Anne De Fornel

My project for the Villa Albertine focuses on the study of Nadia Boulanger’s protean career from a historical, social and poetic perspective, while offering in-depth analyses of her still little-known compositions. It will also analyze the struggle she waged as a woman in her multiple activities (pedagogue, pianist, organist, conductor, composer, music critic, artistic advisor), understand her pedagogical legacy and show how she served as an example for subsequent generations of female artists.

For me, working to promote our women’s musical heritage is an essential mission in the fight against the invisibilization and minorization of women composers, who have been overlooked in the history of music. It’s a privilege to be able to study and decipher manuscripts by women composers, to evaluate them and to contribute to making them better known. In terms of programming, the percentage of works by women composers remains extremely low, and they are often the same creators. Yet there is a profusion of accessible archives, and dedicated databases are a considerable help. Today, the musicological field as a whole must contribute to this recognition.

As a Franco-American musician and researcher, I’m interested in the evolution of gender issues in the classical music milieu in France and the United States. The case of Nadia Boulanger is of particular interest, since in parallel with her career in France, she developed close and enduring institutional ties in the United States. This is evidenced not only by the numerous concert and lecture tours she undertook, but also by the many courses she taught at prestigious universities. And let’s not forget that she was the first woman to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I’d like to take this opportunity to explore a number of dialectical questions: in the absence of a proclaimed feminist stance, how did she manage to occupy a leading role as a female artist in these two countries? What did she have to overcome to develop a brilliant career, and what differences did she perceive between the two countries? Is she still a role model for new generations of French and American female musicians? My residency at the Villa Albertine will enable me to consult sources essential to the progress of my research: the Nadia Boulanger collection at the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University, and at the Library of Congress in Washington. Finally, on a more macroscopic scale, I wish to analyze the place occupied by the study of women composers within the academic and musical curricula of Boston and Washington.