Word: woodworth
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tone music, but should deal with a more specific group of compositions, emphasizing listening assignments rather than a textbook. Listening courses should study the sonorities of instruments, the texture of chamber music, and composers' individual peculiarities of style, and should stress the difference between program and non-program music. Woodworth also applies some of James Conant's ideas in pleading for more and better music teachers...
...Arts and Government" chapter, Woodworth outlines (unfortunately, only briefly) a few of the modest bills on aid to the arts which have met Congressional apathy or hostility and urges their passage. He advocates expanding federally-backed musical performances to include college and conservatory musicians, with more emphasis on domestic programs instead of only "cultural exchange." Another proposal is a federal Department of Education and the Arts, splitting up the present Health, Education, and Welfare Department...
These ideas are not quite as controversial as the dust jacket suggests, but Woodworth should have included more detail about them, and omitted some of the trivia that fills up the rest of the book. Some trivia: a chapter cataloguing the well known abuses of music by restaurants, advertisers and radio stations, another offering unimportant comments about music in churches, and a third summarizing the trends of modern music and urging his readers to be curious about them...
...next-to-last chapter comments well on the role of a music critic ("a reporter, a teacher, a philosopher, and a champion of music in his community") but the illustrations Woodworth has chosen are such atrocious specimens of writing and reporting they nearly invalidate his points...
...word about professorial metaphors: the reader does not expect flowing and melodious prose in a book of this kind, but he could request Woodworth not to write sentences like "Local companies need not espouse either horn of the dilemma..." And in making a very simple point on page 96, Woodworth uses an extended metaphor which includes cores, roots, flowers, fruit, tangents, shooting stars, and satellites...