Word: glissando
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...Glissando Lecture. Indeed, Arnstein takes such proprietary interest in his scores that he refers to them as "our music," frequently advises the composers on how to simplify complex rhythms and smooth awkward transitions. They are accustomed to Arnie's wee-hour phone calls (he knows all their working habits) and the familiar question, "Do you really mean this?" In the case of obvious irregularities, many composers trust him so implicitly that they tell him to do the patchwork. In one instance, when Arnstein was confronted with a low F for the violins-it just does not exist on that...
...overlook some revolutionary developments in flute technique: 1) the range is now six-plus octaves: 2) there are four ways to produce sound besides the normal way-"air rush," "buzz," "hhh-ttt" and "pop"; 3) the mobility of the performer reveals new potentialities for "stereophonic glissando," antiphony between direct and reflected sound, etc. Such potentialities signify the emergence of a new musical humanism...
...work is, above all, a fantasy, and as such it ranges about much more than the 10-minute-long Variations. Leaving its stormy rhetoric, it becomes pensive, then playful, and sprints away into the upper registers to drift off into what is marked "no tone." At another point a glissando emerges from the rattle motive to dive upon the melody below, swoop up again pursued by a line of single notes, and exhaust itself in a final upward surge...
...Slithery Glissando. The Mixturtrau-tonium, originally developed by a German physics professor in 1930 and later refined by Engineer-Composer Oskar Sala. is a complicated monster operated by pressing the fingers on two strings through which runs a weak electric current. By shifting his fingers along the strings much like a violinist and by working switches and pedals, the player can-at least theoretically-produce notes and pre-set chords of every imaginable color, frequency and strength. But so far the Mixturtrautonium can be played only by Engineer Sala...
...unwilling to "speak of his own emotional life: to exhibit naked feeling appeared as a breach of etiquette." Mild-mannered Cyclopedist Blom, 66, also sharpened up his donnish ax on the Queen's English and "made war" on certain usages that irked him. Among the casualties: GLISSANDO, which Blom calls a "mock-turtle with a French head and an Italian tail . . . unfortunately used by composers anywhere but in Italy," and TONE (used for "note" in twelve-tone music), which "has been accepted in America," says Grove V severely, "but must not be allowed to impose itself on the English...