Word: downbeat
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Into the Pit. Some of the enthusiasm reached the pit. From the instant Conductor Reiner slashed the air with the downbeat, the Met's musicians plunged into the lush ripeness of Strauss's score like field mice set at fragrant cheddar. But little of the enthusiasm got through to the cast onstage...
...Olmsted: "First I invented the flute [deep blue solo]. Next, the oboe [etc.] . . . But that wasn't all I needed. I had to have -Sharps and flats and pizzicato, Molto Lento and staccato, Treble clef, ritard, repeat, Allegro, chord, and boogie-beat, Major, minor, jig, and waltz, Scherzo, downbeat, jazz, and smaltz, Jukebox, drumstick, and Puccini, Bassoons, batons and Toscanini...
...casual observer, but many orchestra musicians explain that the technique is an extremely illuminating one that assists them greatly in performing complicated rhythms or melodies, especially those encountered in modern works. At any rate, the musicians of the Boston Symphony will have no doubt when Munch gives his downbeat--something which cannot be said for his predecessor...
...band, dropped in at Nick's old beer-and-sawdust joint, played some self-taught cornet and was hired on the spot to lead the band in a bigger place that Nick was starting. On opening night, the thin, bashful kid from Providence found himself giving the downbeat to such hot-jazz bigwigs as Trombonist Georg Brunis, Clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, Guitarist Eddie Condon and powerhouse Negro Drummer Zutty Singleton. In the cult-ridden, vociferous world of hot jazz, Hackett became an overnight sensation. Erudite Manhattan jazzophiles went learnedly ga-ga over Hackett's musical kinship...
...Downbeat. In Springfield, Ill., Symphony Conductor Constantine Johns, raising his arms for the opening chord of Faust, dislocated his back, spent the next six weeks in the hospital...