Nadia Boulanger: Bon Anniversaire #1

here is the distinguished american composer yale cuba this program is given over to a discussion of the work the influence of not a blogger this is a name of course any music listener any music lover in new york that is completely known a name that justifies this rather amusing remarkable virgil thompson's that and i'm paraphrasing that every small village in america is known for two things that it has a five and dime and a former pupil of gnarly moon juries obviously an influence so panoramic so extraordinary would merit this kind of program this kind of all my age at any time but the occasion for this particular or mileage arises out of the

fact that there has recently taken place in monte carlo in monaco they affect a game and all my age to not a blown j under the sponsorship one may say and one one may use that word of crass line yea and the princess grace or princess grace kelly as any american is apt to say now to begin this discussion we have with us a well known american performer who was at monaco the name will be well known to all of you he is a concert pianist beverage webster any music lover identifies beverage webster's name first the wall with the vast amount of performance of contemporary music and especially american

contemporary music and it will come as no surprise to anyone that much of that contemporary american music has been the work of men who have in former times worked with nadia blown j one can cite the names of aaron copeland of elliott carter and i may say in modestly enough of myself a great many of the men who have gone through the border re have come out finally in recordings and in performance by this distinguished pianist of course mr webster is known also for his recording of much of the standard repertory i mentioned as an example of how come archive years enough of beethoven and to complete this short very short biographical sketch of our distinguished pianist as everyone knows he is one of the star members of the

faculty of the julliard school know as i've indicated before and before i go into a discussion with mr webster all of the naughty boy jerry's informs let me just cite some of the names of the man who have worked with naughty boy jay i think this is the easiest and most authentic way to indicate her influence of course as everyone knows aaron copeland and virgil thompson studied with her in the early nineteen twenties douglas moore quincy border john lazard elysee meister herbert l well and many other names that's amanda generation in their sixties today but then you have a man and who are in their forties men were first of all the men around the harvard group and people like carol shapiro arthur burger irving fine i would include myself i will spin

also in that group then you have musicians on the new york scene people people like big goldman richard michael gorman that is a you have the composer david diamond you have always tell mom who is head of the composition department at hunter college and one could go on to include the younger man man like he's a black man who are in their thirties or early for days the list is endless and as you concede justifies thompson's description not a blue moon jae as someone who has been responsible for a former pupil in every town in america now let me return to muster beverage webster beverage you were at the threat the festival party if you like that took place and what was at a september thirtieth was the third of september thirtieth at the polly pot c a n in monaco proust

kanye and printers greece where the hopes of this all lies to not a blog today having said that i would like to describe the scene and give us your reaction about a way to include him their dinner at the palace on the twenty nine of september and the day following the thirtieth which was the date of the concert honoring and abortion and the reception following and then the next afternoon and abortion received quite a few of her older friends at the hotel de paoli and you know her friends you're probably one of the oldest lessons euro jesus or you are the last of forty fifth anniversary as you know you earned important it is my word you don't look forty five but still i might say that it's less than that since i played a solid team in the content itself it was composed of works which were drawn up and arranged in combat about your mark

a bridge and it included himself a former us himself a lot of people and his compositions are played by the way in the olden days in paris and the program include wanted to short compositions by shell fall say you know i am one of these though was a thing that he wrote especially for the occasion starting with the utility menu and came on stage playing the opening of the court his son on in the wrong key and then came some quotations from me up comedian bill full of debussy and this gradually very cleverly work into happy birthday to you a homeowner i imagine that in that crowd of distinguished musicians and for our new york listeners i need to point out this was not only a group an audience of friends gone from europe but of course many americans i breathe air and kopel was there elliot s and gordon from london the end came from bellagio of course your mark a vision shall falsely came from

