Word: pizzicati
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Pellas and Melisande, composed as incidental music to the Maeterlinck dramatic poem. Biss achieved a good variety of sonorities in the four richly orchestrated movements. In the Prelude the orchestra sounded rich and as one unit; at other times, as in the second movement, subdued violins contrasted sharply with pizzicati in the celli and wood-wind solos. The dance-like quality attained in the third movement was excellent. The music lost direction, however, in the Marche Funebre, when Biss had to struggle to keep the dotted rhythms under control...
...Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis could have been received either as a magnificent catharsis or as an offensive, over-extended tear-jerker. The audience chose the cathartic interpretation, even though the members of the string orchestra did not end their chords together, did not play their pizzicati together, and did not all tune to the standard of pitch habitual in civilized countries...
...woman suggested that the work for piano four hands-two on the keyboard (Lukas Foss) and two with mallets on the strings inside--be called "Murder in the Cathedral." In "Air Antique," cellist Howard Colf's delicate, ghostly left hand pizzicati held the audience literally gaping. Assisting countertenor Richard Levitt transformed his voice into a dazzling clarion in an improvisation on an Italian madrigal, "Dolcissima mia vita...
...puzzle-solving exercise in musical mathematics. Built on the commentary between voices, it has a dissonant restlessness that becomes first almost flippant, then explosive with sonority. Dark and intense, it is never murky and is sharply etched with sudden fast notes in the first violin and several kinds of pizzicati in the second...