A Sickly Young Woman Speaks Elegant Harmony to One of the Immortals

Abstract

In the 1930s, the harmony classes at the Paris Conservatory were still segregated by gender. Jacques de La Presle was a teacher of “women’s harmony,” and in 1938 his student Colette Boyer won a first prize in the annual women’s harmony contest. The test bass had been composed by Henri Busser. Boyer’s realizations exhibit an elegance and refinement that must have impressed the judges. Henri Busser’s own realization of his bass is perhaps not quite as good as Boyer’s. Although the trauma of WWII led her to abandon music and seek refuge as a nun, her small artworks produced for the contests and classes in harmony remain testaments to her great talent. She knew nothing of the kind of harmony classes taught today in North America, but she was a minor master of the art of harmony as a living expression of a great European tradition.