paris we've always tell solar lizama was there for me us yes i am and many others i might say they're representing the non new york area you had people like helen hart maher who is in upper upper state new york and it represents also a special fascination and frankly a brief the conduct of the new haven line has worked with aron saw no it would be a long list but now digitally in the middle of all these horrors of people are all warning to get the naughty i'm sure that you managed to talk to or what did she say oh i had a number of conversations with her and i was it was in very good form she and i don't know whether and many people associate the quality of humor with no devil worship because she's many things she may be in an austere or aesthetic or very religious songs and we don't know her to be marvelous musician which is but if you touch are in just the right way you get them quite a

humorous response from her and she was i mention one of her former pupil stewart who's showing maine anonymous and she said well you know all kinds of people have studied with me and she quoted having arrived and i believe it was scandinavia one time and she was reporting there to be this famous french composition teacher who at top partook in the mid and stravinsky us that bad and then she said again you know i arrived in america once and the goal of the boat and the reporter wrote the next day said i've famous french woman who arrives in new york refused to give lessons to george gershwin he followed this up by saying that's the year i could've retired and made a fortune at that footage you mark just before we went on the air that there was in your coverage of the event on the thirty gary of georgia lemieux and an alliance called the lion's den in the new york post and it

referred to that this program having been a range and drawn up by mark a vision falsely or youth and beauty menuhin and that the program had consistent both are works by her of her pupils former prison students and so i'm sending this to nadia i know she'll appreciate in view of her humor about who hasn't has not studied with her to point out that this program was almost entirely made up of the works in monteverde first so often mozart so these will be added to her famous students or threw one else could we get you to describe very briefly this scene at monocle because what one can assume that you're alone you as a montana march isn't emailing know how i have been much excellent champagne at the reception following the concert band which of course the press crying in prayer princess grace were both present and nadia stood in line for what must've been something like four or five hours and people kept saying to know

i'm also in july to have a chair wouldn't you like to sit down and rest a little bit and she of course with great dignity has said that one has never tired into one stops and of course in her case she never stopped to why i might admire go to sense as it were to that as a commentary on her energy she was responsible for a rather big huge piece of mind being done on the radio and after the performance my wife and i have organized a little party a century a tiny little salute and omar began to not emotionally she wouldn't hear of taking a taxi so we walked about two miles across all of parents to get back to her apartment it had been agreed that we come back and we had arranged a small surprise in her apartment and marry my wife

the two of us could barely keep up with her she come to a traffic light and if you can rationalize by any stretch of the imagination that you'd be able to get across the boulevard you know how how the parisian to drive she would head off a crossing that ball martin and marion i too timid americans falling behind are scared that we were all going to be hit by these oncoming taxis blown j stopping traffic no one there to interfere with this opening up of the red sea as it were to allow these three musicians to get across actually terrific and royal presence exactly exactly i don't know whether she agreed really get started you'd never know it from from her appearance an ad and her the life that she leaves cio there was a representative from time magazine there who apparently it had some little problem interviewing him day before the concert he surveys that you wish she was marvelous but she didn't want

to talk about herself and so he was trying very hard to get some little bits of information for my wife and myself and aliens only honest people who know her long time ago and my wife was able to say look during her lessons with my devotion that was usually at eight o'clock in the morning and nadia had him banana for breakfast well she gave the lesson so we wanted afterwards of this might appear in time magazine with her picture and banana for breakfast underneath it would be quite consistent now that rage to conclude our little interview i'm going to ask you to come and very briefly but very seriously on the relationship and not a bit more j to you and through you to the performers world o'malley has had i think quite extraordinary influence on many of very fine performers and i think that anyone who has benefited by her criticism and consultation an advice over any period of time can only have learned a tremendous amount of me now going to names were there many celebrated people

of oregon i myself personally and gained an enormous amount just from having learned crystal is a musical contact in a very very serious situations and i worked with her on two pianos with stravinsky in nineteen thirty four for the real reforms of perception me and i've had the great advantage of having her as a lifelong friend well would you agree with this observation which is true for the composers world but i should think the implications of her qualities would have their bearing on the performers' world that is to say there isn't a composer but fine doesn't get maximum attention to everything that this woman says because you realize that you're in the presence of someone who can see through a piece of music with a clarity with and almost scientific accuracy into the structure of that peace finding its flaws at least whether they are flaws are not seen

