Word: counterpoint
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This quartet naturally demanded a form of its own; for categorizing these feelings as movements would sap their strength and question what such emotions really have to do with one another. The two movements present a succession of moods, often with sudden changes. One passage superimposes a subdued counterpoint in the violins over coarse grindings from the other pair and thereby stresses each feeling all the more. (It is interesting that Elliot Carter did the same in his first quartet--here, if you demand it, is a Zeitgeist.) But unlike Carter and Moevs, Layton does not set slow, soft melodies...
...Farnaby becomes the willing catechumen of Pala's nubile adams and eves, who live in a state of highly sophisticated innocence. In fact, the substance of the book is Farnaby's slow indoctrination into Pala's delights and mysteries, expounded in interminable conversational counterpoint to the corruption of his own world...
...much for lament. Director Sarah Caldwell saw how much mime matters in this drama; conductor Lazla Halasz perceived the continual recurrence of counterpoint and fashioned a clear texture to exploit the score's intricate dove-tailing of motifs. Meistersinger does not employ Wagner's half-mystical interweaving of words and orchestration. Rather, it makes the orchestra a commentator on the drama's events. This Halasz recognized, and gave the orchestra the subtleties of dynamics and tempo demanded by its place in the opera...
...gave Mr. Diaz a chance to display the scope of guitar literature and his own technical and musical excellence. In the Sor Variations on a Theme by Mozart, admittedly a showcase piece, Diaz dazzled his listeners with speed and bell-like clarity. In the Bach Fugue, Diaz heightened the counterpoint by playing each voice with a different tone quality...
Sequence after sequence can only be discussed in terms of painterly composition. There is constant visual counterpoint between the lines of the palace walls and the positions of the actors' bodies; Nikolai Cherkassov (Ivan) moves elegantly and always in such a studied way that the complements the total geometry of the scene. Standing on the ramparts of a fortress he gestures formally to the double, symmetrically snaking line of Muscovites in the distance. His hand, directly in the foreground and at right angles to the leaders of the crowd, effects a marvelously heightened feeling of perspective which, in turn, enhances...