Word: vivaldi
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Mannered Genius. But the error had been pressed upon him. Convinced that Lewis is Vivaldi's nephew, his cult has urged him into thinner and thinner air since he appeared with his three fellow ascetics in the first Modern Jazz Quartet performances ten years ago. In pursuit of something that sounded agreeably like jazz from the 16th century, Lewis soon became one of the half-dozen important jazz composers, writing such a mannered form of music that his compositions set a whole new tone...
...herd of elephants, and even producing echoing sounds of haunting beauty. Baschet dubbed his inventions Structures sonores and organized a small orchestra: his brother Bernard, Modernist Composer Jacques Lasry and several associates. The group is known in France as Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet. It plays some Bach and some Vivaldi−but Baschet's devices are more adaptable to the works of Composer Lasry, which struggle with such titles as Coil Spring Dance and Duet for Crystals...
...Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Schubert-whoever the composer, the music is rarely heard quite as written: De Koven has an unsettling habit of cutting slow passages on the ground that "the fast ones are far more interesting." He is also a confirmed believer that "you don't have to be an intellectual to appreciate music. Who wants music to be profound?" De Koven's prejudices, in fact, are frequently more entertaining than his programs. "I attend no concerts," says he. "I consider them an anachronism like opera. Concerts are primarily mutual exhibitionism on the part of both performer...
...played too frequently, I should rub the bloom off the musical imagination." In the mid-1930s, Kreisler astonished the musical world-and embarrassed critics-by confessing that for years he had been palming off a whole series of his own compositions as the works of such classical composers as Vivaldi, Martini, Couperin, Dittersdorf, Pugnani. Explained Kreisler: "I found it inexpedient and tactless to repeat my name endlessly in the programs...
...repertory includes "more modern music than our audiences like to think we know" (Barber, Britten, Bartok), attendance falls if the orchestra plays too many contemporary compositions-or even too much Mozart. For better or worse, the orchestra has discovered, nothing sells quite so well as "the madness of Vivaldi...