Igor Stravinsky had promised (TIME, July 26) that his new Mass would be "cold music, absolutely cold. No women's voices. They are by their very nature warm; they appeal to the senses." The Mass was sung for the first time in Milan last week. And cold, absolutely cold, it proved to be.
Onstage, the chorus of 50 voices and the tiny orchestra (ten wind instruments) were dwarfed in La Scala's gilt vastness. When Swiss Conductor Ernest Ansermet put down his baton after the 17-minute Mass, listeners looked at each other uncertainly. Stravinsky's Mass was colder than an unheated cathedral in...
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