Word: nadia
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...hears new aphorisms from his bene factor's mistress ( Nadia Gray). "Life is an auction." she tells him. "Men put up their muscles or their brains, women their bodies. It's all the same." Sellers finally comprehends. Putting up his brains, trimming his beard, he pursues what he can now clearly see is the good life. He overpowers the crook he works for and spirals upward, swiftly becoming an international financier, running stupendous treasuries through his fingers like sand. The camel jumps gracefully through the eye of the needle into the sheer heaven of riches on earth...
...Nadia Boulanger was born into a family of musicians. One grandfather was a composer, one grandmother a famous singer at l'Opera-Comique. Her father won the Prix de Rome for composition in 1835. For variety, her mother was a Russian princess. As a student at the Paris Conservatoire, she carried off first prize in every field she studied: harmony, counterpoint, fugue, organ, and accompaniment. With this array of musical proficiency, she took responsibility for the musical training of her first student: her sister, Lili Boulanger. As a teacher, she succeeded. In 1913 Lili Boulanger won the Grand Prix...
...NADIA Boulanger permanently adopted the role of introducing and supporting the music of her students. She published a few orchestral and instrumental pieces, but decided to give up composing what she termed "useless music." She took an apartment on Rue Ballu in Paris, and during the 1920's held musical court...
There a young Harvard student named Aaron Copland knocked on the door and was admitted. In a book published on his sixtieth birthday, he recollects: "In my own mind she was a 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...
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...