Word: mlle
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...Whenever Mlle. Boulanger speaks, speaks about music; whenever she speaks about music, she speaks of discipline, rigor, conscientiousness. "There is no substitute for discipline in music," she says to students. "You must go back to the basic concept of discipline in this art, and the more engrossed you become in the history of music and strict academic form, the more free you will be as you compose later on." Again, she says: "With young composers detail is infinitely important and few pay enough attention to it." Her main concern in teaching is "to develop the conscience of a musician, which...
...continuing link in that long tradition of the French intellectual woman. . . . Nadia Boulanger had her own salon where musical aesthetics were argued and the musical future engendered." Other Harvard students came--Walter Piston and Randall Thomson. For talk there were Satie, Cocteau, and Stravinsky. Copland recalls that Mlle. Boulanger "was particularly intrigued by new musical developments. . . . Nothing under the head- ing of music could possibly be thought of as foreign. I am not saying that she liked or even approved of all kinds of musical expression--far from it. But she had the teacher's consuming need to know...
WHAT is the magic that attracts composers to Mlle. Boulanger, and what is the secret ingredient that she contributes? Copland describes his view of it in this way: "It is literally exhilarating to be with a teacher for whom the art one loves has no secrets. Nadia Boulanger knew everything there was to know about music; she knew the oldest and the latest music, pre-Bach and post-Stravinsky, and knew it cold.... I am convinced that it is Mlle. Boulanger's perceptivity as a musician that is at the core of her teaching. She is able to grasp...
While she taught, Mlle. Boulanger continued to perform and direct performances. She became known in England through several concerts at Queen's Hall and Wigmore Hall, and broadcasts of old and new French music from London. In 1936, with her own singers from Paris, she gave the first public performance in London of one of Schutz's Passions and Faure's Requiem. The next year she became the first woman to conduct a whole program of the Royal Phil-harmonic Society...
After all, Mlle. Boulanger was right. Words cannot speak of music. They can only suggest--hover on the periphery. You must hear Mlle. Boulanger yourself...