Word: idiom
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Taylor has prospered in the fickle world of popular music for almost three decades and sold 29 million records by writing timeless songs like Sweet Baby James and You Can Close Your Eyes. Along the way, he has created a distinctive musical idiom. A James Taylor song is instantly recognizable for his limpid voice, sweet melody, deceivingly simple harmony and faultless guitar work. Its lyrics are those of an outsider. Yet unlike his contemporary Neil Young, Taylor is no musical rebel. He may have refined his idiom, but he rarely transcends it. His songs are as familiar and comfortable...
...total effect commanded attention as well. Under assistant conductor Channing Yu '93, the piece in its lusher moments evoked the fine string writing of Vaughan Williams. Yu has a knack for the Spanish dance idiom--one hopes that he will conduct Ravel's "Alborada del Gracioso" in the near future. The members of the orchestra were more than up to the task of the furious coda, never letting its fast tempo mar their phrasing...
This concerto has a late-classical sound unusual for music written fewer than twenty years after Bach's death. Though the structure and idiom of the middle movement were predictable, the finale was full of surprising figures and irregular phrases. The orchestra met the movement's polyphonic and rhythmic demands and maintained the character of the dance...
...Mendes are busy deconstructing British oldies like An Inspector Calls or finding quirky new takes on Shakespeare. But the directors of these American classics have treated them for the most part with straightforward fidelity. The second thing one notices is how well the British actors handle the American idiom. Aside from an occasional slip--listen for those long e's in been--the American accents are convincing, or at least unobtrusive...
...single picture: Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912. It became the star freak of the show--its bearded lady, its dog-faced boy. People compared it to a Navajo rug, a cyclone in a shingle factory, an earthquake in the subway. A dull brown painting in a Cubist idiom, its overlapping planes were partly derived from the motion-analysis photos of Etienne-Jules Marey. Its very title was ironic, almost insupportable. Nudes, in art, were not supposed to move, let alone walk downstairs. They were meant to stand or lie as still as statues. Movement suggested indecency, even though...