Abstract
On July 5th, 1913, the instructors of the Académie des Beau-Arts of France, the institutes responsible for the production of French artists, announced an unexpected and unprecedented victor of the distinguished Prix de Rome competition in composition. Nineteen-year-old Lili Boulanger was the new sound of French music. Never before had a woman composer won first place in the century old Prix de Rome due to the conservative political views shared by the Académie and the misogyny of the competition’s jury. This momentous event has been given much attention in the research of Boulanger’s Prix de Rome success through sociological perspective on France in 1913; a bourgeoning feminist atmosphere in the increasingly liberal government of France influenced the jury’s decision to award Boulanger the Premier Grand Prix. Contemporary English musicological scholarship has favored this socio-historical narrative over analysis the aesthetic character of her winning cantata, Faust et Hélène, thereby neglecting another significant facet to Boulanger’s win; her overt incorporation of motifs from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. This thesis will contextualize Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène cantata within the existing sociological narrative as well as in terms of the impact of Wagner in the French musical aesthetic throughout the nineteenth century. These Wagnerian aesthetics will then be incorporated into an analysis of the opening prelude of Boulanger’s cantata to display how she modeled her composition to the musical environment of twentieth century France.