Word: instrument
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Attached to each instrument was a transducer, which converted the instrument's output into electronic signals. The signals were then mixed, balanced, amplified and blown out at the audience through loudspeakers. The effect was sometimes as intense and attention-riveting as listening to records through earphones; too often it was more a nightmarish stew of French horns sounding like tubas, trumpets like cornets, strings like wood saws. It did not help, of course, that Revenaugh had to surrender the conductor's usual command over tone and blending to the man at the sound console...
Thus one serious casualty of the war has been the U.S. military itself, the instrument of that will. Abnormal requirements for instant manpower?and the disaffection of so many of the educated young?lowered the services' standards to some extent. Said one senior Army officer: "Calley would never have become an officer if we were not so short-handed." As the war ground on, the protest movement infected the Army itself. "Fragging" became part of the new vocabulary of the '60s. Occasionally units refused orders to go into combat. "Grunts" smoked marijuana openly at their firebases. Thousands came home contaminated...
That kind of zest allows Mother Earth to orbit well above its material; the audience is able to forget that the writing was done with an instrument rather more blunt than that skywriter's chisel. ∎Laurence I.Barrett
...player of a melody instrument, Brueggen's foremost interest is in the declamation of the most immediate musical units. He maintains, justifiably, that the long-line concept (climaxing in Wagnerian "endless melody") simply did not exist for the Baroque performer. Overall, his playing is clearly articulated, with careful attention to dynamic inflection, colorful ornamentation, and intimate shaping of each individual phrase. For some listeners, his approach may seem to personal--too free in rubato, too extreme in the use of swell and vibrato. But, here it is necessary to keep in mind that there is substantial historical evidence in support...
...because Beck is not a real innovator, either. He is, however, a genius among those musicians who work in form-sound, minor electronics and the like. His technique and attack are unparalleled because his ideas come only out of a desire to wrench original sounds out of his instrument. Which in turn comes from his lucky combination of talent and barely-checked ego. Beck's out there because he likes to listen to himself play...