Word: backgrounding
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...background of this explosion were 1) Moscow, 2) oil. Ever since the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) curtly rejected Russia's claim for oil rights in northern Iran and forbade any Government to negotiate such rights till after the war (TIME, Dec. 18, 1944), Russia had been needling the Iranian Government. The Azerbaijan revolt looked like the substitution of action for frustrated diplomacy...
...hotel lobby a Chinese bride & groom have just posed for wedding pictures in the Chinese fashion: five austere black-gowned male relatives held the center of the portrait; the pretty bride in her white gown and the groom in his new black suit and wing collar were in the background...
Cold Garrets & Warm Music. A considerable amount of immortal music has been written in cold garrets, with an empty larder in the background. Richard Wagner and Felix Mendelssohn lived comfortable lives, but Mozart, after a life of penny-counting, was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave, and Franz Schubert sold his songs for as little...
Superfluous People. Prokofiev was a mature composer with a cosmopolitan background and a fully developed style when he returned. In the mid-'30s, Russia did not shoot but it did ostracize composers whose music did not keep time to the Marxian metronome. Prokofiev's first Soviet piece, Symphonic Song, was scorned by Russian critics for its "morbid resignation" and its "tendencies of urbanized lyricism." Wrote Soviet critic A. Ostretsov: "We do not dispute Prokofiev's right to reflect the emotional world of 'superfluous' people in the West, with their rottenness and putrefaction...
...President's sentiments sounded somewhat quaint and academic against the background of industrial strife and power politicking, perhaps this was not so much to the discredit of Harry Truman as it was indicative of the feckless fatalism of the public...