In 1913, a chronically ill 19-year-old walked into the Institut de France and became the first woman to win first prize in the Prix de Rome for composition. This episode traces Lili Boulanger's brief life, from a household led by a 77-year-old father who had won the same prize in 1835 and a mother of Russian aristocratic background, to the bronchial pneumonia at age two that wrecked her health, and the unstructured immersion in the Paris Conservatoire alongside her older sister Nadia.

The hosts examine the partnership between the sisters after Nadia's four unsuccessful attempts at the prize, Lili's 1912 collapse during the competition, her winning cantata Faust et Helene, and the wartime Gazette that connected hundreds of conservatoire musicians in the trenches. They unpack her symbolist language of unresolved seventh and ninth chords, the  ...