I wish to thank Mlle Cćcile Armagnac (Fondation Internationale Nadia et Lili Boulanger, Paris) and the Archivio Storico Ricordi (Milan) for access to scores, letters and documents I am also grateful to Jeanice Brooks, Tim Carter, Katharine Ellis, Anne MacNeil, Jann Pasler and Ruth Solie for critical and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this text First versions of this essay were presented as papers at Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA, October 1995) and at the British Musicology Conference, King's College London, 18–21 April 1996 It is partly based on an earlier essay, ‘Femme fragile Zu Lili Boulanger's Opernfragment La princesse Maleine‘, published in German in Vom Schweigen befreit 3. Internationales Komponistinnen-Festival Kassel 12–165 1993 Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), ed Christel Nies and Roswitha Aulenkamp-Moeller (Kassel, 1993), 72–6

1 'Chère Mademoiselle et amie. Toutes mes pensées sont avec vous dans votre douleur et votre inquiétude Mais j'ai une confiance qui me viens je ne sais d'où et que je voudrais vous faire partager Je sens, je dirais presque, je sais que l'enfant de génie qui doit donner une voix à “la Princesse Maleine” ne peut pas s'en aller avant d'avoir accompli son œuvre qui semble se confondre avec son destin Maeterlinck’ Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter F-Pn), Département de la Musique, Fonds Boulanger This letter is kept in a folder containing Maeterlinck's letters to Lili Boulanger, yet it is not entirely clear if it is written to Lili Boulanger herself or to her sister, Nadia All translations – unless otherwise stated – are my ownGoogle Scholar

2 See, for example, Camille Mauclair, ‘La vie et l'œuvre de Lili Boulanger’, Revue musicale, 2 (1921), 147–55, Paul Landormy, ‘Lili Boulanger (1893–1918)’, Musical Quarterly, 16 (1930), 510–15; René Dumesnil, Portraits de musiciens français (Paris, 1938), 11–23, Léonie Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger (Rutherford, etc., 1978), 117, Eva Weissweiler, ‘Lili Boulanger Eine Reprasentantin des musikalischen Impressionismus’, ch 12 of her Komponistinnen aus 500 Jahren-Eine Kultur- und Wirkungsgeschichte in Biographien und Werkbeispielen (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 325–46, Sylvie Croguennoc, ‘Les mélodies de Lili Boulanger’, Autour de la mélodie française Actes du colloque, ed Michelle Biget (Rouen, 1987), 99–122Google Scholar

3 These names stand here for the literary femme fragile as discussed in Ariane Thomalla, Die ‘Femme fragile’ Ein literarischer Frauentypus der Jahrhundertwende (Dusseldorf, 1972) They are characters in the following works Gerhart Hauptmann, Und Pippa tanzte (1906), Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) and Thomas Mann, Tristan (1903)Google Scholar

4 Carolyn G Heilbrun, Writing a Woman's Life (New York and London, 1988), 20–1 ⁵ Ibid., 25Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Solie, Ruth A., ‘Changing the Subject’, Current Musicology, 53 (1993), 55–65, Jeanice Brooks, ‘Nadia Boulanger and the Salon of the Princesse de Polignac’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46 (1993), 415–68; eadem, ‘Noble et grande servante de la musique. Telling the Story of Nadia Boulanger's Conducting Career’, Journal of Musicology, 14 (1996), 92–116; Katharine Ellis, ‘Gender and Professionalism Women Pianists in Nineteenth-Century Paris’, paper read at the British Musicology Conference, King's College London, 18–21 April 1996 (publication forthcoming)Google Scholar

7 Cf Suzanne Cusick, ‘Of Women, Music, and Power A Model from Seicento Florence’, Musicology and Difference Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed Ruth A Solie (Berkeley and London, 1993), 281–304, Marcia J. Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 4 ‘Music as Gendered Discourse’, 120–64Google Scholar

8 Although biographies of composers and interpreters flourish more than ever, the theoretical discussion of the genre has barely progressed since Carl Dahlhaus's sceptical remarks on voluminous accounts of lives and works in Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Cologne, 1977), 40, 44–6 Biographical issues in musicology in recent years have been addressed mainly in the context of feminist and gay/lesbian scholarship, apart from Hans Lenneberg's historical study Witnesses and Scholars Studies in Musical Biography (New York, 1988)Google Scholar

9 McClary, Susan, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minnesota and Oxford, 1991), 3–26.Google Scholar

10 Carolyn Abbate discusses the feminist implications of contextualization as opposed to an author-centred approach in her fascinating reading of Richard Strauss's Salome However, Abbate's writings, as much as those of other critics such as McClary, focus almost exclusively on the canon, thus reinforcing a traditional male-centred choice of important and ‘great’ works worthy of our attention in the light of today's latest critical approaches, see Abbate, Carolyn, ‘Opera, or, the Envoicing of Women’, Musicology and Difference, ed Solie, 225–58Google Scholar

11 On fundamental reasons for this exclusion, see Battersby, Christine, Gender and Genius Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (2nd edn, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989) Marcia Citron discusses the exclusion of women's musical works in her chapter ‘Canonic Issues’ in Gender and the Musical Canon, 15–43Google Scholar

12 One libretto is in F-Pn ThB 4928, the other is in the collection of the Fondation Internationale Nadia et Lili Boulanger at the Musée Marmottan The F-Pn libretto is handwritten (by an unknown copyist, perhaps Miki Piré?), with annotations in Lili Boulanger's hand, the other consists of typed sheets with autograph annotations in the hands of Lili Boulanger, Maurice Maeterlinck and Tito Ricordi.Google Scholar

