in the violins (you may recognize this tune from Berlioz’s use of it in his Symphonie fantastique). In some brilliant tone-painting, these musical evocations occur in a reverent whisper, yet sweep us fervently forward.

A magnificent section appears in the middle, introduced by the insistent clanging of the chime (bell) and tam tam (gong). The solo baritone sings

Si ces rideaux de pourpre et ces ardents nuages,

(“If these purple drapes and these burning clouds,”)

Que chasse dans l’éther le souffle des orages,

(“Which chase the breath of storms in the ether,”)

The music is filled with emotional drama, rapidly changing between menace, tenderness, and magnificent climaxes. And all along, the harmonies sound ancient and awed – Boulanger uses parallel fourths and fifths, a church technique from the Middle Ages used for sacred chant. Yet, even as Boulanger conjures up this kind of epochal majesty, the baritone soloist sings above it with an operatic air.

The ending reintroduces the funeral drums once again, accompanied by the string basses, but the rhythm is truncated, as though it’s lost a portion of itself to war. The Dies irae continues quietly and in longer tones. The tempo slows and the volume fades. The female voices vocalize without words, as if their meaning has been lost, and the work sinks into the earth like its soldier.

Though Boulanger’s Funeral (1912-13) pre-dated WWI, just after her death and at the end of the War in 1918, the work was slightly revised by her sister, Nadia, and republished to support benefit concerts for the war and veterans as a statement of grief and consolation. In the Century since, Boulanger’s Funeral is sometimes, though incorrectly, remembered as being created in 1918 by Lili as a comment on the tragedy of the War. All the more extraordinary is the truth that this 18-year-old composer created such a prescient, and deeply moving, piece about war in general.