Word: allegro
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...code for their mystical lore; and that the God of Jews and Christians is ultimately nothing more than a magnificent phallic symbol. Normally, such preposterous stuff would be dismissed as beneath serious discussion. But in this case the author is a maverick philologist of some scholarly standing: John M. Allegro, 47, former lecturer on the Old Testament at the University of Manchester and the first Briton on the international team of editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls...
...Allegro's method is to delve behind the surface meaning and context of biblical words, conjuring instead with their frequently erotic root meaning ("Christian," he says, is a derivation from the Sumerian meaning "smeared with semen"). These half-forgotten roots, Allegro maintains, link the characters and stories of the Bible to the orgiastic, often outlawed mushroom cults of the Near East. For example, the Greek word for "stumbling block," which is used to describe the crucified Christ in Corinthians I, once meant "bolt," which leads Allegro to connect it with the phallus-shaped "bolt-plant" mushroom; thus he concludes...
...that Jesus actually lived in Judea than that the mushroom ever did. Last week 15 distinguished theologians and philologists -including Sir Godfrey Driver, one of the chief translators of the Old Testament in the New English Bible -took to the letters columns of the Times of London to denounce Allegro's book as "an essay in fantasy rather than philology," which is "not based on any philological or other evidence" of merit...
...Mozart String Quintet in G Minor K. 516 followed Schumann and was a big improvement. The addition of Isidore Cohen, who played well all evening, bolstered the violin sound immensely and the two violinists were very competent. Again, however, the piece got off to a slow start. An opening Allegro, thick in texture but still meant to move along easily and swiftly, was too slow. Furthermore the group slowed down perceptibly toward the end of the movement, as much as six to twelve beats a second. Then, as if the Schumann had not sufficiently apprized the audience of a certain...
After this nadir, the concert got under way in earnest. The last two movements of the Mozart went quite well. They chose exciting tempi and played with admirable feeling and expression. The final Allegro was particularly pleasing with a nice rhythmic drive, and exactness of nuance, and an attention to phrasing which deserve praise...