Word: musicalization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...impressive display for a composer whose first memorable work was completed at age 48 and whose musical merit was debated for years. An ardent nationalist and legendary eccentric, Janacek composed music full of short, abrupt but harmonically lovely melodies that built from one another into a driving whole. His symphonic works called for more brass and slashing power than many an orchestra could muster. Because Czech consonant clusters are so prickly, his operas were considered hopeless tongue twisters by singers outside his country. The subjects-time warps, prison-camp life, child murder-left audiences pining for the heraldic posturing more...
Today Janacek is ranked among the most original of 20th century composers. His bristly textures seem attuned to the turmoil of modern life; his fascination with the melodic patterns of speech, bird calls and animal cries appeals to contemporary music's interest in sounds. Janáček's chilling opera, The Makropoulos Affair, about a glamorous woman cursed with a 300-year life span, has recently been performed in San Francisco and at the New York City Opera. The Metropolitan Opera and Santa Fe have also staged major Janáček productions...
...musical genius did not really bloom until he was 63. Then he fell madly in love with Kamilla Stoesslova, the pretty young wife of an antique dealer. Although the composer always contended that their love was platonic, hundreds of steamy letters, discreetly tucked away in the local Janáček Museum, seem to belie his claim. The affair inspired a unique musical outburst. By the time he died at age 74 (some say while pursuing a woman through a nearby woods), Janáček had written four blazingly original operas, orchestral pieces and chamber music and the immense...
...State Theater, which originally staged most of Janáček's operas; the Brno State Philharmonic; the Czech Philharmonic; scores of folk singers and choirs. The Czech Philharmonic, one of the grander Old World orchestras, offered a smoothed-out, spruced-up version of the composer's music, while the more regional Brno orchestra left the burr in Janáček's rough edges. Lacking singers of international caliber, the Brno ensemble fared poorly in such star vehicles as The Makropoulos Affair. But Mr. Brouček was a crowd favorite, both because of the sensuous...
...bound to happen. Dolly Parton, the cantilevered queen of country music, was stuffed as usual into skintight duds at the twelfth annual Country Music Association Awards at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Just before the announcement came that Dolly had won the Entertainer...