It’s Time We All Heard the Music of Lili Boulanger
The thing that really surprises me is that the article was written by a man, and doesn’t engage in the conditional praise that they usually use for us. It’s a pleasant anomaly, and I wish it happened more often.
This in particular amazes me:
War was still ripping through Europe in the summer of 1918, when the conductor Walter Damrosch traveled from New York to Paris to alleviate the continent’s misery with music. He brought back news: “I think that Lili Boulanger is the greatest woman composer the world has ever seen,” he declared. The statement managed to pack hyperbole and condescension into a single phrase, since he was partially retracting an earlier statement that “there would never be a great woman composer.” He left it unclear how, in his rankings, the best of the females compared to pretty good males.
I have never in my life encountered a man who understood the disgusting condescension of this type of statement. “Yeah, she’s okay … for a girl.” It’s a mark of how bad things are that I am literally in shock that a male journalist recognized it and thought it worth pointing out.
Fire and Air 