exactly howard has been put together and why it was put the other that way but i think that these very qualities that you're mentioning are precisely the reason why she has so much in such a deep influence on people who play for performance exactly i think the qualities of the same exactly that that's what i'm sighing in addition i think that it has proven that she is able to train somebody i think that's very gifted turkish girl that i had studied with money from the time she was a tiny little girl and nine is obviously has not only the ability to influence people like this musically which is undeniable but also that she can teach somebody to play the piano thank you there is webster your comments both on monocle and on the relationship but not a blown j to the performers world are unique contributions to this roundtable discussion of not able mr kury can return with a group

of new york musicians in just a moment you're listening to the first of two programmes and trivia gennady blown verdict on the occasion of her eightieth birthday anniversary this is the eastern educational radio network ms bee now here again here's gail cuba around the microphones we have for distinguished musicians all of whom are bound together by the fact that they won't hire another now lives have made contact have studied have worked with not a blog before we get into an open discussion i would like to introduce to his new orleans' the four musicians around the market homes here first of all there's ample thurston who identifies

herself as a musicologist rather to modestly also as teaching theory and harmony at the manhattan school in new york mr richard frank o'gorman well known conductor of the goal and barren but as i dare say some of you did not realize a prolific writer who is currently working on a book entitled history information and arms to my right the distinguished american composer really sea monster who is composer in residence at hofstra university on long island and my left likud only bird who is chairman of the music department at hunter college now i propose that we start off in a gentle discussion we might even take is the subject of i daresay most commanding interest for our listeners that the influence

of knotty blown j appalled her american students ms thurston would like to tell that review ordered how her influence projected itself on your work she had a very great deal of influence on my work i was taken there as a child first by the person with whom i studied in school that isn't linda cooper who was also a student years and spent the summer and fontainebleau then and i brought her in mind doing all the years in between until nineteen thirty eight when i went to her again and i went to her because i thought that only she would be the one who could enlighten me in the way that i thought i needed in music well would you say that that influence was also a part of the tremendous respect which i'm sure we all give them on his own during this extraordinary technical competence this ability to see scores

and to penetrate from the technical standpoint and also from a standpoint of aesthetic comprehension this since that she knows everything about what you have written that she sees through it i assume that that would also be part of the impulses that drive from her authority i felt that right away and of course i was immediately sent up in harmony and counterpoint with a long program ahead of me which i was very eager to do this time and i'm still teaching their subject now are you working in composition with her as well yes i say so it was free composition together with the other technical sense that are going big pharmaceutical well i suppose really am here alone sufferance because i studied very briefly read it and i must say it was a memorable experience and i'm glad that i have the opportunity of doing it oh i went to a trusted probably here for quite some time and of

course as everyone else was oh was immensely impressed by this the man's musicianship and as you pointed out was going to see through the hall of the matter so quickly i remember getting to the argument whether that will feel very very illuminating and the very very end and innovating to always be the first one we had i think the first assignment that she gave this matter if i just before new political allies and played badly that you just downplay some of that for one i'm really a very incompetent pianist she was terribly sweet and she said well you know that said you know the orchestral versions of no not very well siblings go well i have a study at next week we'll discuss american that next week the first thing she asked me with which version do you prefer and i so much prefer the piano and she was quite horrified

by this is yes i remember that very vividly but though it was wonderful working mother as you pointed out the insides of a few was able to get to whether or not you agree i have had the good fortune of my life to concourse of the teachers with their skin of them are just in value of our members of civilization sits on a horse of course unfortunately we do tend to dismiss the great teachers critically people music profession who are themselves afflicted by the star system tend to regard the great musicians of the conductor's and the maras performers and we forget that this thing of being an extraordinary teacher might not able or jay you say they're the people and civilization that should be honored now la sea monster euro marble i can't imagine that your career in paris would have been any different than it has been in new york how what was your