13 F-Pn MSS 19469, 19470Google Scholar

14 Boulanger refers to these sketchbooks on several occasions in her late sketchbook (MS 19470), as, for example, on f 31 ('IV^e Acte – p 30 cahier rouge’, ‘Act 4 – p 30 in the red book') and on f. 31^v ('V^e Acte − 2^e cahier rouge’, ‘Act 5 – second red book')Google Scholar

15 Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 146Google Scholar

16 For example in an interview in the Musical Leader in 1913, cited in Annegret Fauser, 'La guerre en dentelles Four Women, the Prix de Rome and French Cultural Politics’, paper read at the Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society in New York, 2–5 November 1995 (publication forthcoming).Google Scholar

17 As far as we know, none of the nineteenth-century French women composers, such as Louise Farrenc, Cécile Chaminade or Augusta Holmès, had ever been offered a similar contract, they usually had to negotiate the publication of each individual piece, even if they had a privileged relationship with a specific publisherGoogle Scholar

18 Letter from Tito Ricordi to Nadia Boulanger, 12 July 1913: ‘deux opéras qui formeront chacun spectacle complet'. Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi, Copialettere 1913–14, no. 337.Google Scholar

19 Jürgen Maehder, ‘The Origins of Italian Literaturoper. Guglielmo Ratcliff, La figlia di Iorio, Parisina, and Francesca da Rimini’, Reading Opera, ed Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (Princeton, 1988), 92–128 (p. 93)Google Scholar

20 Stefan Kunze describes thus the relationship between musical and textual prose in a short and excellent passage ‘Zu klären wäre, welcher Zusammenhang besteht zwischen dem Aufgeben des gliedernden und Dynamik freisetzenden Kadenzgerusts sowie der harmonischen, vom Einzelakkord ausgehenden Spannungsbeziehungen und einer dem Sprechfall folgenden Sprachvertonung, die die Prosa zu ihrem Strukturprinzip erhob Im strengen Sinn sind hier sprachliche und musikalische Prosa, die bereits fruh im 19. Jahrhundert sich ankündigte, zur Deckung gebracht. Musikalische Prosa ist dabei als die Konsequenz eines Satzes zu verstehen, der mit der Verabschiedung einer auf dem Kadenzgerust beruhenden Bauweise keine überschaubare Korrespondenzen mehr entstehen ließ und dadurch den Sprechton musikalisch nachzuvollziehen vermochte Die dem Sprechen analoge Form der verfaßten Sprache ist jedoch die Prosa Sobald die Musik sich am Sprechakt orientierte, wurde sie auf Prosatexte verwiesen’ ‘Der Sprechgesang und das Unsagbare Bemerkungen zu Pelléas et Mélisande von Debussy’, Analysen Beitrage zu einer Problemgeschichte des Komponierens. Festschrift fur Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht zum 65 Geburtstag, ed Werner Breig, Reinhold Brinkmann and Elmar Budde, Beihefte zum Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft, 23 (Wiesbaden and Stuttgart, 1984), 338–60 (p 342).Google Scholar

21 On the resulting category of Literaturoper, see Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘Berg und Wedekind’ and ‘Zur Dramaturgie der Literaturoper’, Vom Musikdrama zur Literaturoper Aufsatze zur neueren Operngeschichte (rev edn, Munich, 1989), 170–85, 294–312. On Literaturoper after 1945, see Fur und Wider die Literaturoper Zur Situation nach 1945, ed Siegrid Wiesmann (Laaber, 1982)Google Scholar

22 Dahlhaus, ‘Zur Dramaturgie der Literaturoper’, 302.Google Scholar

23 See François Lesure, Claude Debussy avant ‘Pelléas’ ou Les années symbolistes (Paris, 1992), 105Google Scholar

24 For a detailed account of the public history of Maeterlinck's La princesse Maleine, see Hermans, Georges, Les premières armes de Maurice Maeterlinck (Ledeberg and Ghent, 1967), 95–103Google Scholar

25 F-Pn Rés Vmf MS 116Google Scholar

26 'Naturellement j'ai refusé.’ Paul Claudel, letters to Darius Milhaud, 18 March 1916 and 5 July 1916; cited in Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 118, 280 (notes 129–30)Google Scholar

27 In Boulanger's case, the aristocratic element was particularly accentuated through the fact that her mother was a Russian princess Although some authors such as Rosenstiel have doubts about the reality of the title, the important point is that both Nadia and Lili were convinced of their aristocratic lineage Compare also Cella Delarrancea's reminiscences of Lili Boulanger. ‘Zu dieser Zeit war sie herrlich schon, wie die Lilien, noch leuchtender am Abend, wenn ihr Parfum zum Wesentlichen ihres kurzen Blühens wird. Zurückhaltend, elegant, graziösaristokratisch in ihren Gesten, meist weißgekleidet, den forschenden Blick ihrer schwarzen Augen zielgerichtet – man könnte sagen, im Bewußtsein ihrer Unvergänglichkeit – so erscheint sie in meiner Erinnerung ’ ‘Lili Boulanger’, Vom Schweigen befreit, ed. Nies and Aulenkamp-Moeller, 38–41 (p 38)Google Scholar

