We recent­ly fea­tured a video of Bri­an Eno giv­ing con­tro­ver­sial advice to artists: “don’t get a job.” Eas­i­er said than done, of course, but he makes a com­pelling case. Along the way, he says some­thing inter­est­ing about the fetish we make of genius—an obses­sive focus on lone, and almost always male, artists as self-made, hero­ic embod­i­ments of great­ness. “Although great new ideas are usu­al­ly artic­u­lat­ed by indi­vid­u­als,” he says, “they’re near­ly always gen­er­at­ed by com­mu­ni­ties.” (He pro­pos­es the neol­o­gism “sce­nius” in place of “genius” to describe “coop­er­a­tive intel­li­gence.”) Eno would prob­a­bly agree that great art not only comes out of cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties of peers, but also from the influ­ence of great teach­ers.

One such fig­ure, Nadia Boulanger (1887 –1979), has been described as “the most influ­en­tial teacher since Socrates.” This is hard­ly hyper­bole. As Clemen­cy Bur­ton-Hill notes at the BBC, “her ros­ter of music stu­dents reads like the ulti­mate 20th Cen­tu­ry Hall of Fame. Leonard Bern­stein. Aaron Cop­land. Quin­cy Jones. Astor Piaz­zol­la. Philip Glass,” and so on.

“It is no exag­ger­a­tion, then, to con­sid­er Boulanger the most impor­tant musi­cal ped­a­gogue of the modern—or indeed any—era.” She was also a tal­ent­ed com­pos­er, a men­tor and fierce cham­pi­on of Igor Stravin­sky, and the first woman to con­duct major sym­phonies in Europe and the U.S., such as the New York Phil­har­mon­ic and the Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Boulanger had her own take on genius: “We are as fools to say, ‘he’s a genius,’” she opines in the inter­view at the top. She also describes her method of weed­ing out unse­ri­ous stu­dents by ask­ing them, “Can you live with­out music?” If the answer is yes, she tells them “thank the Lord and good­bye!” Even at an advanced age, her fierce­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing approach is pal­pa­ble, a qual­i­ty Philip Glass remem­bers from his first meet­ing with her in 1964, when “she was already a rel­ic,” writes Matthew Guer­ri­eri at Red Bull Acad­e­my. She iden­ti­fied a bar from one of Glass’s com­po­si­tions as “writ­ten by a real com­pos­er,” says Glass. “It was “the first and last time she said any­thing nice to me for the next two years.”

Amer­i­can com­posers sub­ject­ed them­selves to Boulanger’s harsh dis­ci­pline as a “rite of pas­sage,” vis­it­ing her in her Paris apart­ment where she did most of her teach­ing. She also made her way through “lead­ing con­ser­va­toires,” Bur­ton-Hill notes, “includ­ing the Juil­liard School, the Yehu­di Menuhin School, the Roy­al Col­lege of Music and the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Music.” Boulanger’s ear­ly life is as fas­ci­nat­ing as her teach­ing career; she was the def­i­n­i­tion of “a tough, aris­to­crat­ic French­woman,” as Glass describes her, and grew up sur­round­ed by music. Her father, Ernest, was a com­pos­er, con­duc­tor, and singing pro­fes­sor. Her younger sis­ter Lili, who died in 1918 at the age of 24, was the more tal­ent­ed com­pos­er. (Nadia, writes Bur­ton-Hill, was “riv­en with envy.”)

A few years after Lili’s trag­ic death, Nadia aban­doned com­po­si­tion to focus pri­mar­i­ly on her teach­ing, men­tor­ing stu­dents with tremen­dous promise and those with less evi­dent gifts alike. “Any­one could be a Boulanger stu­dent,” Guer­ri­eri writes (pro­vid­ed they couldn’t live with­out music): “Those with less­er skills were tak­en in along­side prodi­gies and pro­fes­sion­als.” She did not dis­crim­i­nate on any basis, though her polit­i­cal atti­tudes make her a dif­fi­cult fig­ure for many peo­ple to ful­ly embrace. “She espoused nation­al­ism, monar­chism and, although her good man­ners kept it from her often-Jew­ish stu­dents, anti-Semi­tism.” She held democ­ra­cy in con­tempt and did not believe women should vote. And she was espe­cial­ly hard on her female stu­dents. (When one woman final­ly met her approval, Boulanger addressed her as “Mon­sieur.”)

