Word of the day: twee

The word of the day is twee:

1. affectedly dainty or quaint

905, from childish pronunciation of sweet.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/twee)

"Whenever the show threatened to get twee, it veered toward spooky grandeur: an assault on Akhnaten's temple is headed by a Grand Guignol general wearing a top hat capped by a skull."

 - Alex Ross, "Pyramids and Wikileaks: Modern opera thrives in Los Angeles", 12 December 2016 The New Yorker (https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/12/modern-opera-thrives-in-la/amp?client=safari)

Word of the day: hieratic

The word of the day is hieratic:

1. Also, hi·er·at·i·cal. of or pertaining to priests or the priesthood; sacerdotal; priestly.
2. noting or pertaining to a form of ancient Egyptian writing consisting of abridged forms of hieroglyphics, used by the priests in their records.
3. noting or pertaining to certain styles in art in which the representations or methods are fixed by or as if by religious tradition.
4. highly restrained or severe in emotional import

1656 (implied in hieratical), from Gk.hieratikos, from hierateia "priesthood,"from hierasthai "be a priest," fromhiereus "priest," from hieros "sacred."

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hieratic)

"At the same time, its static, hieratic text, derived largely from ancient Egyptian and Akkadian sources, lies far outside the operatic norm, and makes most American librettos of recent decades look bland"

 - Alex Ross, "Pyramids and Wikileaks: Modern opera thrives in Los Angeles", 12 December 2016 The New Yorker (https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/12/modern-opera-thrives-in-la/amp?client=safari)

Word of the day: nuncio

The word of the day is nuncio:

1. a diplomatic representative of the pope at a foreign court or capital: equal in status to an ambassador.

papal envoy, 1528, from It. nuncio (now nunzio), from L. nuntius "messenger," from PIE base *neu- "to shout" (cf. Gk. neuo "to nod, beckon," O.Ir. noid "make known").

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nuncio)

"When an American general arrived to confer with the papal nuncio, the U.S. Army blared music from loudspeakers to prevent journalists from eavesdropping."

 - Alex Ross, "The sound of hate", 4 July 2016 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/04/when-music-is-violence)

Word of the day: redolent

The word of the day is redolent:

1. having a pleasant odor; fragrant.
2. odorous or smelling (usually followed by of ): redolent of garlic.
3. suggestive; reminiscent (usually followed by of ): verse redolent of Shakespeare.

c.1400, from O.Fr. redolent "emitting an odor," from L. redolentem, prp. of redolere "emit a scent," from re-, intensive prefix + olere "give off a smell" (see odor).

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/redolent)

"What animates the story is López’s score, which begins in full fury—dark, ragged fanfares in the brass, redolent of the main-title theme of a nineteen-fifties Hollywood thriller—and hardly lets up."

 - Alex Ross, "Divas Under Fire: Two new American operas: 'Bel Canto' and 'Great Scott'", 4 January 2016 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/divas-under-fire)

A whiff of music?

Word of the day: ostinato

The word of the day is ostinato:

1. a constantly recurring melodic fragment.

1876, from It. ostinato, lit. "obstinate, persistent."

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ostinato)

"As so often in Welles’s work, the imagery is accented by the sound: amid the noise of writhing bodies, we hear an ostinato of crickets."

 - Alex Ross, "The Shadow: A hundred years of Orson Welles", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/the-shadow)

Word of the day: hackwork

The word of the day is hackwork:

1. writing, painting, or any professional work done for hire and usually following a formula rather than being motivated by any creative impulse.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hackwork)

"This is largely how today’s culture has chosen to remember Welles: as a pompous wreck, a man who peaked early and then devolved into hackwork and bloated fiascos."

 - Alex Ross, "The Shadow: A hundred years of Orson Welles", 7 December 2015 The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/the-shadow)

word of the day: punctilious

The word of the day is punctilious:

 

extremely attentive to punctilios; strict or exact in the observance of the formalities or amenities of conduct or actions (dictionary.com)

You remember punctilio.


