Music: A Little Night Music

"Day after day! night after night, one sits—amusing oneself as best one can—at a thousand concerts. Every night one hears the same tired instruments making the same tired noises. A cry from the violin, a boom from the drum. For 150 years the only new instruments to be invented are the saxophone, the musical saw, musique concrète and electronic devices. Why? In the United States, of course, there is TV. But what do we French do with our nights?"

Thus prattled Paris' Francois Baschet, 36, an enterprising fellow who has been spending his nights inventing instruments...

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