Word: minuet
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This week London debutantes were rushing off to their dancing academies to learn the new Royal Minuet, prepared as "a tribute to H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth on the occasion of her 21st birthday." The first part (with dance partners side by side, hands crossed in front) was a sprightly gavotte; after that came a quick waltz-step chorus to be danced in ballroom style...
Arturo Toscanini, who had made it plain that he wanted no demonstrations, passed his 80th birthday quietly at home as he wished; but the NBC Symphony sneaked in a demonstration anyway. Delivered to his home, and played at dinner: a special recording (the Minuet from Schubert's A Minor Quartet), preceded and followed by recorded congratulations...
...nearby buildings, girls in slacks and boys in basque shirts scraped, fiddled, blew, banged and sang, and the noises elbowed each other like a musical Babel. Behind a boxed hemlock hedge a soprano and contralto sang a duet from Aida, beyond another hedge a section of cellos rehearsed the minuet from Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F Major. In the Music Shed on the greensward a Brazilian conductor, who spoke no English, sign-signaled a student orchestra through a too-briskly gaited Afternoon of a Faun. Koussevitzky observed: "Maybe fine conductor for Brazilian music but he needs...
Fielding's first importation was Conductor Andre Kostelanetz and wife Lily Pons. Critics mauled Kostelanetz's opening program of classical bromides and filigree jazz. Said the Daily Mail: "The minuet [third movement of Beethoven's First Symphony] was turned into a gallop and the finale beat all musical records on the dirt track. Lily Pons, otherwise Mrs. Kostelanetz, sang Lo, Here the Gentle Lark, Caro Nome and other coloratura tidbits. Such agile vocalizing may have impressed the film fans but it sounded very old-fashioned...
...others to keep their seats. At the piano he turned to remark: "When Stalin heard me play this he signed the protocol at Potsdam." The piano was not in good tune and Harry Truman was not in his best musical form. He confessed that he had finished the Minuet with a few bars of a Mozart sonata. Then there were autographs to sign-from a toy bear to a WAVE's leave papers...