experience why i went in it was a when i was quite young a music where was also quite there and chronologically of eighteen although they came after i i'd gone through the mail at the common person they were there's people getting to work with that company i work there primarily with settling on hand doug moore was just coming on the horizon at that time a little bit with heroes dan gregory mason but i think the basic work was with settling on and concurrently and also work with the wily reader in those very early years so that i was not exactly a novice when i came to cars strangely enough this is not widely known i did not go to your intended to study would not it will launch a lot of all people out your offices rather interesting story i think i was bound to vienna and knowing

quite a number of the composer and the milk seen a peculiarity is it whats aaron copeland the right hands i stopped in paris and that meant the mall and they were great discussions of the camp david coleman so one am a general tenor at that time was well why do you want to go to study well sharon day one as the greatest teacher in the world right here in paris and i at that time said well frankly i am much more involved with german music and with french musette which was true at the time so but you have to really see him just can't stop to piracy navy wants to ensure that once talking with us and for better or is the return of the school either throw the dice was i did go to see her and that she immediately electrified me with her charm her personality and her great enthusiasm and the result was i spent four years with not of lingerie instead it without your bike i often wonder what

my life would've been like had i not go on the record that's the question i wanted your marvelously well what he's having had that all of that had really decided it wanted to work with gender and culture and music and so on to suddenly be derailed were onto another track which at least up until the last twelve fifteen years took a rather dim view of that school cop on the way but what have you and let's go to well i think and was all those areas made her peace with the things that have happened in the world of music since what twenty years ago and in terms of power that is to say the people who are getting the commission's running the show and many departments musical life she realizes that then they have to a large degree they mean the people in the schoenberg labor and forced labor camp as she has made her herpes quite nice and i happened to be around in paris the winner of

the fifty three fifty four when the ball is washington was getting wound up and lead to very hadn't quite yet decided whether they were going to enroll in the mr boulez is of course in contemporary music known as demand music now and that winter and one could see that are not a lord harry was quite agitated about this on the one hand the ability of this young man pierre boulez to get all of paris excited to command influence and no one quite knew where it came from although later on one began to see some of the mechanism of his operation but in a word she was she wanted to belong she wanted to see this as a very valid viable movement and yet how did she become an

active member without seeming to repudiate so many of the things that she had spent so much of her mind standing for people with real problems but eventually she did join the group or well i didn't have risen enough in my time with her she was death on sharon barrett an impact on a great deal of germans i must say that online for years without i never got a single example of brahms shown to be a thing that was really good and course of mahler et cetera were considered quite beyond the pale and i do remember one spring in the sharon their comic book and i said what do you think of sharon that idea of getting on in a totally different way and she said as i recall well he has some very interesting examples that i don't really take you home approach where you ask me what my question was

i think that that her greatest influence on the bank which i'm grateful is her constant stress on the sense of life as the basic our theme music and i remember we cannot explain who is the audience what a professional musician means by a sense of what you mean you go into fashion in convincing architecture or to fashion melanie time i would say i would say of those things i would say primarily the concept of the longer melodic along and the second point i think that you brought up was the architect of which in a sense is an outgrowth of mine also there are two i think that she was a fabulous in pointing out of a grade of this the distinctive characteristic of large works of music in this architectural seconds and even though you might not agree all of the works that she chose as models for analysis from another one could wear a new engine that she stayed away from romney's nevertheless the

examples that she did you well always i think romney's greatest analysis was of the beethoven quartets we spent two years with the quartets in particular the less corvettes i think this was very revealing and the sense of precision of penetration of the never ceasing to be very exacting and precise and make sure that an expression market he wanted was mets o'connell and not middle fork at all that this particular chord that you wrote you want it exactly that boise was going to be in six voices are not and seven i think these are the things that are remained with me a sense of craftsmanship i do want to come back to that a little later but we have been missing the voice of our fourth member the lonely bird who as i mentioned earlier the chairman of the department of

