Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) was a French composer, conductor, organist, and renowned teacher. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at age ten, studying harmony and composition. She also studied organ privately with Louis Vierne and Félix Alexandre Guilmant. She was appointed to the faculty of the École Normale de Musique, where she taught from 1920 to 1957. She was one of the first faculty members appointed to the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau in 1921, and she became the director in 1948. She taught many of the foremost twentieth-century American composers and performers, who went to Paris to study with her. Her formal conducting debut took place in Paris in 1934; in 1936 she became the first woman to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra. She lived in the United States during World War II, conducting the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra and teaching at Radcliffe College, Wellesley College, and the Juilliard School. She continued to visit the United States on lecture tours after the war. RK studied with Boulanger in 1931–32 and saw her in Paris and elsewhere in the years afterward. He last visited her in Paris in 1978, the year before her death.

[Written in English]

[October 1931?]

Dear Kirkpatrick,

I shall see you Monday at 6. 36 Rue Ballu.

I am so sorry [about] having welcomed you so badly—but I am so anxious on account of Mother's health.

We will do what we can to help you having a happy year.

Very Sincerely,

Nadia Boulanger

[Translated from French]

November 8, 1932

Dear Mademoiselle Boulanger,

This afternoon I found your letter at the door, and I am overwhelmed with embarrassment at having caused you inconvenience by delaying in sending you the check. I do not know what horrid thoughts about me you are perhaps now having. Before leaving England, I spent almost everything I had for my clavichord, and in Paris I had to wait until the very day I was leaving for my check to arrive from America. Your check [i.e., the check for you], which was already written out, was still in my cahier [literally notebook, perhaps meaning checkbook], because of thousands of chaotic things involved with my leaving [Paris].