One of Nadia Boulanger’s most important biographers and students, Don Campbell has written the following regarding his studies with her:

"In the forty years that have passed since I first met Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau in the summer of 1960, I have continued to be astonished at her penetrating and far reaching influence on music today. Our teaching styles, techniques in composition and the computer as a notation master have all changed and modified the way we connect composition with performance. Yet Nadia Boulanger and her remarkable lifetime of 93 years still can direct present and future students in the learning pathways required for brilliance in this century.

"During an interview for a music journal in 1970, alluding to Debussy’s dictum that ‘The dissonance of today is the consonance of tomorrow,’ Boulanger said, ‘One can never train a child carefully enough. General education teaches one to recognize color and words but not sound. So the eyes are trained, but the ears very little. Just because I’ve learned that red is not blue doesn’t mean that I’m a painter. But most people hear nothing, because their ears have never been trained, and many musicians hear very badly and very little.’

"Accordingly, Boulanger was a slave master of sonic precision. She insisted the muscles of the ear and the focus of the mind be so acutely developed that intervals, rhythmic patterns and harmonic progressions be ingrained deeply, not only within the conscious mind, but within deep memories of music heard throughout a lifetime.

"One of a family of musicians, Nadia, (like) her sister Lili, was the flower of four generations in the French Conservatory. Born on September 16, 1887, her father’s seventy-second birthday, she became a musical phenomenon. (It is said that she could read music at the age of three, but not words until she was nearly 10. --ed.). Sound was far too potent for her young ears, and it was not until age five that she could withstand most musical experiences. One day, as a fire engine passed her family’s Paris apartment, she covered her ears with her hands, screaming under the piano. Then she suddenly got up and touched the same note on the piano keyboard. From that day forward, she stayed at the piano and recognized sounds that came from life that she could put into music. By the time she was in her early twenties, she had won most of the first prizes at the Paris Conservatory and the grand second prize of the Grande Prix de Rome.

"Her younger sister, Lili, a brilliant visionary within the impressionist style, became the first woman ever to receive the Grande Prix de Rome. Lili died on March 15, 1918 at the age of twenty-four. Nadia declared at that time she would never compose again and began her extraordinary journey as mentor to young composers and performers until 1979 when she died in Fontainebleau.

"It was at the first session of the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau in 1921 that Boulanger began to become an astonishing teacher who came to remember every chord progression in Bach’s Preludes and Fugues and how they relate to modern music. In her long career, her musical examples were so vast, it was as if a whole concordance of western harmonics and tonality was at her fingertips. In preparing my book, Master Teacher: Nadia Boulanger, I remember one student telling me the amazing story of how, in her own compositions, after Nadia looked at the score for a few seconds, she said, ‘My dear, these measures have the same harmonic progression as Bach’s F Major Prelude and Chopin’s F Major Ballad. Can you not come up with something new and interesting?’

"As a thirteen year-old, I entered a world of solfege, counterpoint and keyboard harmony. It was all brilliantly advanced and I knew no better than to dive into the remarkable world of attentive listening, rigor and focus. At one of our first lessons, I recall her telling me, ‘Don, you are so young and now everything will be so easy for you. Can you memorize one measure a day?’

"I responded ‘Yes, of course.’

"She said ‘Good, you can be my student. Today we begin with this first measure,’ and she opened the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One. I played the simple C Major prelude. I thought ‘Oh, music will be a cinch!’ Needless to say, every thirty days or so, my mind was racked with challenge. I did not pass her high expectations, yet in two years, I realized how much one could learn with just a measure a day."

The Three Pieces for Cello and Piano are Boulanger’s only surviving compositions for those instruments. They represent an incredible voice full of rich harmony and luxurious melody. Each displays a different character and a unique personality, demonstrating Boulanger’s remarkable concept of form and personal inventiveness.

Craftsbury Chamber Players Music Director Mary Anthony Cox, who plays the piano in this performance, studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She says, "As I am learning these pieces I can see her hands on the keyboard. She had a remarkable independence of the fingers and flexibility of the hands."

And it is through Cox that this incredible tradition of musical study continues now at The Juilliard School in New York.