Word: counterpoint
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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JOHN CAGE: VARIATIONS IV (Everest). Composer Cage arranges a curious counterpoint to the playing of David Tudor by splicing a variety of noises into the staccato piano theme: the sound of traffic on the street outside, a patrician English girl chattering nervously, a chanteuse, a coloratura, a boy soprano, Florence Foster Jenkins murdering high D at the end of the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute. Oddly but irresistibly, they add up to a cry from the heart...
...Warsaw, a city rebuilt after being 87% destroyed in World War II, they could bargain for paintings along the broad Nowy Swiat, drink ice-cold Wyborowa vodka at the Krokodyl, or simply stare at the Vistula when the city's drabness overcame them. Rumania stands in warm counterpoint-from the white sand beaches of Mamaia on the Black Sea, where 30 well-appointed new tourist hotels stand, to the clean, well-lighted cafés of Bucharest's Boulevard Magheru, where one can sip sweet Pinot Noir or bitter Turkish coffee. Fully 200,000 Western tourists visited Rumania...
...than a fierce embodiment of divine purpose, as stiff and one-dimensional as those who have gone before. The movie sags at the center, weighed down by interminable closeups and sermons. The sound track swells with passages from Bach, Mozart, Prokofiev, Webern, an African Mass and-as an odd counterpoint to the Nativity-Odetta's recording of Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child. The strength of Pasolini's Gospel rests on those moments when he forgoes static, calendar-art conventions to fill the screen with direct, provocative and eloquent glimpses of what a Biblical film might...
...J.F.K., a common legacy of grace and style, a clear-eyed toughness, a springy vigor. Lindsay is even handsomer than Kennedy, but admirers noted that they had the same quick toothy smile, the straight-spined athlete's stride. Lindsay has borrowed from Kennedy the poking forefinger to counterpoint his speeches. His campaign for the mayoralty was hung from the same "get things moving again" line as Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign...
...first method would have depended for conference on perfect timing. The characters would have had to establish, by pause and gesture alone, a basic emotional rhythm. The surface chatter would have served as ironical counterpoint. The blend would have caught the spirit of the play perfectly...