Word: music
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Their music was pure "bluegrass," with Lester Flatt fingerin' away on the guitar and Earl Scruggs handling the five-string banjo. For 21 years they toured the country-music circuit, had their own radio show, and were rediscovered by pop America for their background music that was very much in the foreground of Bonnie and Clyde. Now Flatt, 54, and Scruggs, 45, have announced they are breaking up the act. Just why, they would not say. Friends report that the two have never been close, and now that both are well off financially, they see no reason to stick...
Preposterous as it may be, the astrology cult suggests a deep longing for some order in the universe?an order denied by modern science and philosophy. This is expressed by Danny Weiss, a 24-year-old partner in an astrologically hip music-recording outfit called Apostolic Studios, which is guided by top-ranking Astrologer Al Morrison, president of the Astrologers' Guild of America. Danny Weiss believes that the uptrend in astrology is a result of "an awakening of religious consciousness. People have lost faith in their old beliefs," he says. But "if you believe in the order of the universe...
Greece's avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis has a lofty artistic goal: to pre side over the marriage of 20th century science and music. "The two can no longer exist apart," he insists. "Musicians are being forced to recognize all kinds of technical advances. Their job is to catch up with them and guide them." This may be somewhat easier for Xenakis (whose full name is pronounced Yahn-nis Zen-nahk-ess) than for some of his peers. An accomplished architect, engineer and philosopher as well as a composer, he is enough at home with an IBM 7090 computer...
Whistles and Whips. Most of Xenakis' ear-jarring music is an extension in sound of the calculus of probability, one of whose basic concepts is Bernoulli's law of large numbers. It says, in effect, that the occurrence of any chance event-the roll of a seven in dice, for example, or the random collision of stray molecules in the atmosphere-is more likely to conform to the prescribed statistical odds with each successive attempt. To Xenakis, this mathematical absolute has profound philosophical meaning: it implies that the changing structure of certain events in life, including the sounds...
Despite its Pythagorean formality, however, Xenakis' music bears his ingeniously personal mark. For instance, during a composition called Eonta (which means "beings" in Greek) three trombonists and two trumpeters march to and fro about the stage while a pianist flays wildly away at the keyboard. In Terretektorh (one of the coined Greek words that he uses to title his pieces), the musicians blow whistles, rattle maracas, clap wooden blocks and crack small whips besides coaxing unearthly sounds from conventional instruments. As in Terretektorh, the entire orchestra will be scattered throughout the audience during the world premi...