Word: splendorful
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...ever wider public as the best music critic in Chicago. Her two 18-carat assets: 1) a shrewd sense of musical values, 2) a gift of writing pointed criticism engagingly. Examples: (after Galli-Curci's ill-fated attempt at a comeback) "Instead of cream velvet jeweled with coloratura splendor there is an unsteady little lyric soprano quavering like a sad ghost pleading for reincarnation"; (describing William Walton's Scapino Overture) "A blithe, scapegrace carefree sort of score, it makes you think Walton must have whistled it when he drove his ambulance through the London streets, spiritually thumbing...
There is plenty of excellent observation in this novel, and a plentiful fear of nonconformity. There is not the slightest tremor of human mystery; there is nothing of the fear of God. Lacking these, human life is deprived of its splendor, law of its dignity, society of its tragicomic stature. So is The Just and the Unjust...
...despite the splendor of the occasion, there was one lack that any child could have noticed; the music was unmistakably bad. Even though the symphony had been begun last June when the Nazis started their drive and composed in odd moments snatched from volunteer fire-fighting in Leningrad during a terrible winter of hunger and constant siege, everybody expected and hoped for a miracle to happen. Human limitations being what they are, however, the miracle did not happen and the work of art failed entirely to measure up to the occasion...
...stiff backs, crowd the lounge, newspaper, and chess rooms; the piano sits sullenly in the entrance hall; the radio hides somewhere upstairs; and worst of all, the sanctified first floor lavatory has been opened out into the old zoo, displacing a lion's skin, and gleaming in the aluminum splendor of steam-tables a la mode...
...class in Chinese. It is still less surprising, that, with the present demand for men versed in the outlandish tongues of the Orient, the freak of yesterday should suddenly be transformed into the expert of almost unique utility today. He who once imbibed the cup of knowledge in solitary splendor now dispenses its to some sixty would-be Intelligence men, interpreters, and Far Eastern experts...