Word: yellow
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...collection of knives made of rough-hewn steel and handles whittled from eucalyptus branches, a woman chatted away with a friend who carried a bag, on her way to buy some rice or vegetables for lunch. As she talked the seated woman smoothed out the shiny folds of her yellow skirt, long and puffy in the traditional manner of the Aymara. In contrast to the men, very few of the women have changed to modern dress...
...Chinese have not rejected all orchestral music. They still seem to admire the Yellow River Concerto, written by a committee of the Central Philharmonic Society of the People's Republic of China. (A recording by the Philadelphia Orchestra is available with Pines of Rome on RCA #ALL 1-0415.) To capitalist ears the piece sounds vaguely stirring and faintly romantic. A Washington Post critic suggested that "from the sound of it...the principal members of the committee were Franz Liszt and Sergei Rachmaninoff, with some help from Edvard Grieg...
...Chinese don't see it that way. According to the official program notes, the brass introduction to the final movement (entitled "Defend the Yellow River") should conjure up an image of Chairman Mao's call to arms. A piano solo in the second movement "summarizes the long history of the nation and its people," but if the program didn't say so no one would ever know. Nietzsche, Wagner, George Bernard Shaw and many other critics have all written tracts trying to analyze some piece or another in historical or philosophical terms. All they have shown is that...
Composition by committee? Why not? Most of our Broadway musicals and pop records, to cite but two examples, are produced by committees or their equivalent. The Yellow River Concerto turns out to be delectable schmalz that rivals such an old classical "pops" favorite as the Warsaw Concerto...
Exactly how the committee collaborated on the concerto has not yet been divulged by Chinese authorities, who do not encourage individual artistic expression. It is known that Pianist Yin Cheng-chung wrote the solo music. Like some Western works for solo instrument and orchestra, Yellow River has a program: it starts by invoking the day-to-day life on the river, ends with Mao's call to arms, and the defense of the river as a symbol of the entire country. Sophisticated Western listeners would have no trouble picking Yellow River apart, but for all its naivete...