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" Were I to be appointed Secretary of Education, I'd issue a prospectus for a compulsory nationwide high school course called 'The American Experience in Art.' "
Terry Teachout
Education
Experience
High
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" Few of us boggle - though we should - at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists. "
Terry Teachout
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Fact
Trumpet
" Unlike film, live theater is an anti-naturalistic medium in which character is mainly illuminated through speech and movement. "
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Movement
Film
" Century-old records are the closest thing we have to a time machine. To listen to the voice of Theodore Roosevelt or the piano playing of Claude Debussy is to feel the years falling away like autumn leaves from a maple tree. "
Terry Teachout
Falling
Feel
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" What is true of ballet is no less true of the other lively arts. Change is built into their natures. You watch a performance, and then... it's gone. "
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" Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years. "
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Side
Fearless
" The setting of 'Billy Elliot' is the British miners' strike of 1984-85, about which the average American playgoer knows absolutely nothing. "
Terry Teachout
Strike
American
Average
" A critic is not a creative artist, is a commenter, a midwife of creativity, but not creative himself. "
Terry Teachout
Creative
Critic
Creativity
" There is still a lot to be said for the well-made, witty, clever, three-act comedy. "
Terry Teachout
Said
Lot
Witty
" David Cromer, from Chicago, I think is the most gifted young director in America. "
Terry Teachout
Young
Think
Director
" You've probably never thought about it before unless you happen to write for a living, but professional writers are doomed to spend most of their waking hours sitting by themselves at a desk, staring at a blank computer screen and waiting for lightning to strike. "
Terry Teachout
Waiting
Thought
Professional
" Most of us remember Nat King Cole as a vocalist. His warm, grainy baritone is still so closely identified with such familiar ballads as 'Stardust' and 'The Christmas Song' that it's hard to imagine anyone else performing them. "
Terry Teachout
King
Christmas
Song
" Direction is the most invisible part of the theatrical art. You don't see it. "
Terry Teachout
See
Direction
Art
" A masterpiece doesn't push you around. It lets you make up your own mind about what it means - and change it as often as you like. "
Terry Teachout
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Like
Mind
" In a world without any criticism at all, although there are many actors who would think they would be delighted to see that happen, would in fact be a far more problematic world than they could ever imagine. "
Terry Teachout
Think
More
See
" All history, and most especially the history of the 20th century, argues against placing ideas in the saddle and allowing them to ride mankind. Too often, they end up riding individual men and women into mass graves. "
Terry Teachout
Women
End
History
" One reason why Shakespeare's plays remain so popular is that they're now regularly presented in updated stagings with a contemporary flavor. "
Terry Teachout
Why
Plays
Flavor
" At its best, no art form is more thrilling than grand opera, yet none is at greater risk of following the dinosaurs down the cold road to extinction. "
Terry Teachout
Down
Best
Cold
" If you're looking for light entertainment, you can't get much lighter than 'Bye Bye Birdie,' a flyweight farce about the coming of rock n' roll to small-town America. "
Terry Teachout
Looking
America
You
" Not surprisingly, my parents' generation did everything they could to make life easier for their own children. Was that good for us? I wonder. It certainly didn't do us any good from a cultural point of view. I'm struck by how few boomers have embraced adult culture in middle age. "
Terry Teachout
Age
Children
Culture
" Only the tone-deaf doubt the power of music, though some feel it more strongly than others. "
Terry Teachout
Feel
Doubt
Power
" Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz. "
Terry Teachout
First
Jazz
American
" The script of a play is not a finished product: It's a set of instructions. "
Terry Teachout
Finished
Product
Play
" The backstage play, in which the private lives of theater people are put onstage for the world to see, is one of the diciest of dramatic genres. "
Terry Teachout
See
Dramatic
Play
" I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the '60s and '70s. My attitude resembles that of my parents, who were born in the '20s and lived through the Great Depression and World War II. "
Terry Teachout
Depression
I Am
Great
" It's said that most Americans under the age of 30 reflexively dislike movies made before 1970, especially those that were shot in black and white. If this is so, I suspect it's because such films portray an America that no longer exists. "
Terry Teachout
Black And White
Age
America
" Well into the '40s, it wasn't uncommon for big-budget Hollywood movies to contain little or no underscoring, and many of today's directors, following the lead of Martin Scorsese in 'GoodFellas,' accompany their films with pop records, not original music. "
Terry Teachout
Music
Movies
Hollywood
" I think that most of the best movies made in America in the 20th century were crime dramas, screwball comedies and westerns. "
Terry Teachout
Best
Think
Movies
" Whether they know it or not, most American playgoers owe an incalculably great debt to translators. Were it not for their work, comparatively few of us would be able to enjoy the plays of Chekhov, Ibsen or Moliere. "
Terry Teachout
Know
American
Debt
" Most 'Monty Python' fans are, of course, baby boomers, who have long been a nostalgic lot and are growing more so as they totter toward old age. "
Terry Teachout
Baby
Age
Growing
" Does film music really matter to the average moviegoer? A great score, after all, can't save a bad film, and a bad score - so it's said - can't sink a good one. "
Terry Teachout
Bad
Good
Great