harbor and who has had a rather special relationship in that he knows fontainebleau knows the activities and they're not able or shea at fort campbell relationship to america to the young americans who go there mr lieber um interview because a bit about your experience start from the beginning if you like the beginning well he invited the contingent of students in the summer of nineteen sixty one to her apartment in paris reception then of course we go and when you say contained innovations these are the americans who were going over just for the summer to work with her that correct or they go over on a chartered bases nowadays of course on a chartered plane and all the un wants to work begins to start down in the fontainebleau it's absolutely formidable thought the schedule that she maintained that summer the summer

of nineteen sixty one when i believe she would have been seventy three never ceased to astonish and even frightened of the speakers none of us are younger ones could keep up with her yeah i remember taking a walk a daring to take a walk on a sunday afternoon behind the palace and passing by her windows and sure enough there she was with a student students who she was able to accommodate on a sunday afternoon saw i believe that the earliest latin during the summer would begin about seven or seven thirty in the morning she would be still teaching many days until ten at night if there were concerts or if there were some kind of functions in connection with the school and i believe you have not something to do with the whole dish mean or in some way here

and people over there correct as a member of the board of trustees of autumn glow i've been asked the last several years to act as a judge on that scholarship students are sent to a summer autumn of flow off a couple times these are really been outspending students usually he will say i would like to have this student back next summer under almost any conditions on it we feel that we can give a review of the scholarship we do or sometimes we look around and find private money to be sure the student goes back ms thurston you went molly bloom j around nineteen thirty and review said yes was there any awareness of for gumbo in those days now or were you all a self contained little unit of the youngsters in paris making a little coterie got together

at the bars and cafes after the lessons and discuss the criticism or were you aware of this other activity or actually at fontainebleau come into existence besides use the summer of sixty one witness a big fortieth anniversary celebration it was nineteen twenty one and nineteen thirty they women students lived in the palace and later on that was not permitted because some of them small and the french authorities didn't feel it was safe enough to have them there but when i was there i lived on the fourth floor of the palace of that summer and there was a three month session as well as a two minute session and earnestly this description of the very hard work and strenuous and you apply just as much then as it did later so the five boroughs largely informs is not only

the penetration of vermont and this perfect equipment and medical equipment but also it's an energy that is unsurpassed at least in my experience i know of no other professional musician that has this boundless energy i remember reading a byline john harris who is a reporter in paris on the scene now in doing a little report irish in the new york times and noting not is it this they're coming up and he quoted her saying that not to work would be death and of course you do have this sensation that she is constantly in a race against time she herself constantly remarks that there isn't enough time in the day i could add a tiny little anecdote it illustrates this extraordinary ability of money more jaded crowd twenty five hours into the day

when i was in paris and fifty four i believe she had helped arrange a performance of big symphonic piece of mind with the orchestra of the french radio and i was very pleased and not a little excited that this was coming up and i remarked to her that i was sorry that i didn't know a great many of the french musicians because obviously i would love to have my professional colleagues here that speaks well two weeks later i discovered that every night before she one would say dropped off to sleep it's impossible to imagine her doing otherwise that she would devote fifteen twenty minutes she said had at her bedside aid or can little pieces of paper stationary and she would jot a tiny little note about this peace of mind coming up and in the

course of a month she had succeeded and sending out about eighty five letters influential french musicians it was this kind of thing that now was always so as i say and crystal ball there so you just couldn't believe that would happen i'm not surprised at that story because when i did a certain amount of secretarial work for her when i was a student i saw her do things like that many times and she often stayed up with these little notes all night after a day's work and then would just or freshen up and start her next day i'd like to pose a question which which seems to me to touch on an aspect of her character the question or perhaps more probably the subject of her generosity now i don't know how her generosity they touch you i