Boulanger was as tra­di­tion­al in her musi­cal attitudes—spurning Arnold Schoenberg’s inno­va­tions, for example—as in her pol­i­tics. Yet she worked with jazz musi­cians like Jones and Don­ald Byrd, and with com­posers like Joe Raposo, “the musi­cal chameleon behind the songs of Sesame Street and The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny.” She was an encour­ag­ing pres­ence in the lives of her stu­dents long after they had gone on to suc­cess and fame. When Leonard Bern­stein sent her the score to West Side Sto­ry, she pro­nounced, “I am enchant­ed by its daz­zling nature” (though she added a cri­tique about its “facil­i­ty”). Per­haps her most rad­i­cal stu­dent, Philip Glass, has nev­er been accused of musi­cal con­ser­vatism. But through his dif­fi­cult course of study with Boulanger, he says, “I learned to hear.”

“To under­go Boulanger’s rig­or­ous train­ing,” writes Guer­ri­eri, “was to absorb her sense of music his­to­ry: evo­lu­tion, not rev­o­lu­tion.” Then again, many of history’s rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies have also been some of the keen­est stu­dents of tra­di­tion, usu­al­ly assist­ed, guid­ed, and trained by his­to­ry’s great teach­ers.

via @dark_shark/Red Bull Acad­e­my

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Mar­vin Gaye’s mega-hit, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” turns 50 this year.

Smokey Robin­son and Gladys Knight got the first cracks at the now icon­ic Bar­rett Strong-Nor­man Whit­field tune, but Gaye’s 1968 ren­di­tion is the famous one, the best­selling Motown sin­gle of the decade.

Gaye’s for­mer broth­er-in-law, Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, is per­haps the only one who wasn’t impressed, refus­ing to believe it could be a viable sin­gle until its enthu­si­as­tic recep­tion by radio DJs and the lis­ten­ing pub­lic con­vinced him oth­er­wise. In short order, In The Groove, the 1968 album on which it first appeared, was reti­tled with the name of its mon­ster hit.

It’s giv­en a con­sid­er­able boost to the danc­ing raisins, Lawrence Kasdan’s film, The Big Chill, and the many emerg­ing tal­ents who’ve sam­pled the track in the decades fol­low­ing the singer’s untime­ly death.

Strip all that away.

For an even pur­er lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence, strip away its famous orches­tra­tion, described by Time Magazine’s Gilbert Cruz as “ a sin­gle drum shot,” “a dan­ger­ous-sound­ing elec­tric-piano riff,” and “a por­ten­tous tam­bourine rat­tle.”

As author Nel­son George, an his­to­ri­an of African Amer­i­can music, observed in his 1984 essay, “Mar­vin Gaye’s Abid­ing Unrest”:

In the ’60s Mar­vin bent his voice to the wish­es of Motown, but he did so his way, vocal­ly if not musi­cal­ly. He claimed he had three dif­fer­ent voic­es, a falset­to, a grit­ty gospel shout, and a smooth midrange close to his speak­ing voice…. His ver­sion of “Grapevine” is so intense, so pret­ty, so god­damn black in spir­it, it seems to cat­a­logue that world of black male emo­tions Charles Fuller evokes in his insight­ful Soldier’s Play. 

The superla­tives that accom­pa­ny Gaye’s 6th place rank­ing on Rolling Stone’s 2010 list of the 100 Great­est Singers of All Time speak to both the emo­tion­al pow­er he brought to his work, as well as his “bril­liant musi­cal­i­ty”:

These days we have Pro Tools and a thou­sand tracks, and you can do dif­fer­ent vocals on every track. But back then you real­ly had to inno­vate, like the way Mar­vin answered him­self in songs, or all that real­ly dis­tant back­ing work, where his voice is all the way in the back and echo­ing. It’s haunt­ing; he deliv­ered every sin­gle song with such clar­i­ty…

Even ex-wife Janis Gaye had sweet words for that voice in a recent inter­view with Voice Coun­cil mag­a­zine. Among the shock­ing rev­e­la­tions that got left out of her tell-all mem­oir about their tem­pes­tu­ous relationship—Gaye was a pri­mar­i­ly self-taught artist who smoked unfil­tered Camels:

…some­times he would walk around like Pavarot­ti just to make the kids laugh. But, yes, he would also run through scales, drink tea with hon­ey and lemon and lit­tle con­coc­tions of cayenne pep­per with vine­gar and things like that. But he didn’t warm up before every per­for­mance.

Lis­ten to “Let’s Get It On,” “Sex­u­al Heal­ing,” and oth­er iso­lat­ed vocal tracks from Mar­vin Gaye’s hit list here.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Beach Boys’ Angel­ic Vocal Har­monies in Four Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” & “Good Vibra­tions”

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her at the New York Soci­ety Library on April 23 for her month­ly low-bud­get vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.