Obscure Music Monday: Boulanger's Dans l'immense tristesse

Marie-Juliette Olga "Lili" Boulanger (Aug. 21, 1893 - March 15, 1918) was a French composer, and the younger sister of the famed composition teacher/composer Nadia Boulanger. Born in Paris, Lili Boulanger was a child prodigy; at the age of two, it was discovered that she had perfect pitch. Her parents, both musicians, encouraged her musical education, and she accompanied her sister Nadia to classes at the Paris Conservatory, studying music theory and organ. Her sister Nadia was one of her teachers, and later on studied with Paul Vidal, George Caussade, and Gabriel Faure, who was particularly impressed by her abilities. Lili would go on to win the Prix de Rome at the age of 19; she was the first woman to ever win the composition prize. She died at the young age of 24, sadly.

Dans l'immense tristessec (In Immense Sadness) for voice and piano was written only two years before her untimely death. The text is from a poem by Bertha Galeron de Calone:

"In the immense sadness and heavy silence
A footstep is heard, a form advances
And then leans over a humble tomb –
O woman, what do you seek in this holy place?

Why come to trouble the peace of the cemetery?
Have you some treasure hidden beneath a stone,
Or have you come to beg, poor living woman,
A little repose from the dead in the shade of their tombs?

No – none of that leads you to this place,
(The moon at this moment lights the scene,)
And what this woman (alas, the heart breaks,)
What this woman seeks is a frail and graceful child

Who sleeps on this tomb and who, in his imagination,
Since he saw his mother vanish there,
Sweet creature! supposes with naïve hope
That she is only concealed and that he will see her.

You would think – a nocturnal secret vision –
That when the blond child feels his head lolling
And when his little soul is tired of groaning,
His mother returns to sing him asleep."

This haunting and sad piece starts with some heavy low notes in the piano, almost as if they are burdened. The downcast mood of this piece is brought about by the slow, even chords in the piano throughout, with the melancholy vocal part above. (It's interesting to note that the music becomes more dissonant when the woman in the text seeks the child.) Boulanger was often drawn to sad texts; she herself had a difficult life where she struggled with loneliness, and was sick most of the time. She no doubt identified on some level with the text.