28 'On eut dit qu'elle s'était identifiée à la pauvre petite héroïne de Maeterlinck [Maleine], comme il y avait déjà eu fusion entre la jeune fille évoquée par Francis Jammes et elle-měme.’ Interview on 8 June 1972, quoted in Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 117, 280 (n 123) I have used Rosenstiel's translation hereGoogle Scholar

29 Albert Spalding, Rise to Follow An Autobiography (New York, 1943), 160, quoted in Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 62Google Scholar

30 On the problematic reception history of Boulanger's Clairières dans le ciel, see Fauser, Annegret, ‘Die Musik hinter der Legende Lili Boulanger's Liederzyklus Clairières dans le ciel’, Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, 151 (1990), 9–14Google Scholar

31 Léonie Rosenstiel, Nadia Boulanger A Life in Music (New York and London, 1982), 91, 121, 125–6; Jérome Spycket, Nadia Boulanger (Lausanne, 1987), 34 Part of the material of La ville morte is kept in F-Pn, including the autograph short score (MS 19624), the libretto (ThB.4929(1–3)) and parts of the full score (MSS 19675, 19676)Google Scholar

32 At this stage of selecting an opera topic, it was usual to involve the publisher. He not only had to approve the choice in general but also had to sort out the legal and financial details involved in the setting of a contemporary text In France particularly, authors had a strong notion of copyright, which was reflected, for example, in the pathbreaking creation of associations such as the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) in 1829 and the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM) in 1851 Unsatisfied French authors, such as Victor Hugo in the famous trial on Rigoletto in 1857, often took legal action On the legal implications of opera composition in nineteenth-century Paris, see Sprang, Christian, Grand opéra vor Gericht, Schriftenreihe des Archivs für Urheber-, Film-, Funk- und Theaterrecht, 105 (Baden-Baden, 1993)Google Scholar

33 'Monsieur Maeterlinck est tout disposé à vous confier “La Princesse Maleine” et il ne s'oppose pas à ce qu'on y fasse des remaniements, des coupures, etc. etc. C'est donc à vous de décider si vous voulez encore mettre en musique ce poème si c'est oui – ce que j'espère – il sera très facile d'arranger le drame de Maeterlinck en livret lyrique – et si vous me le permettez je ferai moi-měme cette besogne’ Ricordi to Lili Boulanger, 4 January 1915 (F-Pn, Département de la Musique, Fonds Boulanger)Google Scholar

34 'Bataille navale d[an]s la mer du Nord, entre les Anglais et les Allemands – quelle horreur! – Sans résultat autre que abominations sans nombre, souffrance – oh! c'est trop pénible ’ F-Pn Rés Vmf MS 116 (3 June 1916)Google Scholar

35 On the influence of the First World War on Lili Boulanger, see the unpublished study of Meike Tiemeyer, ‘Claude Debussy – Lili Boulanger Auswirkungen des Ersten Weltkrieges auf Leben und Werk’ (Hausarbeit im Rahmen der Ersten Staatsprüfung für das Lehramt am Gymnasium, Osnabrück University, 1994).Google Scholar

36 'Zooals de motto's aanduiden heeft zij getracht, de stemmingen, die de plat geschoten vlakten, de nacht, de gewonden, de smart en de eenzaamheid oproepen, in klanken te realiseeren’ Eduard Reeser, ‘Lili Boulanger’, De muziek, 7 (1932–3), 210–21 and 274–71 (p 269).Google Scholar

37 Letter from Paul Gentien to Lili Boulanger, 2 September 1916 ‘J'ai repensé après vous avoir quitté à votre désir d'écrire une œuvre d'actualité qui n'en serait précisément pas une C'est excessivement difficile à réaliser dramatiquement[] On a parait-il joué cet hiver à Paris une pièce intitulée “Attila” qui est l'histoire de l'invasion actuelle, et qui a eu un certain succès Je crois pourtant qu'une telle pièce měme avec le lointain recul de plus de mille ans doit avoir une tournure “Faits-divers” choquante et banale Il y aurait peut-ětre une façon de tourner la difficulté pour un poète (mais il lui faudrait beaucoup de talent, voilà le hic), ce serait d'écrire un conte de fées très simple, à peu de personnages, ayant pour sujet général une guerre ’ F-Pn, Département de la Musique, Fonds Boulanger. In his following letter (not dated), Gentien recommended Claudel's L'annonce faite à Marie as a suitable and patriotic opera subjectGoogle Scholar

38 This earlier date is suggested by the copy of a telegram which Tito Ricordi sent to Lili Boulanger ‘Heureux [sic] conclusion Maeterlinck vous attend vendredi’ Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi, Copialettere 1915–16, viii, no 438 Rosenstiel gives 20 February 1916 as the date of the first meeting between Maeterlinck and Boulanger ‘Maeterlinck sent Lili another letter on February 20, inviting her to visit him with Tito Ricordi the next day at four o'clock ’ Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 118 The letter which Rosenstiel mentions is not among Maeterlinck's letters to Lili Boulanger in F-Pn Yet Maeterlinck writes in his letter of 18 February 1916 that he had realized only after Boulanger's departure that he had forgotten to talk about financial details with her Thus their meeting must have taken place earlierGoogle Scholar

