Word: tonality
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...music. Inheriting a spirited ensemble from his flamboyant predecessor, Leopold Stokowski, Ormandy refined it until the strings turned to silk, the woodwinds to amber, the brass to gold. If Ormandy's interpretations of safe repertory standards such as Beethoven and Brahms symphonies were not always individual, the ravishing tonal beauty of his orchestra was often reward enough. "The Philadelphia sound -- it's me!" Ormandy said proudly, and it was less a boast than a statement of fact...
...respond to spoken commands, is old hat to fictional electronic brains like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but still a primitive art in the real world. Computers are not yet discerning enough to cope with the ambiguities of spoken language or with a wide range of accents and tonal qualities. Making sense out of human discourse, says Dataquest Analyst Kenneth Lim, "is quite possibly the most difficult thing for a computer to do, other than actually thinking...
...standing in the center, telling them how to play." His businesslike podium manner and his reliable but unspectacular interpretations of the standard repertory caused many to underestimate him. But in 44 years, the longest music directorship in American history, Eugene Ormandy led the Philadelphia Orchestra to a height of tonal splendor that was the joy of his adopted city and the despair of orchestras everywhere else...
Gubaidulina's Offertorium (1979-80) uses the theme of Bach's Musical Offering as the takeoff point for a complex violin concerto that lasts about 35 minutes. Atonal passages mingle freely with tonal ones as the theme is atomized and then reconstructed in reverse; the modern orchestrational device of flutter-tonguing for flutes and brass is complemented by traditionally virtuosic writing for the solo violinist. Gubaidulina, 53, also evokes her Russian predecessors Stravinsky and Prokofiev, most strikingly in a passage of glissandi string harmonics that recalls The Firebird. By Western standards, Offertorium may be tame, but given the governmental restrictions...
...varied, but still codified system of marks: dot, dash, stroke, slash. In his best drawings sur le motif, most of which belong to his second visit to Montmajour in July 1888, one sees how this open marking evokes light, heat, air and distance with an immediacy that "tonal" drawing could not. Space lies in the merest alteration of touch; light shines from the paper between the jabs and scratches...