Word: note
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Biblical teaching brought a new note of individual responsibility to war; the One God became the witness to every killing, the unerring judge of every motive. The basic Old Testament rules of warfare were laid down in Deuteronomy. Enemies within Israel were to be wiped out, and their cities razed, with the exception of the fruit trees. Cities outside Israel's borders were permitted to become tributaries. If they refused, the Bible permitted the killing only of the men -the women and children had to be taken as slaves. The Jews were also prohibited from fighting on the Sabbath...
...Observations on the Florid Song, which was the basic handbook for opera singers during the 18th century. In those days singers freely ornamented composers' scores with their own improvised embellishments in a style known as bel canto (literally, "beautiful singing") To today's purists, who worshipfully preach note-for-note fidelity to the composer the style is strictly bellow canto. Nevertheless, performances in opera houses and on recordings are now being laced with so many variations on old arias that Tosi would sing...
...such excesses came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when German composers such as Wagner and Strauss insisted on Werktreue- allegiance to the printed score. At the end f his career, even Verdi was threatening to sue any opera house that permitted singers to change a single note of his music. The castrato vogue gradually faded, and as the size and interpretive importance of the orchestra multiplied, the composer became the dominant figure in opera. "The singer's margin of creative and imaginative freedom was inevitably inhibited," says Pleasants, "and he became a single element...
Chance to Get Away. It had to happen, says Pleasants, if only as an antidote to the dulling sameness of the note-perfect performances. A boldly outspoken theorist, Pleasants goes so far as to say that this straitjacket is so confining that some pop vocalists such as Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra, whose jazz improvisations are a direct counterpart of bel canto, are "technically better than most opera singers." The voice of Ella Fitzgerald, whom he regards as the prima donna of pop, "is so naturally placed that she can sing more in a week than most opera singers...
...doctrinaire Pestering. He believes that capitalism is "on the defensive" and distrusts the "North Atlantic Protestant atmosphere" that favors private initiative. "Only totalitarianism and Communist compulsion," he says, "have succeeded in lifting poverty-stricken countries onto the road of progressive improvement." Balogh's tune has hardly changed a note since the early postwar era, when he proclaimed confidently that only the long continuance of direct economic controls could restore Europe's prosperity...