The Maestro and Her Protégé: The Story Behind the Book

by Kate Whouley

“Should you call me Maestra? God, no. That’s as bad as poetess.”  

The speaker is Hannah Schaeffer, the musical protagonist of The Maestro and Her Protégé, at the pinnacle of her conducting career. Hannah was just 10 years old, though still pretty sure of herself, when she showed up one early morning in the 1990s, refusing to stay in the background of a novel I’d just started writing. A month or two later, this strong-willed character headed off to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. 

I’d never been to Paris, but I did know something about Mademoiselle Boulanger. A musical master, she was a teacher to almost any 20^th century American composer you can name—Aaron Copeland, Philip Glass, Elliot Carter, Quincy Jones; the list goes on. And through her American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, she influenced generations of musicians and music educators you might not be able to name, including my freshman-year music theory professor. Whenever he mentioned his studies with Boulanger, his tone was reverent—but there was also something else I could hear. Something that reminded me of the way I felt right before a dreaded theory “individual” with Dr. Hartzell. Something that made me pay attention.

Born in 1887, Boulanger was the first woman to guest-conduct the New York Philharmonic—in 1938—the same year she broke the gender barrier with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. (It wasn’t until 2007 that another woman took the podium at Symphony Hall.) A colleague of Fauré, a friend to Stravinsky, a mentor to Leonard Bernstein, Nadia Boulanger was an indisputable genius. As a teacher, she was known to be strict, unyielding, severe, and unapologetic. And she stopped teaching only weeks before she died in October 1979.

It was about sixteen years after Boulanger’s death that her imaginary student began to inhabit my pages. For the next few years, I followed Hannah around, listening, and also accumulating a serious reference collection to help out with all the historical and musical figures that were a part of her story. When an unrelated project took me to Paris, I hiked across town and up the hill to the cemetery where I knew Nadia Boulanger was buried. I can’t say why I started there; I’m not a grave-visitor by nature, and I could have located her apartment on Rue Ballu or visited Trinité, the church she attended every Sunday. But I headed to Division 33 at Cimetière Montmartre.

The tomb of Famille Boulanger hosts a coffin-shaped garden and a gray-white stone that rises up like a gothic window, sculpted with trailing flowers, etched with three generations of Boulangers, and worn by the work of guarding souls. That morning, I found a black and white photo hidden in the unruly groundcover that had overtaken the garden trough. A page cut out from a book, I was pretty sure, it had been slipped into a double-sided Lucite sleeve, edges scotch-taped against the elements. Another surprise: a single long-stemmed red rose soaking in a white marble vase. I touched the rose, not yet open, and I picked up the photograph. Mademoiselle, as she was known to her students, was seated at a grand piano, unsmiling, and, it seemed, looking straight at me.

Right then, I started to cry. Not little weepy-in-the-eyes-squint-back-tears kind of crying, but the uncontrollable, thank-God-I-have-a-Kleenex kind of sobbing. I felt bereft, inconsolable. Not to mention: puzzled. I sat down on the flat gravestone next to the Boulanger family tomb, blowing my nose, sipping from my water bottle, grateful that Division 33 was otherwise unoccupied.

Collecting myself, I understood something more about the people on my pages. Hannah, I realized, had grown up to be a remarkable woman—possibly breaking through a glass ceiling that Boulanger could barely see in the distance. I sensed that Hannah had paid a price for her prodigious talent and musical success. And I was beyond certain that she missed Mademoiselle. Because even though we’d never met, I missed her too.

For the next several years, whenever frequent flyer points and my day job allowed, I returned to Paris, borrowing an apartment in Boulanger’s neighborhood. I visited her grave, rehabilitated the garden, replaced the photograph every six or nine months, and delivered fresh flowers to the heavy vase. I took to feeding the cemetery cats and got to know some of the other cat-feeders who made their way into the book. Graveside, I met a handful of Mademoiselle’s students who came to pay their respects, and I was accepted into the fold, the student of a student.

Was I Kate or Hannah as I haunted the 9^th arrondisement, stopping by Boulanger’s apartment building, picking up buttery croissants at a nearby bakery, and shopping in the little grocery at the end of her street? It was a kind of “Method” writing that I loved, but alas, real life was also filled with stories that needed sharing. Two memoirs later, I felt the novel still tugging at me. Hannah and Nadia, persistent and not exactly patient, made new requests. In service of their story, I walked across the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and visited the green room in Lincoln Center. I attended open rehearsals of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was introduced to Philip Glass, who turned down my impromptu invitation to spend a winter afternoon remembering Mademoiselle. I’ve soaked in the neighborhood surrounding Carnegie Hall, and scoured the auction catalogue detailing the contents of Leonard Bernstein’s Manhattan apartment. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve met Hannah’s parents, her grandmother, her kindly quintet coach (perhaps my favorite character in the novel), her first love, her best friend, her fire-starting student, and the Paris detective who annoys her at first sight. I’ve thought a lot about how it might feel to be an absurdly talented and ambitious woman in a profession (still) profoundly dominated by men. And thanks to Hannah and Nadia, I’ve visited a world where glass ceilings can be shattered, a world where dedication and determination matter, a world where the sky is visible, a world where a million kinds of love transcend the routine inconvenience of death. I invite you to join me there. We’ll be in great company.