Word: brasses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...from platoon (45 men) to division (20,000) in combat, and led the first big Marine victory in the Pacific (on Guadalcanal, where his 1st Marine Regiment killed 1,000 Japanese overnight on the Tenaru River). Perhaps his hardest fight came after the war, when President Truman and Pentagon brass tried to make the Marines a lightweight police force...
During the four years since Britain recognized Red China, the British charge d'affaires in Peking suffered the kind of humiliation that a century ago would have led Lord Palmerston to dispatch a gunboat. The top Communist brass snubbed him; their juniors let him cool his heels in anterooms. His mission consisted largely of trying to free Britons who had been clapped in jail by Mao Tse-tung, and trying to get compensation for British firms whose assets had been expropriated by the Reds. The Communists never bothered to send diplomatic representation to London...
...musician knows, it takes a lot of brass to be a tuba player. Generally, tubas range in size from the B-flat tenor (10 Ibs., 151 in. of tubing), which is hugged to the player's chest and sometimes goes pah-pah, to the large, economy-size B-flat bass (29 Ibs., 387 in.), which is often worn somewhat like a life preserver and mostly goes oompah. One thing that tuba players have in common is a fear that audiences are laughing at them. To many nonmusicians, indeed, the tuba appears absurd -there is always some fellow...
...Call. Catelinet, who started out as a child in the brass section of a Salvation Army band, now plays tuba for both London's Philharmonia Orchestra and the London Symphony. Six weeks ago, he got an important call. The London Symphony, preparing for its soth jubilee concert, had asked Ralph Vaughan Williams, Britain's No. 1 composer, to write a special composition for the celebration. Vaughan Williams just happened to have a tuba concerto * lying around, agreed to have it played if the orchestra had a tubaman up to the job. Would Catelinet like to audition for Vaughan...
...there was a mix-up at the concert: Catelinet's place on the program was changed without his knowledge, and he had to wait in the wings, hugging his tuba, for 20 minutes. By the time they got onstage, both Catelinet and his instrument (which, like all cussed brasses, needs a lot of last-minute tootling to warm it up) had a case of chills. The orchestra broke into the concerto, and the tuba came in disconcertingly off cue. The whole first movement, in fact, sounded as if there were pigeons in the brass, alas...