Word: bombastes
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Wylie thinks he has the answer for juvenile delinquency, the high divorce rate, national psychoses such as Naziism and "iron curtains." He presents his answers, as usual, in ups & downs of personal sharpness and pseudo-scientific bombast, glib epigrams and gassy notions, often pungent and more often appallingly slipshod prose. At his best, Iconoclast Wylie pinpricks as sharply as H. L. Mencken ; at his worst, he is as full of unenlightening heat as Westbrook Pegler...
Concertmaster Richard Burgin, who filled in for Koussevitsky last week, started his program with what proved to be a prime example of the Symphony's doubtful taste. He chose what should have been a musical treat, a Handel Concerto Grosso in D Minor; but he treated it with bombast instead of finesse, using a huge orchestra that included among other things ten double-basses to play something written for a tiny group of strings. Performed in that fashion, the Concerto lost all of the finesse and delicacy which make it a great work...
With their institution flanking the Charles on both banks, Techmen hold it unreasonable that in their daily routine they should be forced to turn to 'Harvard' for support. Editorial bombast in "The Tech," downstream undergraduate weekly, threatens to carry the issue to the cities of Cambridge and Boston and thence, if need be, to the legislature...
...Following close on the heels of the "Oberon" Overture, and Ravel's "Pavane for a Dead Infanta," the usually brilliant "Till Eulenspiegel" was not setoff effectively and seemed trite rather than amusing. This unintended effect was partially realized by Dr. Koussevitzky's insistence upon attacking the Weber with the bombast and brilliance usually reserved for Wagnor's "Rienzi" or "Die Meistersinger." "Oberon's" poetry and lyricism were largely overlooked. The Strauss was simply more of the same, and while the virtuosity of the Orchestra was startling, the musical meaning was missing...
Dividing the bill with Oedipus-and seeming as incongruous as a fashionable charm dangling from a severely classic bracelet-was Sheridan's 18th Century burlesque of the theater, The Critic. Ragging the playwright's vanity and the critic's venom, kidding the knee breeches off the bombast that then held the stage, The Critic is frequently amusing but fatally long. The Old Vic gave it as bright a production as Broadway is likely to see, and tossed in perhaps the most amazing quick-change that Broadway has ever seen. Half an hour after he had vanished...