Word: instrumentality
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Loudspeakers carried the countdown across the claw-shaped coral atoll to scientists huddled in and around instrument-filled trenches. Radio carried it to some 40 ships and 100 aircraft of Joint Task Force 8 deployed over 6,000,000 sq. mi. of the Pacific. One of those aircraft, an Air Force B-52, sped at high altitude toward the island. In the operations center, Dominic's scientific director, William Elwood Ogle, wearing khaki shorts and a green aloha shirt, nodded to Joint Task Force 8's commander, Major General Alfred Dodd Starbird, a tough, tall...
Strange & Haunting. In the 13-minute unaccompanied chorale Chorus of Dido, Nono as usual used the voice as a musical instrument, at times calling upon performers to jump two octaves, insisting that consonants as well as vowels be stressed, introducing a kind of staccato syllabification that somehow managed not to obscure the text. What gave Dido its strange and haunting power was the deft balance of the vocal writing-so carefully calculated that all 32 choristers were able to sing together without destroying the work's flexible texture...
...Bombs. Nono, who regards the voice as "the perfect instrument," is not worried about overburdening singers ("Only composers like Mascagni ruined voices-because they did not understand vocal problems"). Son of a wealthy Venetian engineer, Nono studied music and law simultaneously, was greatly influenced by the works of Composer Arnold Schoen-berg-whose daughter, Nuria Schoenberg, he later married. Now living in Venice, Nono turns out a steady two or three works a year, often calculating their complex connections in algebraic equations...
...gadgetry is not a U.S. monopoly: Mark X's includes twin tables with mirrors that fold out into the rear seat, and an air-conditioning system that can deliver different measures of hot and cold to each passenger. The big new Facel Vega II from France has an instrument panel designed to turn anyone with $9,800 to spend into a Mitty-style jet pilot-8 dials. 10 toggle switches. And Rolls Royce. unable to improve on perfection, is offering such titillations as a built-in refrigerator to go with the built-in bar and a water supply built...
Ever since lasers-a word and an instrument stemming from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation-were first perfected, their fierce, pure gleam has been one of the most revolutionary tools of advancing science. By stimulating the atoms of a synthetic ruby with brief bursts from a powerful strobe lamp, scientists demonstrated that they could produce spurts of "coherent" light -pure red light that is all of the same wavelength, all polarized in the same direction, and all traveling in phase in almost perfectly parallel beams. Such light can be focused so sharply that its energy is concentrated...