"'There is a point in the perfection of artistic skills beyond which further progress is without artistic value,' the composer and critic Virgil Thomson wrote of the Boston Symphony, in 1944.  'The surface becomes so shiny that nothing else can be perceived.'...  The Boston Symphony is 'overtrained,' he says, its punctiliousness leading to 'executional hypertrophy.'  Phrases are so polished that they become inert; narrative dissolves into immaculate moments.  'The music it plays never seems to be about anything, except how beautifully the Boston Symphony Orchestra can play.'"

 - Alex Ross, "Brushfires: Andris Nelsons energizes the Boston Symphony", 1 December 2014 The New Yorker


I once had a choir director like that.  We sang better than we did with the previous director, but we completely lost touch with what we were singing about.

word of the day: expiate

The word of the day is expiate:

Etymology:  < Latin expiāt- participial stem of expiāre to make satisfaction, < ex- (see ex- prefix¹) + piāre to seek to appease (by sacrifice), < pius devout. 

1. trans. To avert (evil) by religious ceremonies; to avert the evil portended by (a prodigy or prophecy). Obs. exc. Hist. 

2. To cleanse, purify (a person, a city) from guilt or pollution by religious ceremonies. Occas. Const. of. Obs. 

3. To do away or extinguish the guilt of (one's sin); to offer or serve as a propitiation for. †to expiate oneself (rare): to do penance.

4. To pay the penalty of.

5. To make amends or reparation for. 

6. intr. To make expiation for. Obs. 

7. To extinguish (a person's rage) by suffering it to the full; to end (one's sorrows, a suffering life) by death. Obs.  (OED)

"The sets, by Jasmine Catudal, rich in gold and red, offer all kinds of spaces in which singers and dancers can move about: stage, auditorium, trap room, prompter's box, catwalks.  When, at the beginning of Act III, the action goes backstage, with the Met's own back wall towering in the distance, it's as if Lepage were expiating for the colossal clautsrophobia of his 'Ring'."

 - Alex Ross, "Retaking the stage: 'The Tempest' and 'Un Ballo in Maschera', at the Met", 3 December 2012 The New Yorker

Word of the day: Aufseherin

The word of the day is Aufseherin:

"Of the 55,000 guards who served in Nazi concentration camps, about 3,700 were women.^{[citation needed]} In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a guard shortage.
The German title for this position, Aufseherin (plural Aufseherinnen) means female overseer or attendant."

 - Wikipedia


"The ultimate ambiguity of the plot is that we cannot be sure if Lisa really sees Marta on the ship.  The Aufseherin may be hallucinating, her mind corroded by guilt and fear."

 - Alex Ross, "Testament: Recovering a Holocaust opera by Mieczysław Weinberg", 5 September 2011 The New Yorker

Word of the day: chaconne

The word of the day is chaconne:

Etymology:  < French chaconne, < Spanish chacona, according to Spanish etymologists, < Basque chucun pretty.

Music.

 

An obsolete dance, or the music to which it was danced, moderately slow, and usually in 3–4 time. (OED)

 

Wikipedia (and they wouldn't lie to me) goes into a little more detail: "A chaconne (French pronunciation: [ʃaˈkɔn]; Italian: ciaccona) is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line (ground bass) which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and melodic invention."

"Only the chaconne climax falls short: it seems a bit blatant."

 - Alex Ross, "Testament: Recovering a Holocaust opera by Mieczysław Weinberg", 5 September 2011 The New Yorker

Word of the day: epigone

The word of the day is epigone:

Etymology:  In pl. < French épigones, < Latin epigonī, < Greek ἐπίγονοι, plural of ἐπίγονος born afterwards, < ἐπί upon, after + -γονος, < root of γίγνεσθαι to be born. The designation οἱ ἐπίγονοι (Latin Epigoni) was applied especially to the sons of the seven heroes who led the war against Thebes; the mod. use is in allusion to this.

rare.

One of a succeeding generation. Chiefly in pl. the less distinguished successors of an illustrious generation.  (OED)

"The first impression is of an epigone.  So I thought for years, listening to the few Weinberg recordings that came my way.  Recently, though, I became entranced by a disk of the 1944 Piano Quintet, by the ARC Ensemble, and began to perceive the subtle ways in which Weinberg stands apart from his hero."

 - Alex Ross, "Testament: Recovering a Holocaust opera by Mieczysław Weinberg", 5 September 2011 The New Yorker