Word: fermata
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...performance, entirely by virtue of Yannatos' direction, was the amazing melodic truncations in the second movement. Following the return of the English horn melody, the first two chairs of each of the strings, muted, play the melody, yet are abruptly cut off twice. The ensuing silence, held in a fermata, was of great dramatic effect. This quiet and understated phrase, a mere five measures of the piece, was perhaps the most captivating of the evening...
...Fermata by Nicholson Baker (Random House). The author, whose specialty is upwardly pretentious soft porn, is puffed as a writer of something like satire, with something like a point of view. Baloney, as proved by this latest aid to heavy breathing: the smarmy tale of a fellow who learns how to stop the universe momentarily and uses the trick to undress women, then masturbate...
...phone-sex relationship -- that he is producing something like satire, driven by something like a point of view. A concept for our times: how safe can sex get, not just from infection but from imperfection, and of course from conception, though not from Baby Bell? His new novel, The Fermata (Random House; 303 pages; $21), is somewhat less elevated. A fermata, in music, is the extension of a note, chord or rest. What is extended, or stopped, in Baker's tale is the forward motion of the universe. His hero, a fellow named Arno Strine, has discovered that...
...Fermata indulges in a voyeuristic tease...