Word: greatly
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Louis XI was no picture-book king. He had "a long ugly nose . . . a pair of oblique eyes too deeply set, thin lips, a powerful jaw . . . a jutting chin;" was less than middle height, bald, thin-shanked, shabbily dressed. A great talker himself, though direct and blunt, he required others to be the soul of brevity. Like many autocrats, he preferred plain people to the aristocracy. His favorite hat, high-peaked, shapeless, banded with leaden images of saints, was famed. But once at least he ordered a new one. He wrote to his General of Finances: "I have forgotten...
...Chastity Commissioners; in Paris he ran a state lottery; in Warsaw he fought a duel with Count Branicki; in Rome he was decorated by the Pope; in Switzerland he spent a week with Voltaire; in Berlin he was offered a mastership in a boys' school by Frederick the Great. When he was finally allowed to return to Venice, his money gone and credit dwindling, he became a spy for the Inquisition; congenitally unable to toe the line, he got into hot water with his holy employers and had to leave Venice once more. Thence his decline was rapid: still...
...Great is the esteem expressed when musicians present one another with wreaths. By this token a big, bearish Russian might have felt doubly honored last week in Manhattan. He received not only a floral wreath, but a lyre made of red and white carnations and inscribed "in the name of American musicians to this Orpheus of Russia." The famed, hulking Orpheus was Alexandre Constantinovitch Glazounov, now making his first visit to the U. S. and appearing last week as conductor of his own works...
Alexandre Constantinovitch Glazounov is the last survivor of the late great Russian school of composition. Born in St. Petersburg 64 years ago, the son of a bookseller, he was taught music by Mily Balakirev and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, both members of the famed Russian "Five."* He himself won early notice with his startling memory. When Alexander Borodin died, the overture to Prince Igor was nowhere to be found, but Glazounov had once heard Borodin play it on the piano and was able to reconstruct it entirely from memory. Aged 16, Glazounov had finished his own first symphony. Liszt liked...
Last week's concert, at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, called for little critical comment. It was a ceremonial affair. Glazounov, like most great composers, is an indifferent conductor. He had only a scratch orchestra at his command. Yet a great audience gathered to pay tribute, arose when he appeared, applauded continually. Similarly was he honored fortnight ago in Detroit. He will appear also in Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston...