Word: musicalities
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...slight-framed pianist named Alec Templeton. Pianist Templeton was blind, but he had large, sensitive ears. Chicago listeners were amazed at his uncanny versatility. He could ripple through a Mozart concerto with thorough orthodoxy, and next minute go to town in a jammed-up version of The Music Goes 'Round and 'Round. Not only could he swing Bach, he could Bach swing. He could improvise in the style of any classical composer, aid get such a good likeness that most listeners were fooled...
...Pianist Templeton moved on to Manhattan. Manhattanites liked his improvisations on any theme that was tossed up to him. His musical satires* floored them completely. Stoop-shouldered, solemn Templeton would sit at the piano and reproduce the sound of a whole Wagnerian opera, pounding out brass chords, yodeling out-of-tune soprano arias and throaty German tenor recitatives. From Wagnerian opera he would turn to Italian opera, lieder singing, Gilbert & Sullivan, the bedlam inside a music conservatory. Last week Pianist Templeton brought his improvisations and caricatures to Carnegie Hall, where they formed the dessert of a program of more conventional...
...Chinese the art of music is distinctly old stuff. In 2600 B. C., when the skin-clad savages of Europe were tootling shinbone flutes and walloping tomtoms, China's cultured Emperor Huang-ti established a standard scale for all China's musical instruments. When the T'ang Dynasty passed out in 907 A. D., Chinese music declined somewhat. But cultivated Chinese have always regarded music as one of China's most important arts...
Like Occidental music, Chinese falls into two camps: classical and popular. Most of what U. S. listeners hear (in Chinatown theatres and restaurants) belongs to the popular type. But last week Manhattanites got a chance to hear samples of China's classical music played by the highest-browed of China's highbrow musicians. The concert was sandwiched in as part of a show given by the Chinese Cultural Theatre Group, a troupe that had reached Manhattan by way of several west coast cities. Their play-acting was not up to Chinatown's level. But the music, delicately...
...most U. S. ears, Chinese music is at best incomprehensible, at worst a painful noise. To Chinese ears and minds it is not only pleasant but instructive. Philosopher K'ung Fu-tze (Confucius), himself a ch'in (zither) player of no mean order, considered music one of the six fundamental factors in education. In China's great days, music was a required subject for budding administrators. Hundreds of learned books were written about...