39 Letter from Maurice Maeterlinck to Lili Boulanger, 18 February 1916 ‘l'exemplaire expurgé de “La Princesse“’ F-Pn, Département de la Musique, Fonds Boulanger The letter continues ‘Peut-ětre faudra-t-il, ça et là, retoucher ou rétablir un raccord négligé ou oublié La musique le sentira mieux que moi et il va sans dire que je suis tout à vos ordres pour vous donner les textes nécessaires'Google Scholar

40 Letter from Tito Ricordi to Nadia Boulanger, 3 April 1916 ‘Quant à mon voyage à Nice pour voir Maeterlinck je ne peux měme y penser.’ F-Pn n.l a Boulanger 99, 5/6Google Scholar

41 'J'aurai peut-ětre d[an]s ce que j'ai fait aujourd'hui, le thème de Hjalmar’ F-Pn Rés Vmf MS 116 (2 May 1916)Google Scholar

42 Letter from Maurice Maeterlinck to Lili Boulanger, 24 June 1916 ‘L'adaptation me parait très habile et très heureuse Peut-ětre faudra-t-il encore quelques coupures – je vous soumets deux ou trois retouches sans importance ’ F-Pn, Département de la Musique, Fonds BoulangerGoogle Scholar

43 Letter from Maurice Maeterlinck to Lili Boulanger, 8 August 1916 ‘Il est fort juste que l'adaptation ou les coupures ayant été faites par Ricordi, son nom figurera sur la brochure et la partition ’ F-Pn, Département de la Musique, Fonds BoulangerGoogle Scholar

44 'Mademoiselle Lili Boulanger m'informe que vous avez eu l'amabilité d'acquiescer à mon désir et que mon nom modeste figurera à coté du votre illustre sur le livret de la Princesse Maleine. Je vous en suis infiniment reconnaissant ’ Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi, Copialettere 1916–17, il, no 171 Maeterlinck clearly made his permission to print Ricordi's name on the title-page dependent upon receipt of belated contracts for the project Ricordi's letter contained not only the contract but also a cheque for 5,000 francsGoogle Scholar

45 The fact that the libretto was adapted by Tito Ricordi has never been revealed in the writings about Lili Boulanger Even Rosenstiel, who had access to the majority of Boulanger's letters, including those of Maeterlinck and Ricordi, does not mention that it was Ricordi and not Boulanger who shaped the libretto Ricordi's adaptation of La princesse Maleine was not his first, for he had been involved in at least two other operas in 1912–13 he shortened Gabriele d'Annunzio's play Francesca da Rimini for Riccardo Zandonai; and later, in 1918, he adapted La nave by the same author for Italo Montemezzi (see Maehder, ‘The Origins of Italian Literaturoper’, 110, 122–5) Mosco Carner mentions in his biography of Giacomo Puccini (Puccini A Critical Biography, 3rd edn, London, 1992) that Ricordi apparently suggested changes for the libretto of Tosca (p. 114) He also gives a short biographical survey of Tito Ricordi's life and work (pp 121–2, 221, 241) in which he emphasizes Ricordi's strong interest in the actual production of operas.Google Scholar

46 Letter by Tito Ricordi to Maurice Maeterlinck, 8 September 1916 ‘J'ai de bonnes nouvelles de Mlle Lili Boulanger et je sais qu'elle travaille avec grand enthousiasme à cette oeuvre où elle va mettre toute son ame et tout son cœur d'artiste ’ Milan, Archivio Storico Ricordi, Copialettere 1916–17, ii, no 408Google Scholar

47 F-Pn MS 19470Google Scholar

48 'Copié Samedi 27 au / L 29 Octobre 1917 / Gargenville’ F-Pn MS 19469, p 9Google Scholar

49 'Copié en / déc 1917 / il faut tout finir / avant le 1er Janv / il FAUT !!! / Le pourrai-je?’ F-Pn MS 19470, f 37^v.Google Scholar

50 'Obwohl meine Schwester den Wunsch geaußert hatte, daß ich diese Werke [eine Sonate und La princesse Maleine] vollenden sollte – es ist mir nicht gelungen – wird es mir je gelingen? Maleine ist sehr weit gediehen, wunderbar, und dennoch unaufführbar’ German translation of a letter from Nadia Boulanger to Eduard Reeser, published as ‘Ein Brief von Nadia Boulanger an Eduard Reeser’, Vom Schweigen befreit, ed Nies and Aulenkamp-Moeller, 88–91 (p 91)Google Scholar

51 La princesse Maleine is a five-act play set in unspecified (medieval) times in Holland Marcellus and Hjalmar, kings of the two parts of Holland, decide to marry their children Maleine and Prince Hjalmar During the engagement festivities in Harlingen, Maleine's home, a dispute erupts, instigated by Queen Anne of Jutland, who had left her husband for King Hjalmar (the Old King) and who plots to marry her daughter Uglyane to his son. After the dispute, King Hjalmar and his court leave, while Marcellus demands that Maleine should renounce Prince Hjalmar When she refuses, he locks her in a tower A war erupts between the two parts of Holland, devastating Harlingen When Maleine and her nurse finally manage to break out of their prison, they find their home destroyed Maleine eventually makes her way to Ysselmonde, King Hjalmar's residence. There she finds employment as chambermaid to Uglyane Meanwhile, Queen Anne pushes forward Uglyane's and Prince Hjalmar's wedding, while poisoning the Old King and trying to seduce the prince herself at the same time With a fake letter, in which she pretends to be Uglyane, Maleine asks Prince Hjalmar to meet her at the fountain in the garden There she discloses her true identity to him and they-reconfirm their engagement.Google Scholar

