Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Within hours of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia last August, the Western broadcasts that had boomed through so clearly for half a decade were once again obscured by artificial static that overrode many broadcasts. The resumption of jamming was obviously an attempt to muffle the world's outcry against the invasion by Soviet troops, and it represented no small effort. The Soviets switched back on all their coldwar jamming devices, which some experts number in the hundreds. They consistently tried to blank out the Voice of America, the BBC and West Germany's Deutsche Welle, and at various...
Patient Fiddlers. Unfortunately for Kremlin censors, it is more difficult-and sometimes even more expensive-to jam programs selectively than it is to send them. Western broadcasters get their programs through either by taking advantage of Soviet technical lapses or by employing classified tricks of their own. And once through the barriers, they have an eager and well-equipped audience. Short-wave transmitters are much more common in the Soviet Union than in other nations because the vast size of the nation makes short-wave transmission the most practical way to reach the entire country. Perhaps as many...
Name That Tune. Nettled by similar unkindnesses perpetrated by the BBC, the Soviets last week struck back at their Western tormentors. An article in the government newspaper Izvestia charged the BBC with "involvement in the most seamy operations" of British agents operating in Eastern European nations. One ploy, Izvestia reported, was to play certain tunes at prearranged times, thus enabling a British spy to forecast such events and so prove to local recruits that he was a bona fide spook. The BBC dismissed the charges as ridiculous, and in its own sly way mocked the paper's paranoia...
...reputation as a virtuoso organist. Yet as a composer, he attracted mostly condescending notice-even his son Johann Christian, one of the four Bach children who distinguished themselves as composers, referred to him as "the Old Wig." Today, of course, Bach is universally ranked among the transcendent creators of Western civilization. Choral works that he turned out for rowdy schoolboys to sing in drafty provincial churches are cherished by the world's finest choruses. Keyboard exercises that he jotted down for his children and students still beguile and challenge great virtuosos. Instrumental pieces that he com posed to curry...
...artists are the thousands of more modest Bach performances, ranging down to the smallest towns and the merest amateur level. Here Bach is pervasive. Following the pattern set by the present-day chorus at Bach's own St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, church and community choirs throughout the Western world are marking Christmas by singing something of Bach's, even if only a two-minute chorale. And what church organist will let Christmas-or any other week-go by without playing at least one Bach prelude or perhaps an entire recital...