know that you touched many of us i've already indicated how it touched me in in this professional situation where i could use this boost which are not able or jacob give me in writing letters ms thurston did you have occasion to see that either has affected you personally or as you in your capacity almost as a private secretary you must see many instances yes i saw very many the most upstanding to say when i was there was that at the time of the invasion of the low countries she forgot yourself completely and she put her writing and her on or below at the disposal of the people who needed to be taken away from paris at that time the daughter of that maybe a madam who are very was expecting a child within a few months and she had a four year old child with her and nadia immediately got her studebaker out and picked up and drove to a place which was seems safe at that time which was in brittany she then returned to paris and we

saw very briefly and he'd made plans for students at to take tear themselves and then an old friend of her mother's name and ezell blair may who was extremely old lady she would had only one million lives i think i went with her and she drove her to use as do the small chateau where the sox family have lived during the summer and stayed there but then she was not able to return from recession she stayed there until we made our trip across spain and portugal to you there's certain that that generosity under the stress of wartime but also wondered just the banal stress of financial difficulties which many a youngster who get over an embarrassment and spends his allowance of a lot of stone i think we've all saying oh yes many occasions where she stepped in and helped out and does anyone else have occasions from their own life they they saw something of this world will

not approve the one that i know and again in connection with irv gordon well audie if she has felt that investment would benefit by coming back or punished for summer he's moved heaven and earth to see the monies available via the scholarships are limited of course and there have been instances where he simply said that there's no money available policy that you have it or not another subject that we touched on the importance not even lingerie now we have here for people excluding myself because i'm not in education i'm not in the academic world but all four of you are or have been the golan until fairly recently was at juilliard a very prominent member of the faculty at juilliard what would you for say in the prospective of the immediate past or what would be the perspective twenty years

from now on what has been the influence of money laundering on american music how does a whole lot hasn't been good has been bad has this personality is so fiercely dominating has that been good for composers what do you think really see market i mean it's so a lot of his own on both sides of the two cultures are so different the french and the american that be a meeting that is bound to result both in a seminal influence and certain conflict in other words where the american composer's my generation let's say war in need of a deeper and more a penetrating an ornate roman identify two or three or four composers of your generation so that the audience you mentioned a ross leave any thought in my class at the time were in the market which is among the americans there let me

think who was with us a lot with those that virgil had just left i remember at in the class robert russell bennett people period i would say that where we've benefited enormously was in gaining a deeper and clarify insight into the great tradition into this whole world complex technique structure intricate complexity and form that has been our the french tradition but the great european tradition i would say to that extent she was enormously helpful and to this day i say that my striving for clarity and precision a form i think that's part of the other drugs i would say on the other side i think many americans oh this is part of the american

school to find it perhaps did not fond of the state which i was so deeply french and region out of that atmosphere all for a robo etc the happiest way to unleash in the sense that an eye as being quite the walt whitman of music they wild man nate the great bob barrett york the sense of the american birthday vitality the wrongness or perhaps in that sense her insistence on classical purity was not i'm always on the plus side and money was broke away from the state and that since so i think there are though i've as i say those of the day the two wings of the scale about i see indigo month of achieving at his comment nevertheless i got something to do it really says i disagree with them and

some point we were very hotly another important contribution to american music was made on the formation of school because a cruel or many of those old and your music is very different venues hurdles is very different from aaron's and so on down the line i think for example as being a really great teacher is valid informing have a small intimate deported and again remember all making one respect work and craftsmanship again remember a record first interview with her just to see some of the things i'd done here she was very gracious he said was a quote thank you to resent this before well exactly the same thing happened in many years later when this incident is curiously went from readers abortion more generally get at exactly the same thing with wiley who also was wonderful to

