Word: avant
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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SATIE: PIANO MUSIC, VOL. 3 (Angel). Debussy called Erik Satie "a sweet medieval musician who wandered into this century." He made a living playing the piano in the bars of Montmartre, drank with Duchamp, Man Ray and the other Dadaists, and wrote breezy little avant-garde compositions. With their whimsical titles (The War Song of the King of the Beans, Waltz of the Chocolate with Almonds) and seemingly random harmonies, they are surprisingly fresh after 50 years. Much of the credit for the exuberant mood of this record goes to Aldo Ciccolini, who plays with such easy mastery that...
...damned thing after another, indeed; also one tragic, surprising and perplexing thing after another. During the first eight months of 1968, events have moved at the pace of an avant-garde movie edited by a mad cutter. The alarms, the assassinations, the political reversals and the extremist cries have been so overwhelming that even last week's Czechoslovak tragedy may seem like only one more episode by Christmas. The common reaction is "What a year!", followed quickly by "What next?" Was there ever a year that could match this one for continued shocks, for a sense that "things fall...
Overt Hostility. The college's difficulties stem from both lack of leadership and the overt hostility of its New Hampshire neighbors, whose Yankee conservatism clashes with Franconia's avant-garde aims. Unintentionally, perhaps, the school quickly earned a reputation as a refuge for well-to-do but offbeat students (total yearly cost: $3,400). Last year more than one-third of Franconia's students were either transfers or dropouts from other colleges. Teachers in refuge from more orthodox corners of academe were attracted by the innovative spirit at an almost completely faculty-run school...
...Polish avant-gardist. Grotowski argues that theater exists to shatter taboos that separate man from himself. The relentless iconoclasm of the age has pretty much destroyed religious, political and social taboos. According to Grotowski, only the human body retains an aura of sanctity that lends itself to exposure, shock and outrage...
...Cleverness ("She breathed on him (though a young lady should not eat, because of the known redolence of onions, onions) onions."), hyperbole ("his insides, like spoilt cats demanding milk as lava begins to engulf the town and the cats with it, complained and switched on a kind of small avant garde chamber piece for muted brass") and poetry ("Out in the gull-clawed air, New Year blue, the tide crawling creamily in, Enderby felt better.") become a tedious camouflage instead of a clear glass over the subject, the criterion of truly good style. Burgess, as defensive or more...