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Nadia and Lili Boulanger.

Article Excerpt
Nadia and Lili Boulanger. By Caroline Potter. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. [xiii, 191 p. ISBN-10: 0-7546-0472-1; ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-0472-1. $99.95.] Music examples, indexes, bibliographical references, list of works.

In 2009, the Bibliotheque nationale de France will unseal containers of documents belonging and related to Nadia and Lili Boulanger that have been kept under wraps since the death of the former in 1979. Scholars of the two sisters' lives and works are more than eager to discover the contents of those boxes, and it is perhaps with this interest in mind that Caroline Potter and Ashgate decided to publish Potter's new book, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, late last year. Unfortunately for readers and scholars looking for new material or insights to tide them over until that momentous day in 2009, they will find little original work in this slight book save for some brief analyses of the sisters' compositions.

Organized into six chapters, Potter's book attempts to cover the lives of Nadia and Lili Boulanger, albeit briefly; the music both composed as part of their preparations for taking part in the Prix de Rome; Nadia Boulanger's compositions; Lili Boulanger's work after 1913, the year in which she won the Prix de Rome; Nadia Boulanger's teaching methods; and the lasting reputations of each woman. There are also two appendices, providing catalogs of each composer's works.

The downfalls of Potter's book are its heavy reliance on previous biographies and books about the sisters, some of them of questionable repute; its lack of primary sources; and the level of analysis provided in the discussions of individual works. It also...