Prince Hjalmar informs his father that Maleine is still alive and that they want to marry The Old King tries to dissuade him out of fear for Queen Anne's reaction But Maleine appears in public, and when the king does not refuse his son's marriage with Maleine instead of Uglyane, Anne starts to poison Maleine as well. Throughout the wedding preparations Maleine becomes paler and weaker, but her resistance keeps her alive The wedding approaches, and Queen Anne locks Maleine in her room with her dog Pluto as her only company Maleine is terrified The door opens, and in come Queen Anne and the Old King When King Hjalmar refuses to kill Maleine, Queen Anne throttles her with a noose. While the couple try to remove the traces of the crime, the court fool appears at the window The king kills him with his sword while, outside, Maleine's nurse, Prince Hjalmar and little Allan (Anne's neglected son and now a friend of Maleine) start searching for her. When the corridor is clear, the king and queen depart hastily from the room, leaving Anne's red coat behind In the cemetery, peasants discuss strange occurrences a thunderbolt has struck the crucifix of the castle chapel, and it has fallen into the moat In the castle, the courtiers try to understand what is happening Finally Prince Hjalmar, Angus, the Old King and Queen Anne join them When they start talking about Maleine, the king begins to give away that something has happened Hjalmar and the nurse go to look for Maleine and they find her dead The seven Beguines (nuns) enter, followed by the Old King and Anne The king accuses Queen Anne of murdering Maleine, with the red coat proving his words Prince Hjalmar stabs the murderess before killing himself. The king stays behind, madGoogle Scholar

52 'L'œuvre la plus géniale de ce temps’ Octave Mirbeau's 1890 review of La princesse Maleine, quoted in Peter Szondi, Das lyrische Drama des Fin de siècle, ed Henriette Beese (2nd edn, Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 353Google Scholar

53 'Désormais, la preuve est faite: il y a un théatre symboliste.’ Retté, quoted in Marcel Postic, Maeterlinck et le symbolisme (Paris, 1970), 42.Google Scholar

54 'Die gemeine Deutlichkeit der Dinge, das handgreiflich Wirkliche, das Straßenkleid der Wahrheit wird verschmaht und der Grund der Wogen in der tiefen Seele, die irre Sehnsucht, die sich nicht zu deuten weiß, und der schwule Schwall der blinden Traume, alles Rätselhafte und Unartikulierte wird aufgesucht Es ist, von der frechen Despotie der toten Dinge weg, die Rückkehr zum lebendigen Menschen ’ Hermann Bahr, Die Überwindung des Naturalismus (Dresden and Leipzig, 1891), 196, quoted in Erwin Koppen, Dekadenter Wagnerismus Studien zur europäischen Literatur des Fin de siècle (Berlin and New York, 1973), 278Google Scholar

55 Letter from Maurice Maeterlinck to Octave Mirbeau, 1890. ‘Quelle lointaine tapisserie que cette “Princesse Maleine” avec un vent d'au delà dans les trous ’ Quoted in Szondi, Das lyrische Drama des Fin de siècle, 354Google Scholar

56 'Le symbole ne supporte jamais la présence active de l'homme ’ Maurice Maeterlinck, ‘Menus propos, le théatre’, La jeune Belgique, 9 (1890), 334, quoted in Carole J Lambert, The Empty Cross. Medieval Hopes, Modern Futility in the Theater of Maurice Maeterlinck, Paul Claudel, August Strindberg, and Georg Kaiser (New York and London, 1990), 46.Google Scholar

57 Susan Youens, ‘An Unseen Player: Destiny in Pelléas et Mélisande’, Reading Opera, ed. Groos and Parker, 60–91 (p 64).Google Scholar

58 'Quand j'ai écrit La Princesse Maleine je me suis dit “Je vais tacher de faire une pièce à la façon de Shakespeare pour un théatre de marionnettes “ ‘Jules Huret, Enquěte sur l'évolution littéraire (Paris, 1901), 129 Marionettes as non-human players held an important place in symbolist dramatic theory, but puppet-plays were also part of the French Wagner reception in the salon (e. g. of Judith Gautier) In 1888 Henri Signoret founded the Petit-Théatre des Marionnettes in the Galérie Vivienne, which gave not only contemporary pieces by writers such as Maurice Bouchor or Anatole France but also adaptations of Shakespeare In 1888, Bouchor's adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest was performed with music by Ernest Chausson Since Maeterlinck had been in Paris when this theatre was founded, it is highly probable that he not only knew about it but actually went thereGoogle Scholar

59 The following discussion is based upon several studies Hermans, Les premières armes de Maurice Maeterlinck, 95–103, Szondi, Das lyrische Drama des Fin de siècle, 351–63, Postic, Maeterlinck et le symbolisme, 42–51, Lambert, The Empty Cross, esp pp 42–8, Hans Felten and Elke Pacholek, ‘Uberdetermination und Heterogenitat im fruhen Theater Maeterlincks’, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, new ser., 36 (1986), 320–30, Paul Gorceix, Les affinités allemandes dans l'œuvre de Maurice Maeterlinck (Paris, 1975), 305–71, Stefan Gross, Maurice Maeterlinck oder der symbolische Sadismus des Humors Studie zum Fruhwerk mit angehangten Materialien (Frankfurt am Main, 1985)Google Scholar

