Word: themes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...runoff. His well-organized advertising campaign depicted him as the youthful symbol of France's future, a kind of French Kennedy ("John Fitzgerald Lecanuet," sneered the Gaullists). His toothsome telegenicity seemed to grow with each appearance on television, though he began the campaign a virtually unknown Senator. His theme was vive the Common Market, vive united Europe, vive NATO. It won the rare endorsement of "Mr. Europe" himself, Jean Monnet...
...competition produces some of the most breathtaking displays in the country. The prize for gaudiness goes to E. J. Korvette's, which prides itself on a huge semicircular tree of lights that juts out from the building's side and shines for 20 blocks. Claiming that religious themes cannot be handled with discretion, Lord & Taylor plays out its "Christmas Is Love" theme with nuzzling poodles, smooching skunks and necking giraffes...
Store managers, in general, figure that the theme does not matter so long as the display catches the eye. Comments the display director for a big department store outside Washington: "Decorations act as a little alarm clock to tell people that Christmas is just around the corner. They are a way to remind people that if they wait until the last minute they won't get their shopping done...
...tiny masterpiece of physical comedy, as rigorously controlled as ballet in its step-by-step demolition of an elegant dinner party by two nincompoop waiters for whom a dog, a banana peel, three whipped-cream cakes, and a lady in a sliding tiara add up to disaster. The theme of tit-for-tat destruction, a comedy cliche raised to classic stature by Laurel and Hardy, is the starting point for an excerpt from their pie-in-the-face epic Battle of the Century. Whether dangling from the girders of an unfinished skyscraper, flattening a bungalow as they build...
...second method is to put the same melody in different contexts. This constitutes a strong return to the classical tradition. Probably the best example is Bach's The Art of the Fugue, in which one theme is put in hundreds of different harmonic, rhythmic, and mood contexts. Davidson played at this method continually Thursday night, perhaps most successfully in "Stately I." The harmonies sound awfully dissonant at first--as did regular triads in the Middle Ages--and the mood changes are more extreme than those in Bach, but the technique is similar...