say they both have that income us sane in as much or of course one way to regenerate great deal more on the perceptions of musical techniques a little bit and by golly what we start with tupac oh well you know this band that you as a teacher to agree rio was how many times you really have to do the work and how far you have to be about it down low i think go now to one of the extreme was caused if she ever found out i had not seen in many years and was savagely beaten there is supposed to learn that i was at the head of a theory grow them a place like julio eventually turned out olson reporter on the textbook you know interesting that we both rode on netflix you know there was a very different scenario very different and very different from the original always that yes i don't think

by the wing nut it was one event that temperamentally inclination to do it without this discipline with people like nandi lot like going out through this is insistent on honesty in the year all i'm told that she has a definition for innovation which consists of two words and hear as she encourages all the students regularly to attend the swordfish glasses under and that didn't they at fontainebleau half and i think that was very solicitous effect on american credibility as the students that they do and have gone into the conditions in this country well i wonder if to let to those observations on the technical side the concern that one no their craft i wonder if you could also agree with what seems to me something quite unique and something which explains why when two weeks and then exposed to portray your a marked

man is a work that is that after studying with her coming in contact with this relationship to music because that's the thing that is overpowering to see a person who lives in swims in music and has a relationship with such extraordinary integrity that seems to me that all of us as composers who worked with her whether we have been drawn into her aesthetic whether we've become little stravinsky's now whether we have written music marked by the french texture or as they call them pointed out have embraced another kind of texture another kind of approach yet it seems to me that you never once you've experienced have abort a treatment and you never can fool yourself about when you let yourself down in the process of writing a peet's it seems to me that as youngsters when we start out writing

and you find that you can write a piece and you have talent and the people seem to pay attention to you and given the fact that each piece poses dozens and dozens of alternative possibilities at how often when your youngster you choose one that seems quite good but later on a year later two years later applebee's and you realize that there are weak spots that you didn't work hard and know over in that passage that you could do better that you let yourself down now seems to me the thing i got from studying of narnia although my studying whether was a rather freakish time rather off beat relationship nevertheless the exposure was such that i know now that when i don't do as well as i can in a piece i'm a fool a lot of people but i'll never fool myself i know when i put myself down when i haven't had her kind of integrity and relationship to

them no i don't know where you're going or not well i think so i know i was going at a moment ago that one of the glee of basic surprises that many people get is that i think in this country and they're not so much today but in an absolute years ago the idea was that you get through these things pretty quickly i'm a new theoretical and i think one of the things that she stressed i think that any really honest musician will stress who is solidly grounded is the long is a preparation and labor that it really requires and that that the depth of penetration is is far greater than you think and i think it is true that that she did a poll that standard of excellence anuj and this can be better sometimes it backwards you sometimes i think probably are people stop composing was

nine voyager one history culture and april madness you know because it wasn't quite so that i think this is every one factor in any options you have to have that actually fierce and tiger like our dissatisfaction and only when you prove yourself is a pretty damn good deal or go up and i think this was a thing that that she definitely depends on and an innovator supper alive but so are nano the question leaving the problems that he can push for fiction and her devotion did all of you have any kind of relationship when you were in paris to other friends students not able or jr did you have a sense that you made a special group that you were a little america as it were as thurston what was your experience there in the most of the other americans that time you were their cars they were at

and in addition at casualty of there were i wanted to russians wanted to polls and english students as well i'm trying to work on last album i'm jeremy whittle of former student but she was very much on the scene in those days and there and tom's these are just one and there were one two other police students who lives names i don't recall at this moment from students at that time we didn't meet very many well i sometimes have the feeling that the french did not want the herder to the same degree that the composers of other nationalities what was your impression that i really can't give you on matt gale as i said before i start with a really for a very brief period and i've always been more or less alone for a live by myself in paris mostly skewed fellow students i knew years or writers or something else saw though i really can't do an impression because i'm not very fuel

