Word: music
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Died. Eric Blom, 70, scholarly, Swiss-born music critic for the London Observer, who spent eight years (1946-54) editing the 8,350,000-word, nine-volume fifth edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians; in London...
Politics was not the only problem that ever bothered Larry Adler. For a long time there was the matter of talent. The son of a Baltimore plumber, he was tossed out of the Peabody School of Music in short order. Diagnosis: a tin ear. He was 13 when he read that the Baltimore Sun was sponsoring a harmonica contest. He spent three weeks teaching himself to play, won, and wasted little time heading for New York...
Pete Kelly's Blues (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). The music, in this series about a cornet player forever running head on into underworld bricks, is authentically blue, but the story line is too often merely mauve...
...called Dreamland. Among them are Mickey, a gum-chewing spend-thrift running away from a sordid home, Yasumi, a loan shark who finally claws her way out of the business, and Yori, a weakling who despises prostitution but cannot stay away. Against a background of neon lights and haunting music, these women suffer, cheat, show flashes of compassion, and dream about escape. One who originally sold herself to support her son goes insane when the son renounces her. Another drives her tubercular husband to suicide by working at Dreamland to save him. And throughout the theme repeats itself: innocent girl...
...continual fascinations of contemporary music is the tension between originality and tradition arising from apparently conflicting ideals of being at once modern and timeless. While composers plead for the chance to break free from the constraints of the 18th and 19th Centuries, they tacitly concur with the critics (and the audiences), who cling to their touchstones, comparing every modern composition to the classical paragon in its form, usually harshly, often unfairly applying criteria that are not altogether suitable. The composer faces the choices of breaking definitely with the musical past; or creating a new mainstream of music by appealing...