2017年7月21日星期五

blithely, standing ovation, let loose sth

"The blithe assumption that everyone will be able to work for as long as the national finances require – that nobody will get ill, that it’s as easy for someone made redundant at 62 to find another job as it is for someone half that age, that technological change won’t sweep away entire careers from under our feet – simply isn’t borne out by the facts."

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally unveiled the White House plan to clean out toxic assets from banks' balance sheets on Monday, and investors gave it the equivalent of a standing ovation.

Ultimately, despite its formulaic elements, “Satyagraha” emerges here as a work of nobility, seriousness, even purity. In the final soliloquy, timeless and blithely simple, Gandhi hauntingly sings an ascending scale pattern in the Phrygian mode 30 times. To some degree the ovation at the end, after a 3-hour-45-minute evening, was necessary. The audience had to let loose after all that contemplation.

blithe
adjective OLD-FASHIONED
happy and without worry:
She shows a blithe disregard for danger.

blithely
adverb
She blithely agreed to the contract without realising what its consequences would be.

Music Encyclopedia: Phrygian

The third of the eight church modes, the authentic Mode on E. The expression ‘Phrygian mode’ is often used as a covering term for Renaissance and Baroque polyphonic compositions whose final sonority is an E major triad established by a Phrygian cadence and within the Phrygian or Hypophrygian range.
A Phrygian Cadence is one in which the lowest part descends to the final or tonic by a semitone step (from a so-called ‘upper leading note’) while the highest part normally rises to the final or tonic by a whole-tone step; the minor-key imperfect cadence, common in the Baroque period at the ends of slow movements, is of this kind.

let loose sth
1 If you let loose something such as bullets or bombs, you release a lot of them all together:
The allies let loose an intensive artillery bombardment over the border.

2 to suddenly make a sound or speak in an uncontrolled way:
He turned round and let loose a torrent of abuse.let sb loose
to allow someone to do what they want in a place:
You don't want to let Oliver loose in the kitchen.