Word: musics
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Rooney and second was Artie Shaw, now felt up to the esthetic side of marriage. "I've grown up," said she. "I used to think books were only good for doorstops. Then I read one and found it habit forming. Now I read all the time. Same with music. I still like pop tunes but I'm getting to be a longhair too. A few years ago I thought anybody who liked to listen to symphonies wore long underwear...
...best bands there are--there's no doubt about that. There are bigger bands, usually preceded by prancing co-eds, suitably unattired. But there is no band that can play music quite as well...
...were commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation to write an American music drama, you would start looking for a play with intense dramatic interest. You would also do well to choose something set in a locale with a musical idiom...
...Lillian Hellman, and he calls the product "Regina." The play deals with a decadent, bickering Southern family which breaks to pieces over an unscrupulous money deal. The composer has worked into this a ball with many Southern belles and several appearances of singing and playing Negroes. In general the music effectively increases the tension, though, with a lack of variation in the first act which is exasperating. Many of the arias, particularly those of the sweet, flighty Birdie, are genuine mood pieces, effectively incorporating devices for a Southern flavor. Yet the music lacks the consistency of, say, "Peter Grimes...
...spite of these criticisms, however, Blitzstein's work is a success, and not only because he shows that an American can write a serious musical which is theatrically effective. The libretto--which he wrote himself--is concise with a welcome absence of trivia. The arias get somewhere and the words are skillfully treated in the music. Only once does he allow himself to be led astray by his social conscience into a long scene in which the Negroes make fun of the gossipping society at Regina's ball...