Word: sackbuts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...RENAISSANCE BAND (Decca) contains pictures and demonstrations of archaic instruments such as the sackbut, the shawm and the krummhorn, which are used to play dances by Michael Praetorious, madrigals by Orlando di Lasso, and a solemn "battle symphony" by Heinrich Isaac probably performed during a play by Lorenzo the Magnificent (Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have composed a similar work). Recorded by the New York Pro Musica under the direction of its founder, the late Noah Greenberg...
...other hand, the sizeable musical score composed by Doris Schwerin is inept beyond belief, despite the announced research into foreign musical styles. The instrumentation calls for recorder, cornet, sackbut (ancestor of the trombone), 'cello, percussion, and piano (if there's any instrument ill-suited to the out-of-doors and to travel, it's the piano). One easily grasps that this score is meant to be satirical. But satirical music, like any other kind, can be good or bad. This is bad. (Having myself composed the score for the 1954 production of Marco, I know well what the problems...
Harvard musical, Lute, Flute, Lyre Sackbut, has won third place in a competition sponsored by Broadcast Music, Inc., to stimulate college composers and lyricists...
...Lute, Flute is not all bad. The opening number, "Lute, Flute, Lyre, and Sackbut," is the best piece of music in the show, and the second scene, a Harvard-Radcliffe dispute between Fran Blakeslee and Morey, contains some extremely clever lyrics. (Unfortunately, the next four scenes are the revue's worst.) The last scene in Act I--a spoof of Gordon Linden--and the three numbers at the end of the show are also successful. "Paradise Permanently Lost," in which an American an Italian, and a Swede try to make a movie out of Milton's work, is particularly fine...
Lute, Flute, Lyre, and Sackbut is a pleasant way to spend an evening, but it is also frustrating, because it could be so much better than it is. If Mr. Morey and Mr. Paul had tried to infuse all the scenes with songs as melodious as the title tune, and with lyrics as scintillating as those in the second number, they would have produced a fine piece of work. But by taking the easy way out, they have created only a big fat fluffball...