Word: czechs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...black, Czech-built Tatra limousine pulled up outside Bonn's White House, the Villa Hammerschmidt. Out stepped two East German diplomats, chilled from their unannounced eleven-hour journey over the icy autobahn from East Berlin. They carried a letter from East German Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht to West German President Gustav Heinemann...
Last week Husák all but completed his cleanup of the country's legislatures by forcing 63 liberals out of the Czech National Council, the parliamentary body for the Czech-speaking part of the country. Previously, liberals in the federal Parliament had been replaced by hardliners. Among those expelled in absentia from the Czech Council last week were Economist Ota Sik and Kafka Expert Eduard Goldstücker, former president of the Writers' Union, both of whom have gained refuge in the West. Said Dubček's onetime Culture and Education Minister, Ćestm...
...Only a cut above the amateur" was British Critic Ernest Newman's scornful evaluation of Czech Composer Leoš Janáček in a 1924 review of the opera Jenufa. "Atrocious drama and wretched theater," complained a New York Times critic after a 1931 performance of From the House of the Dead. Through years of such disasters,Janáček (pronounced Ya-na-chek) remained a proud, angry man who longed desperately for recognition and stubbornly believed that his peculiar brand of musicmaking would be vindicated. Now, four decades after his death, the often maligned composer...
...street, jotting down musical notations of individual speech patterns. He claimed to have recorded 60 distinct ways in which the word yes could be pronounced. He was also fascinated by bird calls, animal cries, and the whispering of leaves. Conversations between his dogs were carefully transcribed onto music paper. Czech Conductor Karel Ančerl, now music director of the Toronto Symphony, recalls the first time he saw Janáček: "I was returning home from a party with a few friends. A full moon lighted the park, and suddenly we saw a stocky man in a long overcoat...
...have anything to do with it." Atheist or not, Janáček had a profoundly spiritual appreciation of the value of life. One of his most powerful compositions is the Slavonic Mass-a soaring, jagged work for chorus, orchestra and soloists that has sometimes been used in Czech Catholic liturgical ceremonies. The Mass was a salute to nature, not God, and as usual Janáček's critics missed the point. After its premiere, one wrote sardonically that "the old man" was apparently turning to belief in God. Janáček answered with a bristling postcard...