Pedagogies of Creativity in Music

This chapter explores the notion of pedagogies of creativity and creative pedagogies in music composition. Drawing on Amabile’s categorization of “domain-relevant” and “creativity-relevant” skills, the chapter uses historical and contemporary examples to indicate the interrelated nature of these skill sets, specifically through a historical case study of the pedagogy of Nadia Boulanger. The chapter presents the notion of composition pedagogy as a “signature pedagogy” that operates as a series of collaborative apprenticeships undertaken in spaces and places of professional practice that promote the cognitive, practical, and moral aspects of composition as a professional practice. In a world where the notion of music creativities is ever expanding, the interdialogic relationship of pedagogies of creativity and creative pedagogies provides a way forward for composition learning and teaching.

‘Under the Gallic Spell’: Boston's Embrace of Gabriel Fauré, 1892–1924

French influence on American twentieth-century music has long been central to historical narratives, particularly in relation to Nadia Boulanger and her pupils from the 1920s onward. Yet the much earlier impact of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), Boulanger's own teacher, has been largely ignored. While most American audiences around the turn of the century were largely unfamiliar with Fauré, Boston embraced his music enthusiastically. By the 1890s, a growing Francophile aesthetic reflected in the city's musical life encouraged performances of French repertoire, and a remarkable number of Fauré's compositions were introduced, some heard frequently enough to become well known to local audiences. Many of Boston's most influential critics, educators, performers and patrons admired Fauré and advocated for him as a representative modern French composer. That his music was so warmly welcomed in Boston at the end of the nineteenth century without any overt self-promotion by the composer has not been widely known until now. Although Fauré never visited the United States, his music found a home away from home in Boston, both while he was still living and well beyond.

In Search of a Consolatory Past

This chapter investigates how interwar French musicians understood music making as an embodied memorial practice. Using archival sources such as soliders’ and musicians’ diaries and correspondence, concert programs, and journals like the Gazette des Classes du Conservatoire, this chapter demonstrates that Maurice Ravel, Marguerite Long, Nadia Boulanger, and Darius Milhaud were among the many French musicians who understood musical practices such as composing, listening, and performing as crucial sites for maintaining connections with lost loved ones. By situating these sources within the context of popular fin-de-siècle theories of corporeal memory posited by Henri Bergson and Marcel Proust, as well as spiritist and French Catholic memorial practices, this chapter shows how making music facilitated mourning by permitting musicians to recall corporeally the feeling of being in the presence of those they mourned.

Estudo de uma correspondência inédita trocada entre Charles Kiesgen e Nadia Boulanger em torno da Société Musical Indépendante (SMI)

O presente artigo, segmento de pesquisa de Pós-Doutorado amparada pela Capes, pretende uma reflexão em torno de uma correspondência inédita trocada de 1926 a 1928 entre Charles Kiesgen, então secretário-geral da Société Musical Indépendante (SMI) (1910-1935), e a compositora Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), então membro do comitê de direção dessa importante associação musical francesa. No decorrer de seus 25 anos de existência, a SMI teve como principal atividade a realização de suas temporadas de concertos, responsáveis por revelar nomes referenciais da música do século XX e apresentar em primeira audição um número impressionante de obras. As 26 cartas que integram a correspondência que representa o foco deste estudo fazem parte do acervo privado do Departamento de Música da Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) e classificadas “Rés. Vm. Dos 138”. No decorrer desses escritos, é possível entender o modo de funcionamento, a seleção dos compositores, intérpretes, das obras para as temporadas de concertos e as inúmeras dificuldades enfrentadas pela associação em seus últimos anos de existência, parte da história da SMI que permanece ainda desconhecida e que a presente investigação busca compreender.

Gender Wars in Music, or Bloomsbury and French Composers

This chapter explores Woolf’s relationships with two important French women composers: Germaine Tailleferre and Nadia Boulanger. The former is singled out by Woolf in A Room of One’s Own as emblematic of the professional bias facing women composers. Boulanger and Woolf met in 1936, at a lunch with Ethel Smyth and Winaretta Singer (Princesse Edmond de Polignac). As her correspondence confirms, Boulanger and Woolf stayed in touch for some years and Woolf repeatedly referred to Boulanger’s example when reflecting on the misogyny and obstacles facing contemporary women artists, whether composers, painters or writers. Consideration of Woolf’s relationships with these women is placed in the larger context of their reception in the French and British press, exploring the role that their gender played in the critical reception of their work and aesthetic innovations.