Word: musician
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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That night the papers carried the news which for a week had been kept a strict secret even from his own musicians: Arturo Toscanini, the greatest performing musician alive today, had retired. For almost a fortnight, his letter of resignation to RCA Board Chairman David Sarnoff had rested, unsigned, on his desk. Abruptly, on his 87th birthday, Toscanini made his decision, ran upstairs and signed it. Excerpt: "And now the sad time has come when I must reluctantly lay aside my baton and say goodbye to my orchestra ... I shall carry with me rich memories of these years of music...
...blurring from dream to reality and back again, like the moon in a mist. In his first dream, which takes place around the turn of the century, the composer meets an old man who tells him all about the good old days, back in 1830. In a flash the musician becomes a bugler, off to sound the charge on some sultan's daughter (Gina Lollobrigida) in Algeria. But after lolling awhile with Lollobrigida, he meets the old man again, and is off to 1790 for some wig-nuzzling with a willing aristocrat (Magali Vendeuil...
This kind of fare is varied with pure farce. In "The Woman in the Case," a double-bass player and an aristocratic beauty get acquainted after both have gone swimming and have had their clothes stolen. Chekhov's Russian undressing achieves its full flavor after the gallant musician, clad only in a top hat, starts to take the beauty home in his double-bass case and loses her. Eventually, the encased beauty is released in the midst of a musical soiree. In "Boa Constrictor and Rabbit," an expert tells how to seduce a married woman with patience, distance, praise...
...Without more encouragement the gauche musician sat down and began to play his C major Sonata. Before he had proceeded far, his host cried, 'Walt, Gott im Himmel, Clara must listen to this...
Faced with the loss of a hard-earned position, i.e., conductorship of Spain's National Orchestra, Argenta composed a second declaration. He was distressed. He apologized. He humbly affirmed that he was a musician and no writer. Perhaps, he explained, this accounted for the fact that he wrote something he really did not mean. His only aim had been to push and incite Spain's composers towards better production. Moreover, he had always been a convinced Falangist who "owes his personal peace, the peace of his family and the peace of his country to Franco and the Falangist...