Word: pistone
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Before he decided to be a full-time composer at 27, Walter Piston worked as a draftsman for the old Boston Elevated Railway (he helped draw plans for an "articulated streetcar") and studied painting. His painting teacher advised him: "Don't be afraid to make a poor one." Since then, unafraid Composer Piston, now 64, has turned out a steady flow of works, none of them poor, most (including a 1948 Pulitzer-prizewinning Third Symphony) concise, witty, technically brilliant. Last week the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed the latest Piston, Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, to warm applause. As played...
...French Composer Henry Barraud's Third Symphony, played on the same program with Piston. It proved to be a craggy piece that achieved its emotional impact through a series of sharp contrasts. The music was by turn slow, dense, lyrical, harsh, full of sharp emotional edges. Composer Barraud got a polite hearing but sent his audience delving into their programs in search of the unifying idea the music seemed to lack. CJ Peter Mennin's Piano Concerto, performed in Manhattan by the Cleveland Orchestra, which commissioned the work, along with eight others, to celebrate its 40th anniversary...
...students have come to Harvard only to study the department, they are the least neglected. Candidates for a Ph.D. must have a certain number of courses and guidance in order to receive a degree, and although doctorates are only awarded in the field of musicology, the presence of Walter Piston and Randall Thompson on the faculty attracts many composition students. Nevertheless, with only six permanent members in the department, even the graduate students must be content with all too few courses and very little variety...
...there is very little room for electives (honors and non-honors candidates alike take six courses, almost all full courses), which is just as well, because the Department does not offer very many electives. Although an undergraduate occasionally can enter a graduate course--there is a Freshman in Professor Piston's composition seminar this year--most are restricted to a very small selection of courses...
...large blocks to satisfy any last-minute demand by Soviet VIPs. A foreigner can usually wangle a seat at the last moment, even if a nontitled Soviet citizen must be bumped just before takeoff. In flight, meals are heavy and ordinary, include Georgian wines, vodka and cognac. The piston planes are un-pressurized, and many of the TU-1O4 jets are pressurized to a cabin altitude of only 9,000 ft. (v. 5,000 ft. for U.S. planes), carry oxygen masks next to each seat for passengers who cannot stand the thin...