60 Letter from Maurice Maeterlinck to Octave Mirbeau, 1890 ‘Je suis profondément troublé en ce moment et je n'ai jamais plus profondément douté de moi-měme Dans ma pauvre Princesse je ne vois que de Shakespeare, de l'Edgar Poe et l'influence de mon ami Van Lerberghe et je n'y distingue plus rien qui m'appartienne ’ Quoted in Maurice Maeterlinck, Serres chaudes, Quinze chansons, La princesse Maleine, ed Paul Gorceix (Paris, 1983), 289.Google Scholar

61 Maeterlinck addressed this point in his preface to the 1901 edition of his collected plays ‘The texts of these short plays, which my publisher now collects in three volumes, have hardly been changed It is not at all that they seem perfect to me – far from it. But one does not improve a poem by successive corrections The best and the worst in it have entwined rootsGoogle Scholar

It would for example have been easy in La princesse Maleine to suppress many a risky naivety, a few superfluous scenes and most of those astonished repetitions that make the characters seem like slightly deaf sleepwalkers constantly roused from painful dreams. I could have thus spared them some smiles, but the atmosphere and the very world in which they live would seem changed’ Trans David Grayson, ‘The Libretto of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande’, Music and Letters, 66 (1985), 34–50 (p 35)Google Scholar

62 Libretto of La princesse Maleine, Musée Marmottan, p. 8Google Scholar

63 Ibid., final pageGoogle Scholar

64 The chapter is entitled ‘Sur les femmes’, in Maurice Maeterlinck, Le trésor des humbles (3rd edn, Paris, 1896), 81–98Google Scholar

65 On the development of this essentialist dichotomy in Western culture since Greek antiquity, see Battersby, Gender and GeniusGoogle Scholar

66 '[Les femmes] sont vraiment les plus proches parentes de l'infini qui nous entoure et, seules, savent encore lui sourire avec la grace familière de l'enfant qui ne craint pas son père. Elles conservent ici-bas, comme un joyau céleste et inutile, le sel pur de notre ame.’ Maeterlinck, Le trésor des humbles, quoted in Gorceix, Les affinités allemandes dans l'œuvre de Maurice Maeterlinck, 305Google Scholar

67 'Il y a divergence ininterrompue entre les forces du symbole et celles de l'homme qui agite Le symbole du poème est un centre dont les rayons divergent dans l'infini.’ Maeterlinck, ‘Menus propos, le théatre’, quoted in Lambert, The Empty Cross, 46Google Scholar

68 'La femme est plus près de Dieu que l'homme De tous les ětres que nous connaissons, la femme semble l'ětre le plus près de Dieu. La femme a plus de raison et moins d'intelligence que l'homme Elle ne voit rien isolément En tout objet, elle semble voir, à son insu, les relations éternelles de l'objet, plus exactement que l'objet lui-měme … Il y a des sous-entendus introuvables entre la femme et la mort, par exemple. Elle ne meurt pas comme nous, elle meurt comme les animaux et les petits enfants.’ Maeterlinck, ‘Menus propos’ (1891), quoted in Gorceix, Les affinités allemandes dans l'œuvre de Maurice Maeterlinck, 305. The description of women and children as similar is a common phenomenon in Western history which can also be seen in the context of colonial attitudes towards the ‘Other'; see Wilson, J. J., ‘Carrington Revisited’, Between Women. Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about their Work on Women, ed. Carol Asher, Louise DeSalvo and Sara Ruddick (2nd edn, New York and London, 1993), 327–41 (p. 329)Google Scholar

69 For an interesting reading of the essentialist understanding of the ‘eternal feminine’ within the discussion in gendered categories of muse and poet, see Greer, Germaine, Slip-Shod Sibyls. Recognition, Rejection and the Woman Poet (London, 1995), 1–35. See also ‘The Queen's Looking Glass: Female Creativity, Male Images of Women, and the Metaphor of Literary Paternity’, Sandra M Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven and London, 1984), 3–44.Google Scholar

70 Youens, ‘An Unseen Player’, 63Google Scholar

71 Youens thus summarizes the purpose of drama according to Maeterlinck; ibid., 65.Google Scholar

72 The role of destiny in Maeterlinck's plays is discussed in almost all writings on him. With specific reference to Pelléas et Mélisande, see Youens, ‘An Unseen Player'Google Scholar

73 Felten and Pacholek, ‘Überdetermination und Heterogenität im frühen Theater Maeterlincks’, 324Google Scholar

74 Ruth A Solle, ‘Whose Life? The Gendered Self in Schumann's Frauenliebe Songs’, Music and Text Critical Inquiries, ed. Steven Paul Scher (Cambridger, 1992), 219–40.Google Scholar

75 On this discussion, see Offen, Karen, ‘Depopulation, Nationalism and Feminism in Fin-de-siècle France’, American Historical Review, 89 (1984), 648–76; Dibora Silverman, ‘The “New Woman”, Feminism, and the Decorative Arts in Fin-de-siècle France’, Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed Lynn Hunt (Baltimore and London, 1991), 144–63, Edward Berenson, The Trial of Madame Caillaux (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1992), esp. ch. 1, 3 and 4, Marieluise Christadler, ‘Zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht: Die Musen der Republik’ and ‘Mondaner und rebellischer Feminismus Die Frauenbewegung in der Dritten Republik’, Bewegte Jahre – Frankreichs Frauen, ed. Marieluise Christadler and Florence Hervé (Düsseldorf, 1994), 37–52, 53–71Google ScholarPubMed

