Word: dum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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According to Elkies, there is a similar simplicity in music. "Think of the simple opening--dum dum dum dum!--of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. In music you start out with a trivial motif and it turns into this beautiful, intricate composition," he says. "Again, it all stems from this small, very simple idea...
...Fair Lady, Henry Higgins put the question in a bouncing lyric: "Why can't a woman . . . ((ta-ta-ta-dum)) . . . be more like a man?" Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a major sex-discrimination case, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, that touches on some further questions that Professor Higgins never got to. Can a woman be too much like a man, at least in the eyes of some male colleagues? And if her career suffers because she strikes them as gruff and hard-nosed, is she being penalized for qualities that might be treated as assets...
...Violin Concerto by the Kansas City Symphony. "I know I wrote slurs over those eighth notes, but they're all jumbled together. They sound like mush." Davis jumps up and heads toward the conductor, score in hand. "We need to hear each one separately," he says. "Dig-a-da-dum!" he scats, his right hand punching the air in emphasis. All at once, something that had been mumbled turns articulate as the strings bite into their parts...
...good at casting, costumes, orchestration, design, marketing. Nothing slips through the net." When he does unwind, it is generally at his Steinway grand piano. "Want to hear some tunes?" he will ask, and a moment later will deliver several songs from Aspects in the tuneless dee-dee-dah-dum voice universally adopted by composers...
...about her. She can laugh in the face of one complicated situation after another," she notes. But more significant clues are to be found in the music. "Even the music laughs," she says. "When she sings, 'Ding, ding,' in her duet with Figaro, the orchestra goes, 'diddle, diddle, diddle dum,' which it doesn't do when Figaro sings the same phrase. To me that's the orchestra laughing...