Word: roussell
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Byzantine Deceit. Like a lot of Frankish knights of the day,11th century Roussel de Balliol offered his sword for hire-and even then, before the Crusades, the steadiest work around was fighting the infidel. When Roussel and his troop of 300 mailed warriors got a chance to hire out to the Emperor of Byzantium to fight the Turks, he jumped at the chance. Out in Asia Minor, at the very frontiers of the Christian world, there were chances which a mercenary might never have in Europe...
...government announced its intention to let the penal colony "disappear by extinction." Red tape, lassitude and the demands of World War II slowed down the process, but last February the government decided to bring home the last convicts and libérés. Last week Théodore Roussel, a freed man who had spent more than 50 of his 76 years in French Guiana for a long-forgotten robbery, gazed blankly at the soft landscape of his native land. "I can't blame anyone but myself," he said of his wasted life. "I was headstrong...
...Roussel: The Spider's Feast (Paris Philharmonic conducted by René Leibowitz; Esoteric). The composer's most popular work, in an LP première. The music was written for a ballet (vintage 1912) about insects, but it is a work of freshness and real symphonic flow...
Still, Munch is a perfectionist. The string session had to play a passage from Roussel's Ballet Suite Le Festin de L'Araignee four times before it attained the precise dynamic contrast Munch wanted. Otherwise, the orchestra got through the rather dull score without mishap...
Play together they did. In their first appearance at Paris' international Festival of the Arts, they offered modern French (Roussel, Honegger) and American (Barber, Piston) music, and left the audience (including President Auriol) shouting itself hoarse. In courtly appreciation, the orchestra and Conductor Munch broke a long-standing symphonic rule and played an encore. Two nights later came the success of Monteux, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring...