Word: robinson
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...Robinson is quite arbitrary in picking six cherished operas as his text, and even more so in including Schubert's two greatest song cycles, on the theory that they are "distinctly operatic." His basic argument is that Mozart's Marriage of Figaro expresses the Enlightenment's belief in reason and reconciliation, that Rossini's Barber of Seville reflects the post-Napoleonic withdrawal from emotional involvement, and that Schubert's Winterreise and Schöne Müllerin represent the Romantics' concentration on the individual and his relationship to nature. Similarly, he asserts that Berlioz's Trojans dramatizes the 19th century's obsession...
...heavy argument indeed. But Robinson does not pursue it doggedly or even systematically (to have done so with such elusive material as music would have been painfully Procrustean). What he offers instead is an interesting potpourri of perceptions, suggestions and possibilities. He demonstrates, for example, the despair of the hero of Winterreise by noting that Schubert consistently describes reality in a minor key and changes into the major only when he is shifting into fantasy. This is a somewhat technical point, necessarily, for most writing about music is either technical or gush. In addition, Robinson has the wit to confess...
That said, Robinson nonetheless achieves the true purpose of criticism: to impel his reader to return to the music itself, and to hear it anew. --By Otto Friedrich
Just who was this man, and where did he get off telling South Africa's Ambassador how his country should be run? No matter. Randall Robinson, 6 ft. 5 in. of polished brass, kept boring in. Accompanied by several civil rights advocates, including District of Columbia Delegate Walter Fauntroy, Robinson went to the South African embassy on Massachusetts Street in Washington and demanded of then Ambassador Bernardus Fourie that the Pretoria government release its political prisoners and extend civil rights to blacks. Fourie demanded that his visitors leave, but Robinson and the others refused. Arrested, they spent the night...
That incident a year ago this week started one of the longest continuous demonstrations in U.S. history. Picketing and arrests organized by Robinson's Washington-based TransAfrica lobby occur every weekday in front of the South African embassy. They have ignited flares of protest in 26 other U.S. cities, pushing the Reagan Administration into toughening its mild "constructive engagement" policy toward South Africa...