“As editor and contributor Brooks has done a fine job, mixing judiciously chosen source materials with carefully researched scholarly articles, plus photographs, scores and handwritten documents. Her book fulfills an academic agenda but, more importantly, to read it feels like spending time in Boulanger’s world, understanding a little better who she was and what she experienced as a human being.”

The Wire

"This publication joins a growing list of scholarly works about Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) and her sister, Lili (1893–1918). . . but the present volume evaluates new sources and leads to several reassessments. The maturity of these essays makes the book particularly compelling. Each contributor pays meticulous attention to details at every level: the book is marked by in-depth presentation of ideas; clear, nuanced, and explicit analysis; and excellent documentation that often adds context, source details, locations of the many primary sources consulted, and other useful information. This book is about the world Boulanger occupied and about the world she created: space and visibility for Lili’s compositions, placement of Gabriel Fauré at the center of French modern music for American audiences, links to new music and international connections for Polish musicians, and especially encouragement for the 50-plus who were her students."

Choice

"Nadia Boulanger and Her World offers a variety of new perspectives on a well-known figure... In eight full-length essays and five substantive introductions to excerpted primary sources, Brooks and the book’s nine other contributors present Boulanger as a master musician whose performances, pedagogy, and social dexterity placed her at the center of twentieth-century art music in Europe and the United States."

Journal of the American Musicological Society