In 1913, Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for composition. She was born in 1893 in Paris, into a family of musicians: her mother, Raïssa Mischetsky, was an amateur opera singer, and her father, Ernest Boulanger, a composer and voice teacher. As a child, she began accompanying her sister Nadia to her classes at the Paris Conservatory. She was often confined to her home due to her ill health, and her musical instruction was therefore mainly made up of private lessons. She learned to play several instruments, practised improvisation and sight-reading, and took organ and composition classes at the Conservatory. As a teenager, she decided to become a composer, and began preparing for the Prix de Rome at the Conservatory, to which she was admitted in 1912. Her first participation was a failure due to her poor health. She competed again in 1913 and won, for her cantata Faust et Hélène. This also won her an exclusive contract with publisher Tito Ricordi, allowing her to focus exclusively on composing. Her stay in Rome was interrupted by the war. Her final years were darkened not only by the illness that killed her, but also by the tragedies of war – many students of the Conservatory perished in the fighting. Her surviving works – a scant few piano and chamber music pieces – have a strong vocal focus. Alongside mélodies such as the cycle Clairières dans le ciel (1913-1916), based on poems by Francis Jammes, her post-1911 work mainly comprises pieces for choir and piano, organ, or orchestra, culminating in three psalms with orchestra: Psaulme 24 (1916), Psaulme 129 (1916), and Psaulme 130, Du fond de l'abîme (1914-1917) – major works which exemplify her unique musical language and her mastery of orchestration. She also wrote an opera, on a libretto inspired by Maurice Mæterlinck’s play La Princesse Maleine. Though nearly completed, it has unfortunately disappeared.

– Florence Launay –

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]