Word: instrument
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They laughed when Andres Segovia sat down to play the guitar. The nerve of the ( man, bringing a flamenco instrument into the hallowed precincts of the concert hall. "That stupid young fellow is making useless efforts to change the guitar -- with its mysterious, Dionysiac nature -- into an Apollonian instrument," wrote one skeptic after Segovia's 1910 debut in Madrid. "The guitar responds to the passionate exaltation of Andalusian folklore, but not to the precision, order and structure of classical music...
That assessment was, to say the least, inopportune. When he died last week at 94 in the Spanish capital, Segovia had put the guitar on a near equal footing with the piano, violin and cello as a solo concert instrument; he had also won for himself a place among the most influential performers of the 20th century...
Born in Linares, a village in southern Spain, young Andres briefly studied the violin. But his teacher was a harsh martinet, and Segovia was unmoved by the sound of the instrument. "The violinists and cellists I heard in the Granada of that time seemed to extract catlike wails from the violin and asthmatic gasps from the cello," he wrote in Segovia, his 1976 memoir. "But even in the hands of common people, the guitar retained that beautiful plaintive and poetic sound...
Health-care institutions pay a manufacturer about $9 a phone, then charge patients about $12 to use the instrument during their stay. And since many patients formerly walked off with standard-issue phones (average price: $75), the theft of a disposable phone is less costly. Says Kendall Gallagher, a Mini-Phone vice president: "A patient confronted with a hospital bill might feel he's entitled to everything in the room, including the phone." Philadelphia's Mercy Catholic Medical Center estimates that it saves between $50,000 and $75,000 a year by installing the discardable devices. Indeed, they have proved...
Ramey's silken voice, which ranges high into traditional baritone territory, is worlds apart from the toneless barking and roaring that too often pass for singing among basses. A flexible, liquid instrument, it can scale the trickiest Rossini coloratura passages or rattle the rafters in triumph...