Ex. 7-11: Reflets

Composed in 1911 by Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), to a poem by Maurice Maeterlinck from his collection Serres chaudes (Hothouses). Maeterlinck — whose play Pelléas et Mélisande became Debussy's opera — won the Nobel Prize in Literature that same year. The poem gazes into moonlit water, where lilies, palms, and roses sink slowly into a dream.

Boulanger was about seventeen when she wrote it. She was often seriously ill: a childhood illness had left her frail, and she suffered from a chronic illness (then called intestinal tuberculosis) that would take her life at twenty-four. She gave her short life entirely to music.

In 1912 she entered the Prix de Rome, France's top prize for young composers, but fell ill during the contest and had to drop out. She tried again in 1913 and won — the first woman ever to take the Premier Grand Prix de Rome, with her cantata Faust et Hélène. The jury was led by Gabriel Fauré, an old friend of the family; the story goes that he had spotted her perfect pitch when she was only two, and liked to bring his new songs for her to sight-read.

Her older sister, Nadia Boulanger, had tried four times for the same prize without winning it. Nadia gave up composing and turned to teaching — and to making Lili's music known to the world. Maeterlinck stayed with Lili to the end: she had set another of his poems, "Attente," the year before "Reflets," and she spent her final years on an opera based on his play La Princesse Maleine, left unfinished when she died.

"Reflets" was never published in her lifetime. It appeared in 1919, the year after her death.

From the album C. Schumann, L. Boulanger & A. Mahler: Songs for Voice & Piano by Maria Riccarda Wesseling and Nathalie Dang (2008)
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