76 Clément's pathbreaking book on the undoing of women in opera focuses, as Mary Ann Smart puts it, on tragic operas, ‘conveniently forgetting comic operas, in which no one dies and the girl usually gets what she wants’ ('The Lost Voice of Rosine Stoltz’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 6 (1994), 31–50, p. 33) Yet Smart does not seem to be aware of the fact that, although women do not die in comic operas, their role is still fenced by society's notion of femininity, creating a less obvious form of ‘undoing’, especially in role stereotypes such as the komische Alte Heroines in comic operas usually get marriage as their reward, thus enacting the female ‘success story’ of the well-adjusted bourgeoise. Clément's discussion of Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande draws upon the concept of the little witch, representing a Naturwesen similar to Maleine, see Catherine Clément, L'opéra, ou la défaite des femmes (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar

77 Suzanne Cusick discusses a similar constellation of the reading of a libretto through a female composer as feminist act in her essay ‘Of Women, Music, and Power’ Although the public situation is different, given that Francesca Caccini's La liberazione di Ruggiero was a commission from a female patron, the pattern of reinterpreting a male libretto in a female perspective corresponds with Boulanger's later effort in the case of La princesse Maleine.Google Scholar

78 Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, xi.Google Scholar

79 Birgit Stiévenard-Salomon, ‘Zum Religiösen in der Musik Lili Boulangers’, Vom Schweigen befreit, ed Nies and Aulenkamp-Moeller, 77–83.Google Scholar

80 On the Clairières dans le ciel, see Fauser, ‘Die Musik hinter der Legende’, Sabine Giesebrecht-Schutte, ‘Lili Boulanger’ “Clairières dans le Ciel” – ästhetischer Ausdruck und musikalische Form’, Die Musikforschung, 47 (1994), 384–402Google Scholar

81 On the question of musical Wagnérisme in France, see Schwartz, Manuela, ‘Die Wagner-Rezeption und die Oper des Fin de siècle Untersuchungen zu Vincent d'Indys Fervaal’ (Ph D dissertation, Technische Universität, Berlin, 1995). In June 1995 an international conference in Berlin (organized jointly by the Centre Marc Bloch, the Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar der Humboldt-Universitat and the Konzerthaus Berlin/Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt) on ‘Der Wagnérisme in der franzosischen Musik und Musikkultur (1861–1914)’ discussed different aspects of French Wagnérisme in new perspectives The proceedings are being prepared for publicationGoogle Scholar

82 See for example Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 173–4; Fauser, ‘Die Musik hinter der Legende'; Bonnie Jo Dopp, ‘Numerology and Cryptography in the Music of Lili Boulanger: The Hidden Program in Clairières dans le ciel’, Musical Quarterly, 78 (1994), 557–83.

83 'Avez-vous remarqué les colères subites de mon père depuis que la reine Anne est arrivée à Ysselmonde? – Je ne sais ce qui se passe; mais j'ai peur de la reine!'Google Scholar

84 On Boulanger and Dukas, see Schwartz, Manuela, ‘Mehr als ein Gesellenstück – Faust et Hélène von Lili Boulanger’, Vom Schweigen befreit, ed Nies and Aulenkamp-Moeller, 64–71.Google Scholar

85 As far as the surviving documents and Rosenstiel's account (The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 146) reveal, Boulanger found Maleine's theme early in her work on La princesse Maleine in 1911. But the loss of almost all the musical material necessarily leaves room for doubt over this chronology.Google Scholar

86 See, for example, McClary, Feminine Endings, Solie, ‘Whose Life?'; Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 120–64Google Scholar

87 Quoted in Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 136, 260.Google Scholar

88 See, for example, Jann Pasler's analysis of the French perception of Russian music in her paper ‘Making Alliances through Music Russia as Embraced by the French’, read at the International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, University of Surrey, 14–17 July 1994; and Jeffrey Kallberg, ‘The Harmony of the Tea Table Gender and Ideology in the Piano Nocturne’, Representations, 39 (1992), 102–33. Debussy's ambivalent verdict on Massenet's music is grounded in his perception of the composer as someone ‘searching in music for documents that would serve as a history of the feminine soul’ ('à chercher dans la musique des documents pour servir à l'histoire de l'ame féminine'), see Debussy, Claude, Monsieur Croche et autres écrits, ed François Lesure (2nd edn, Paris, 1989), 59Google Scholar

89 See n 75 aboveGoogle Scholar

90 'Les femmes sont curieuses quand elles se mělent sérieusement d'art elles semblent préoccupées avant tout de faire oublier qu'elles sont femmes et de montrer une virilité débordante, sans songer que c'est justement cette préoccupation qui décèle la femme ’ Camille Saint-Saens, ‘Les Argonautes’ (1881), Harmonie et mélodie (Paris, 1885), 225–39 (p 228)Google Scholar

91 Gilbert and Gubar explain woman's imprisonment in her cultural context by adapting Harold Bloom's concept of the anxiety of influence ‘Unlike her male counterpart, then, the female artist must first struggle against the effects of a socialization which makes conflict with the will of her (male) precursors seem inexpressibly absurd, futile, or even self-annihilating And just as the male artist's struggle against his precursor takes the form of what Bloom calls revisionary swerves, flights, misreadings, so the female writer's battle for self-creation involves her in a revisionary process Her battle, however, is not against her (male) precursor's reading of the world but against his reading of her’ The Madwoman in the Attic, 49.Google Scholar

