Word: tympani
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...begin at the beginning, we come in and see black and steel wreckage, rising to the flys in perfect proportions, a portrait of desolation. The orchestra--tympani, an organ, and an electric guitar--play a Greek sounding overture, a mixture of sirtaki and danse macabre...
...meet it half way. It uses a passionate form of music, rock and roll, so naturally and so well that it may be that long-awaited theatrical millenium--a real rock and roll musical. Bradley Burg's score, which, when it is not playing off organ beeps against tympani thumps, is airing subtle and poignant melodies, may well be the best music he has written...
...keeping his twenty-three fine musicians together through the tricky orchestrations. Now all he has to do is keep them quiet, for they are much too loud, and although few lyrics get lost, the noise gets painful. Mutes on the brass and a lighter hand on the tympani might help. J.D. McLaughlin's set leaves a maximum amount of clear space for cavorting on the small Agassiz stage. The show is brightly lit, as comedy should be, and the costumes are clashingly colorful and good...
...issue contains a story about an archprotester named Sheppy West who is called upon to sing "My Rotten Country, 'Tis of Thee" at a rally, and offers instead the "ultimate protest," a prolonged belch that "moves up chromatically with a jazz feeling and finishes off with a big tympani effect." The audience is overcome. "It's as if Sheppy has said something personal to everyone and they are with it and relating. He has communicated. It just goes to show, if you got it inside of you, it's bound to come...
First the tympani's unbelievable crescendo at the start of the March to the Scaffold, then the mock-serious strings, followed by all that nonsense for the bassoons. Finally the inevitable tuba, and a great off-beat joke by the percussion utensils. The Dream of a Witches' Sabbath flaunted its own goodies, notably the raucous way the clarinets, flutes, and bassoons treat the witches' dance tune (a perversion of the Beloved's theme). The brasses' evil parody of the dies Irae plainchant seemed to have more downright nastiness to it than ever before...