even my fellow american students who with so they were really girding for instance that many of the young outstanding group was the americans and they were russians in my time to as i mentioned igor markovich and stravinsky sounds to lima one of atlantic's org where is one of bachmann's the invasion of dollars or you know what i think you know i think they are not of lingerie represents the french tradition she represents the quintessence of it and i think the french didn't grow up with that and they don't read analysis of speculation on my part but i did speak french composers among them for example there's meal one on one event and i we talk about not that you know she it was a reality that you know what and he said that two we said well you know to him again you know it said it said something and i think that that this is a seven up or a particular knack at a particular inclination it's not necessarily a case of a problem being without honor except in our own country

mr jones and right now so many years a much since then who did not you know what must not forget that not important have russian and mom always still alive in those days and it was quiet bayonne feeling of they've you know that siren was caught where he had been waiting and waiting to point most ominous photo and say that is so that someday people object to him about it but that she represented that side of it and i think that appeals too to many people and perhaps not but to many of the french i think a lovely the young the french composers or went to study with people who were who have other qualities of the french did not represent what i think somehow we didn't we gravitated towards me the essential characteristic of the tradition that she represented and they didn't need a rigorous the fact that she was in paris also helped and gravitation

for an hour and then it was stravinsky i'm saying that's not a lot to do that to us now who were you all are subjected to this kind of silent proselytizing that went on but stravinsky persuasion that the nominee represented by much so because stravinsky came to visit us and i don't feel for about two weeks and speaking of generosity we had a musical evening almost every evening in which stravinsky on audio of both would play and they sometimes played piano four hands at his works out we went to love her and we would also through oedipus during that visit and we had walks during the autumn collecting grasses and arranging and when we got back i think another factor and the attraction of paris for many of us when we were young students americans was the fact that there wasn't an active musical life in paris that as we did not have the new york times if you think back to nineteen

thirty in what was going on you your music when it wasn't great great great diehl and i remember going to hundreds of concerts in paris and not have to do if you as a matter of fact and i remember apropos of the german music meeting eric at the paris opera went for the inaugural pink also performing tristan and glass discuss that afterwards and you're quite right she was madly and speak about it as well rather curious as to her present position which you indicated before is to make peace with that levitt well i think that also was weak was so awed but it was strongly by stravinsky he's being made are two summers ago at fontainebleau there was a festival of french music that was french chamber music hall which included a brochure and of the article that you mentioned that was in the time she spoke with that

with an enormous understanding of what is being done in terms of the experimental music particularly electronic don't think he's completely open to this the survey that ability to embrace many generations and i think actually we might conclude on that particular note that the significance of the lingerie at least one aspect of that which marks a soul has been always to on the one hand him praying at the student with this sense of what disappeared technique is and how you must acquire and yet at the same time or otherwise one were on escalator and she jumps on the step that you're on concerned terribly that you get to the next day but that process of identifying herself with your problems so that when you're their that our and ruben who is uniquely you have the sensation that nothing exists for

this woman while you're before the steinway in this marvelous little musty apartment but you are the center of all their attention i think perhaps explains why we have in america composers so desperate in their styles as copeland thompson's sessions bernard rogers and the name because we could go on for hours but this is just to give the lesson public a slight indication of the enormous scope and the enormous number of students that not even watch a mishap now as as we close let me identify again for listeners the members of the roundtable first of all professor we've heard the lonely bird chairman of the department music department at hunter college there's ample thurston musicologist a member of the faculty at manhattan school in new york city mr richard vargo

goldman conductor composer writer and at my right and after i see munster the distinguished american composer thank you you have been listening to the first of two programmes in tribute to nadim alone today on the occasion of her eightieth birthday anniversary on the second program in this series was to cubicle again speak with pianist everett webster and be heard in a roundtable discussion recorded at the university of michigan with three members of the go along very far on the university's music faculty ross lee finney leslie bassett and paul cooper not a blow today by nsa or was prepared by gail cubic and produced by walter shepherd for wor they are the non commercial cultural an informational fm station of the riverside church in new york city this is the eastern educational radio network it's been