92 From early encounters with male colleagues and the press onwards, the Boulanger sisters’ sex had been the focus of attention Saint-Saëns commented on Nadia's ‘search for the effect’ ('recherche de l'effet') when she presented an instrumental instead of a vocal fugue at the Prix de Rome competition of 1908 (see Spycket, Nadia Boulanger, 28) Nadia's sight-reading piece for the Conservatoire's final-year piano competition for women pianists in 1914 was judged as ‘a long and unintelligible, and therefore very feminine page’, revealing Nadia Boulanger as ‘a criminal’ who ‘offered to the unfortunate female contestants a harmony bristling with harmonic difficulties’ (Rosenstiel, Nadia Boulanger, 123), terms that remind one of Saint-Saens's unmasking of Augusta Holmès as a woman overdoing the harmonic complexity of a piece because she does not understand and ‘master’ the ‘masculine’ side of music In March 1912, when Lili enrolled for her first Prix de Rome competition, Emile Vuillermoz – citing Nadia Boulanger and Hélène Fleury, two women who so far had each received a second prize in the Prix de Rome competition – warned his readers against the danger that women were just about to take over French music, with dire results for its quality because fashion would replace creation Emile Vuillermoz, ‘Le péril rose’, Musica, 11 (1912), 45Google Scholar

93 In the green sketchbook, as well as in sketches of other pieces (e.g. F-Pn MS 19438), Boulanger often used letters as abbreviations for different cells, which would then be noted as a sequence of A-B-A-B-A-B-A-B, etc under a melodic line. This repetitive structure is one of the main characteristics of Boulanger's compositional style it can be found in works such as the songs Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre rěve and Deux ancolies from Clairières dans le ciel, or the Vieille prière bouddhiqueGoogle Scholar

94 On Boulanger's musical language, see Mattis, Olivia, ‘Lili Boulanger – Polytoniste’, Lili Boulanger zum 100. Geburtstag Bremer Lili Boulanger-Tage, 19–22 8 1993, ed Kathrin Mosler (Bremen, 1993), 48–51 Mattis cites contemporary sources such as Charles Koechlin, who refers to Boulanger's harmonic progressiveness in discussing her works together with those of Georges Auric, Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky and Béla BartókGoogle Scholar

95 In his critique of Holmès's Les Argonautes, Saint-Saëns explicitly mentions harmonic complexity and powerful orchestration as signifying maleness in music; see Saint-Saëns, ‘Les Argonautes’, 229Google Scholar

96 On Boulanger's orchestration, see Fauser, Annegret, ‘Zur Orchestrierung der Clairières dans le ciel’, Vom Schweigen befreit, ed. Nies and Aulenkamp-Moeller, 61Google Scholar

97 'A ma chère petite collaboratrice Lili Boulanger / qui doit donner à la Princesse Maleine, de par la volonté des dieux de la musique et du Destin, l'ame attendue’ Quoted in Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 281. In her diary from 1917, Boulanger notes on 15 February ‘Réçu Photo dédicacée Maeterlinck – encadrée par la suite –’ F-Pn Rés. Vmf MS 118Google Scholar

98 Delarrancea, ‘Lili Boulanger’, 38–41.Google Scholar

99 Rosenstiel, The Life and Works of Lili Boulanger, 42–3Google Scholar

100 Solie, ‘Changing the Subject’, 56Google Scholar

101 Wagner-Martin, Linda, Telling Women's Lives. The New Biography (New Brunswick, NJ, 1994), 51 The question of feminine autobiography and biography has been discussed extensively in recent years in literary, sociological and historical disciplines.Google Scholar

102 Letter to Fernand Bourgeat from 1912(?), sold at auction by Drouot (Paris) in June 1987. ‘Je ne te rase pas souvent, avoue-le – laisse-toi donc faire pour une fois et mets-toi en quatre pour obliger ta vieille Lili. Je montre à l'examen 1 chœur et 1 quatuor vocal – interviens auprès de ceux membres du Jury que tu honores tout particulièrement de ton amitié afin qu'il fassent exécuter les deux choses et prie-les, s'il trouvent mon travail aussi bien qu'on le dit, de m'octroyer le Prix Lepaul et qu'on me joue à la classe d'orchestre ’ F-Pn, Fichier des ventes aux enchères. Bourgeat had played a central role in the affair of the Prix de Rome in 1903 in his function as Chef de Secrétariat du Conservatoire (see Fauser, 'La guerre en dentelles').Google Scholar

103 Brooks, 'Noble et grande servante de la musique'.Google Scholar

104 The Particeli has not been found, in spite of my intensive search for over three years It might appear one day unexpectedly – like Berlioz's allegedly burnt Messe solennelle. It is highly unlikely that Nadia Boulanger destroyed any of Lili Boulanger's manuscripts (as she has sometimes been accused of doing), especially La princesse Maleine, given that other unfinished material survived. A more probable reason for the loss of several of Lili Boulanger's works can be found in the fact that during the period after Nadia Boulanger's death, when her estate was moved and catalogued, some pieces were allegedly misplaced.Google Scholar

105 Another example would be Isabella Andreini, whose ‘divine madness’ could explain her creative talent to her contemporaries, blending the mad character she played in the commedia dell'arte with her person, see Anne MacNeil, ‘The Divine Madness of Isabella Andreini’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 120 (1995), 195–215Google Scholar