Word: instrument
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...with stories of godlike visitors from the sky, riding in fiery chariots or on iron wings, arriving like "birds of thunder"? Indeed, the book's only illustration is drawing of an ancient stone carving found in Mexico in 1935. It looks remarkably like a figure bent over an instrument panel in a space capsule...
...clarity is its own kind of reward. Composer Elliott Carter admits that such works as his Pulitzer prize-winning Second String Quartet (1959) and the Double Concerto for Piano and Harpsichord (1961) were initially written with stereo in mind. In the dense antiphonal Double Concerto, for example, each solo instrument is set off against the other - one to a stereo channel - and each has its accompanying coterie of winds and strings. The resulting dialogue is almost Joycean in its plural textures and moment-to-moment subtleties. Recording studios also offer new technical means of composing, through such devices...
...accordion is a peculiar instrument. It is cumbersome. It has a lowbrow reputation. It can be used as winter quarters by mice. It has a lamentable tendency to lure performers into horrific displays of digital dexterity. It is also matchless at invoking with artful umpahs the special nostalgia that clings to Lili Marlene's Kaserne and the pastis-tinctured cafés of Edith Piaf s Paris...
...they have been fighting back, since 1938 at least, through the American Accordionists' Association. Its aim: to improve the reputation of the accordion as a concert instrument, mainly by encouraging composers to write for it. There is also a worldwide organization with somewhat downbeat initials (C.I.A.-for Confederation of International Accordionists), which last week brought accordionists from 15 countries to Manhattan's Hunter College assembly hall to play for the title of world champion...
...accordion itself-inconclusive and tinged with melancholy. But the serious contestants vindicated the proceedings with disciplined and evocative efforts on behalf of composers ranging from Bach to Hans Brehme. The winner was a Russian, Valeri Petrov. His two runners-up: Fellow Countryman Anatole Senin, who alternately coaxed from his instrument both the organlike richness and wintry delicacy necessary for Bach's organ Concerto in A-Minor, and American Pam Barker, who survived the technical terrors of Khatchaturian's Piano Concerto with impressive calm...