We may soon have something radically new in sound images, prophesied, Aaron S. Copland at Sanders Theatre last night in the second of his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures for 1951-52, on "Music and the imaginative Mind."
He predicted that media for the new images might be the electronic organ, sound wave instruments, and that the ability to write music directly onto film might hasten the changes. But, comforting his audience, he said: "We, the composers, are the ones who must give meaning to whatever sonorous images the engineers can invent."
The bulk of the evening's lecture was on the "sonorous image." Copland spoke of it as a "kind of aural mirage, not easily immobilized and analyzed." He gave as an example, the impact of such an image upon himself. Once, in 1925, he had gone to a rehearsal to hear the first orchestration of his music. Arriving late, he said the sound of his music excited him so, "that I was literally about to fall over."
The musical program which followed the talk, brought in the "sonorous image" theme, using instruments unfamiliar to the audience. They were a square, 150-year-old Mozart piano, and a Karpsichord.
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