Word: legato
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...decided that he would not have to teach after all, and quit Harvard. Before he could leave for New York, however, Arthur Fiedler, director of the Boston Pops, asked him to start writing for the orchestra. Beginning with "Harvard Fantasy" in 1937, and continuing with "Jazz Pizzicato" and "Jazz Legato," Anderson's compositions have become perennial favorites of Pops audiences...
...Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. filled Carnegie Hall with bigwigs of business and music. Lynch sang such McCormack stock in trade as Macushla, Neapolitan Love Song and Che Gelida Manina from Puccini's La Bohème -and his voice sounded very nearly as clean and sweet, his Irish legato as rippling as McCormack...
...once. After playing for a few moments, my musical patient laid his instrument aside with an air of utter resignation. 'Doctor, that depression in the center of the palate is no good for me-the air becomes stranded in the hollow. I can't produce a normal legato...
...filled in the hollow. The results were gratifying, but not for long. After playing his instrument again, my patient was once again a picture of gloom. 'Doctor, my legato has improved . . . but now I lose my wind too quickly.' I partially closed up the arch in the bicuspid region. 'Fine,' said my patient after another experiment with his flute. [Then] the patient suddenly stopped and his face registered horror. 'Doctor, I'm losing my staccato...
Contrary to all the learned treatises that classicists may write on the subject, good jazz today is fundamentally a legato (smooth) style, rather than a staccato (jerky) style. How many times have you seen "Jazz is the result of playing melodies in short, heavily accented and staccato phrases." . . . That's like defining an automobile as a stagecoach. The definition and the symphony men's idea of jazz are 'way behind the times...