Word: timpanists
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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Stocky, energetic Saul Goodman, 46, timpanist (kettledrummer) and head of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony's percussion section, got a rare chance to do both last week in Manhattan. At the orchestra's first children's concert of the season, he surrounded himself with a dozen instruments of his profession and engaged them in a one-man battle against time in a piece called The Worried Drummer...
...Goodman took to drumming as a Boy Scout in Brooklyn (he thinks "Americans have special imagination and aptitude for drumming"). When he was in high school, he heard a concert by the Philharmonic, and was so fascinated by the timpani that he dashed backstage and asked to become the timpanist's pupil. Six years later his teacher retired, leaving 20-year-old Saul in charge of the percussion section...
...Plaster Fell." Happy as he is with his art, Goodman thinks the timpanist's skill is not sufficiently understood. He doubts whether even conductors-since few have ever been timpanists themselves -can thoroughly appreciate the subtleties of a kettledrummer's tone and pitch. But only the deaf can miss it when the percussion comes in wrong...