Word: quaint
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Mozart: Die Zauberflote (Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Thomas Beecham conducting, with Tiana Lemnitz. Erna Berger, Helge Roswaenge, Gerhard Hüsch and other artists; Victor: 2 volumes, 3-7 sides). The 18th-Century Masonic symbolism ol Mozart's great, quaint, rollicking fantasy-opera The Magic Flute is pretty vague to present-day audiences. But the music is some of the most beautiful Mozart wrote. Its first complete recording, less perfectly tooled but more spectacular than the Glyndebourne Don Giovanni (TIME, Oct. 3), is the record of the month...
...rather, the last stand of her independence. All society, exemplified by aunts, veterans, parents and brothers, seems to be forcing her into a complicated ritual which has nothing to do with her relations with the doctor. As a result all the trappings-the flags, costumes, bridesmaids-seem as quaint and unreal as an anthropologist's description of some South Sea Islanders' marriage rite. Jennie surrenders, but only after she has discovered, by making eyes at the best man, that there is more than one way of getting her way, that conforming to society's demands...
...untutored occidental eye, "quaint" is the word for Persian miniature paintings. Humay Meeting Humayun (see cut), painted on silk about 1430, is a far cry from the type of pseudo-Persian fantasy, with harem maidens, moons and gazelles, affected by occidental illustrators. This painting, 6 by 8½ in., belongs to the Timurid period of 'Persian art, after the Mongol conquerors, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, had brought in Chinese influences. But there is no Chinese depth or shading in the picture. The pure red, gold, blue and green robes of the figures, their rouged cheeks and the formalized tree...
Buxtehude: Missa Brevis, and Johann Hermann Schein: Motet "Die Mit Tranen Säen" (Motet Singers, Paul Boepple conducting; Musicraft: 4 sides). In 1700, grand old man of European music was a Swedish composer and organist named Dietrich Buxtehude. His quaint, archaic Missa Brevis is as deft and complicated as a Renaissance tapestry. Composer Schein's motet, added for good measure, was written about half a century earlier...
Christmas in pastoral Bessarabia is visiting time. This Christmas a bitter, blizzardy Rumanian winter swept down off the Carpathians but the quaint railway cars that spin from Kishinev down to Galatz, Braila and Bucharest were thronged with festive, gaily-cloaked peasants visiting from village to village. East of Galatz two holiday trains sped along the winding, single-track line in a blinding storm. Someone had blundered, for they were running head on toward each other. Near Reni they crashed. For hours the dying lay with the dead in the heaping snow while rescue trains ploughed through from Galatz. Late Christmas...