Word: tocsins
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Where but at Harvard could a group call itself Tocsin? When spoken, the word carries a medicinal odor, rather than the intended echoes of a warning bell. Yet the group exists and, surprising for the "peace movement," its notes ring clear. Forged during the summer, it is preparing to sound the alarm about impending nuclear ruin...
Ringing the tocsin at this point is unhealthy, but it must be realized that if both East and West hold to their present claims there will be conflict. Since even the panic and patchwork diplomacy of Secretary Dulles is virtually unavailable, it is imperative that effective leadership be installed in the State Department...
...early hours one January morning, the clang of church bells broke the stillness over the vineyards and olive groves of Sant'Angelo in Villa, about 50 miles southeast of Rome. At the sound of the tocsin, villagers tumbled out of bed and, dressing as they ran, swarmed to the church, shouting threats. The alarm had been sounded by two early risers who had spotted the enemy on their way to work. The enemy: Parish Priest Andrea Tarquini, who, flanked by three carabinieri, had tried to slip secretly into the church to sign a document that the whole village considered...
...there, but the lyrics provide a startling illustration of just how differently they order these things in France. Sample: "The Father Superior with haggard eye and gnashing teeth left the refectory screaming: 'I'll kill the bum who drank all my Communion wine.' He had the tocsin tolled, but nobody found the drunk...
...evoked an atmosphere of imminent tragedy, with its ominous drumbeat in the background. The second, "January 9th," is a musical treatment of the mob scene on "bloody Sunday." The third, "In Memoriam," is a funeral hymn to the fallen heroes, based on revolutionary songs of the period. The fourth, "Tocsin," rising to a crashing coda, was described in a Moscow daily as "a call for tireless struggle for the highest ideals of mankind.'' The work evidently satisfied Moscow brass as a classic example of socialist realism (although that unsocialist romantic, Tchaikovsky, had been capable of similar stuff...