Word: corno
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...Londoners read such music reviews (feuilletons to the journalists of the day) in Thomas Power ("Tay Pay") O'Connor's evening Star. Often infuriating because the glib reviewer seemed to know everything and to assume that his readers knew nothing, the articles were signed "Corno di Bassetto'' (basset horn- an old wind instrument now superseded by the clarinet). This week, publication of the collected Corno di Bassetto's Star pieces† reminded old (81) George Bernard Shaw's loyal public that he had served his hitch with the musical dead watch long, long...
Shaw boasts that he got his Star post "because I believed I could make musical criticism readable even by the deaf." As Corno di Bassetto he succeeded partly by being flip, partly by avoiding, to the scandalized amusement of his colleagues, the technical aspect of music. Nevertheless, Shaw had a sound background. With the aid of his mother and a singing teacher who had moved into their Dublin house, he had developed a skilled but "uninteresting" baritone voice, had learned the piano and mastered in great detail a tremendous lot of musical scores, mostly the operas of Meyerbeer and Verdi...