Skirted Conductor

Women conductors are not a complete novelty to U. S. concertgoers. Fiery, mop-headed Ethel Leginska, conducting symphonies as early as 1926, was soon followed by Chicago's Ebba Sundstrom and Manhattan's Antonia Brico. But few of the big-league U. S. symphony orchestras have ever been led by a woman.

When, last week, middleaged, pince-nezed Nadia Boulanger stood up before the Boston Symphony Orchestra and raised a long, bony index finger, it was the first time in its 57-year history that the second oldest U. S. orchestra* had sounded off under feminine leadership.

It was not her fame as a conductor that brought French-born Mile Boulanger her engagement to lead the Bostonians.

She had only occasionally before led an orchestra in public. What made her interesting to Boston music lovers was her reputation as one of the most famous composition teachers of her generation. In Paris (where she heads the Ecole Normale de Musique's composition department) and in Fontainebleau (where she has long been associated with the American Conservatory), Mile Boulanger, at one time or another, has had nearly half of the better-known younger U. S. composers at her feet. Main purpose of her present Boston visit is not conducting but teaching. The news that she was to lecture for a term at Radcliffe College brought pleas for admission from hordes of Harvardmen.

Prim Music-mentor Boulanger writes no music herself. Teaching other musicians to write is her fulltime job. In her earlier years she taught the ABC's of composition, pushed adolescent hopefuls through courses in elementary harmony and counterpoint, the grammar and syntax of music. But nowadays she ir besieged by full-fledged composers who have outgrown their schoolbooks, need expert advice on polishing off finished compositions.

Catholic in her teaching principles, Mile Boulanger has teethed a varied crew of composers: conservatives like Quinto Maganini, Douglas Moore and Virgil Thomson; wide-open Westerners like Oklahoma-born Roy Harris; jazz-bred Manhattanites like Aaron Copland and Marc Blitzstein; rip-roaring cacophonists like Walter Piston. But when the late George Gershwin visited her in Paris, proposed himself as a pupil, it took her only ten minutes to say no. Said Mile Boulanger: "I had nothing to offer him. He was already quite well known when he came to my house, and I suggested that he was doing all right and should continue. I told him what I could teach him wouldn't help him much . . . and he agreed. Never have I regretted the outcome. He died famous. .

* Oldest major U. S. orchestras are: New York Philharmonic (now the Philharmonic-Symphony), founded 1842; Boston Symphony (1881); Chicago Symphony (1891); Cincinnati Symphony (1895); Philadelphia Orchestra (1900).

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